Messrs Vanghese (left) and Asumang (middle) assisting Mrs Patricia Dovi Sampson, Director, Ministry of Communications to inaugurate Oracle office in the Stanbic Heights, Accra.

Oracle to harness opportunities in Ghana

Ghana's growing information and communications technology (ICT) ecosystem received a shot in the arm on March 24 when global software giant, Oracle, opened its local office in the country.

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Oracle's direct presence in the country will come as a big relief for the ICT community, especially for companies that use large data and information and relies largely on It software to drive operations. The company's vast array of software and hardware solutions cut across industries – private and public.

The company, which has been indirectly present in Ghana through partners for over two decades, wants to push cloud computing and data centre applications strongly, one of the areas that oracle is competitive in.

Ghana Country Manager, Mr Joseph Asumang, told the Graphic Business ahead of the inaugural ceremony that Ghana remained an important market for the company and that Oracle was committed to staying in for the long haul.

"We see that the African market in general is growing so there is a lot of potential, particularly for us. We see that the use of information technology is growing and Ghana being one of the key growth potential in Africa, we feel that it’s about time Oracle committed more resources to the market.”

Mr Asumang said coming directly into the market would bring Oracle closer to its clients to help them deploy IT solutions better.

Oracle is a unique software company that has the widest portfolio of products and services and wants to push all areas, depending on market needs.

The company has backed its words by taking up office space within the Stanbic Heights at the Airport City, where it has further retrofitted into a state-of-the -art modern office for its sales, engineers and service support staff.

Although the company has just made a triumphant direct entry, its products took a lead years ago and has been deployed in various forms for various entities including electronic banking, healthcare, insurance, human resource management, retail, aviation, for deploying enterprise and public sector portals, real estate, telecommunication and the likes.

"Yes we had reached the market through our partners, but we think that the time has come to be closer to our customers so that we will be able to deliver superior service and deploy products to the market much quicker," Mr Asumang said.

Human capital

The company’s presence is also good for young Ghanaian IT enthusiasts and professionals, as the company has a policy for using local talents as much as possible.

"One of our key objectives is that we rely on local skills sets to settle in the market. This means we are going to give opportunities for Ghanaians to develop and utilise their skills. So there is a correlation between our physical presence and the development of local capacity.”

This will also mean that Ghanaian IT professionals can be deployed within the Oracle global network, irrespective of geography.

Already, the company, through its training Academy, has worked with two IT students of Ashesi University and Valley View University to develop apps for the hospitality industry.

Cloud computing

However, with cloud computing fast catching on in Africa, as in the rest of the world, Oracle also intends to work towards adoption of cloud services either as a service or platform. This will give the market the choice to either deploy their own small data centres for cloud solutions or rely on Oracle Cloud services which has servers hosted elsewhere. Currently, the company does not have a data centre in Africa.

Oracle Cluster Leader for Africa, Mr Cherian Vanghese, said the company believed in the economic potential of Ghana and its human capital, saying Oracle would help train the local professionals and deploys them within the group.

Mr Vanghese said the cloud adoption was considered a non-starter in Africa some few months ago but the service was catching on fast, which makes Africa one of the rapidly changing markets across in the world.

Oracle as a global company has invested US$39 billion in research and development since 2004.

Headquartered in California, the company has 130,000 employees across the globe, 420,000 customers in 145 countries and more than 25,000 partners. It recorded US$38.2 billion in revenues last year.

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