By Nishant Arora

New Delhi, Nov 19 (IANS): Big and small enterprises the world over are looking for Cloud-based solutions that simplify and organise their data in a way it can be easily accessed, managed and updated. For this to happen, the companies need databases that are agile, scalable, secure and cost-friendly.

Cloud major Oracle, that has been a leader in the space of database technology for years, is now offering the world's first "Autonomous Database" -- a "self-driving" software that uses Machine Learning (ML) to enable unprecedented availability, high performance and security at a much lower cost.

According to Shailender Kumar, Regional Managing Director, Oracle India, Indian customers -- both existing and new ones -- are fast embracing and upgrading to "Autonomous Database".

"These early adopters represent a mix of large enterprises, mid-size firms and born-in-the-Cloud start-ups, hailing from diverse industries -- from banking to footwear, spices to digital commerce and consulting to IT services," Kumar told IANS in an interview.

"Autonomous Database has excellent growth prospects in the Indian market as it can save on efforts and cost and enhance efficiency," he added.

L&T Infotech has invested significantly on automation for services deployment and deployment during various tools and accelerators.

"Autonomous Database will help further product-level configuration so we look forward to partnering with Oracle and customers for Autonomous Cloud services in the coming days", said Pandurang Ranjalkar from L&T Infotech.

Running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Autonomous is not just self-driving but also a self-securing and self-repairing database that automates key management processes, including patching, tuning and upgrading to keep critical infrastructure automatically running for a modern Cloud experience.

"The Autonomous Cloud service is designed to uniquely scan for security threats and apply updates while running to prevent cyber attacks and data theft," informed Kumar.

A leading Indian footwear company wanted to improve operational efficiencies with their point of sale (PoS) applications, spanning over 1,500 stores across the country.

"With the modern, enterprise-grade Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing, they were able to reduce the reporting load on PoS applications and are now offering an even better in-store shopping experience to their end-consumers," Kumar informed.

Another example is a leading bank with its origin in south India.

With more than 1,200 branches and 1,600 ATMs across the country, the bank had multiple systems in place for monitoring branch details, network analysis and ATM availability, etc.

"Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud, bundled with Oracle Analytics Cloud service, helped the bank gain a unified, single view of ATM availability, branch operations and network availability," added Kumar.

This empowered them to make better business decisions and personalise services better for their consumers.

"For instance, they're now able to figure out which ATM has more walk-ins, why customers in a particular locality use a competitor's ATM though there's an ATM by their home bank nearby, etc., and are able to make more strategic business decisions," the Oracle India executive told IANS.

Not just big enterprises, but start-ups are also looking forward to adopting the Autonomous Database.

With advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ML algorithms, organisations today are looking to extract deep levels of insight into user-behaviour and past performance to do better future predictions of trends.

Doing this with a traditional database takes a lot of time, because of the need to link large impression volumes with actual transaction value to see what happened.

According to global management consulting firm Pique Solutions, Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse has surpassed Amazon Redshift by providing compelling value for customers of all sizes due to its lower cost, higher performance and the reduction of management and operational costs.

"Our customers see significant advantages in using our Cloud database services to take the complexity out of running a business-critical database while delivering unprecedented cost savings, security and availability," Andrew Mendelsohn, Executive Vice President, Oracle Database said last month.

The same is true for Indian enterprises that, according to Kumar, want simplicity and cost savings for data management workloads.

"The overall Cloud adoption in India is growing fast. In this scenario, the Autonomous Database has come as a fresh air for the businesses," said Kumar.