No industry is immune from the current pace of technological change. While this acceleration presents radical opportunities for growth, analytics, and connectivity, it also brings real and pressing challenges to the adaptability of business organizations. At COLLABORATE 19, Chinam Kry, VP of Cloud Business Group at Oracle, shared with the Quest community how aligning HR and Finance through Cloud-based applications creates an agile, adaptable business response to navigate both the current business landscape and future innovation.

Barb Darrow, Senior Director of Communications at Oracle, wrote about today’s “unprecedented challenge” of cybersecurity. Technological and legal complexities are continuing to grow in this age of heightened cybersecurity threats—including a rise in state-sponsored hacking. This “unprecedented challenge” was a topic of conversation between Dorian Daley, Oracle Executive Vice President and General Counsel, and Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect during Oracle’s recent Media Days.

Oracle’s own Arvind Rajan spoke at COLLABORATE 19 about how to lift and shift your PeopleSoft solution to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and begin leverage the OCI File Storage Service (FSS). The session gave an overview of OCI FSS and walked through a customer case study of how it can be leveraged within an organization.

Nancy Swanson, Senior Director of Product Marketing for the Oracle Database Appliance Portfolio, wrote about how companies can move to a new stage of competitiveness and growth when they transform their organizations on-premises or in the Cloud.

An increasing number of businesses are discovering that infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a catalyst for digital transformation, accelerated application development, and increased customer engagement through mobile applications and social interactions. Gartner forecasts that IaaS spending will grow 27.6 percent and reach nearly $40 billion in 2019. That would be a nearly $10 billion increase from last year.

If your company is looking to transform systems that have an overwhelming quantity, diversity, and/or complexity, you fall under the umbrella of “large scale migrations.” These situations often involve multiple business units, and there are very demanding operational and security requirements in production workloads.

At COLLABORATE 19, Hunter Bohannon, the HR Oracle Cloud Support Analyst at Yum! Brands, spoke about how Yum! Brands conquered challenging payroll business requirements with Oracle HCM Cloud and Cloud Payroll.

Lori Pierson, Vice President of HCM Transformation at Oracle, laid out five dangers customers should avoid when upgrading their HR system to HCM Cloud. Moving on-premises human resources applications to the Cloud is continuously becoming more and more popular. If a company wants to take its HR applications to the next level, it’s important to take advantage of new technologies and deliver a better experience for current and future employees. Organizations need to prepare for what lies ahead before making the move to the Cloud and learn how to avoid the five dangers Lori listed when upgrading to HCM Cloud.

Sue Shaw, Director of IT Operations for ATCO Group, spoke at COLLABORATE 19 about how to manage change after you’ve made the move to the Cloud. Sue discussed the scope of ATCO’s Cirrus Cloud Project, the types of changes companies may face during Cloud projects, and tools that are available to help with Cloud implementation change management.

Emerging technologies like Internet of Things (IoT) are continuously disrupting organizations and industries. A recent Oracle blog explored the possibility of blockchain playing a role in the future of IoT as organizations continue to adopt the emerging technology to transform their business.

Dorian Daley, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Oracle, and Edward Screven, Chief Corporate Architect at Oracle, spoke about the current threat landscape and Oracle’s strategy for addressing it. The pair spoke about how Oracle is enhancing the relationships with customers by adopting a service model that allows customers to shift the security burden and risk to Oracle. They also covered how Oracle has rebuilt Cloud and the Autonomous Database, so customers are fully equipped to truly protect their data and eliminate human error from the security equation.