Oracle has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Maharashtra government in San Francisco for the creation of a Center of Excellence, a research platform for designing, developing, and testing new capabilities for delivering better governmental services to citizens and business entities.
Oracle’s CEO Safra Catz told financial daily Business Line that India is going to leapfrog other global cities in the domain of deploying tech to make urban centres smarter. “You have visionary leadership that is intent on leveraging the newest technology, not recreating the wheel. They are absolutely intent on doing things quickly,” Catz told the publication.
On the subject of cost-effectiveness of the various solutions offered by Oracle, the CEO said that cloud computing would offer an economical option to India. “First of all when you are using the cloud it’s already so much less costly right out of the box. You are leveraging the scale of a global operation and India alone is a massive market for us. So, pricing is not an issue,” Catz told Business Line.
Further elaborating, Catz said: “Historically, deployment of technology could be costly and slow. But with the cloud you are talking about massive economies of scale, the costs go down and it’s fast to deploy. It allows for easy entry. It’s one of the reasons why this is such a perfect fit for needs for India.”
Oracle is looking at deploying local data centres, utilising local knowhow, and also leveraging global capabilities. “We have a lot of experience in delivering in different parts of the world. We have many development centres in India and some of the most talented people in the world are in our Indian operations,” Catz said in the interview.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis spoke about the challenges related to the rollout of Smart Cities in the same interaction. The CM has been quoted as saying, “We do have some challenges but I have created a war room where I am personally monitoring 30 projects directly. In this war room, we sort out every problem, and all stakeholders are present. So many projects that were stuck for the last 20-30 years have been cleared in one year.”
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