The Indian education sector is in the midst of a huge transformation enabled by technology. Classroom boards have become more interactive and students have immediate access to information using mobiles, iPads and laptops. Looking at the huge opportunities in this sector, Oracle has rolled out a series of mobile enhancements specifically designed to meet the unique needs of higher education. Mitesh Agarwal, CTO, Oracle India, shares his perspective on why Oracle foresees a tremendous opportunity for mobility in the higher education sector in India
1. What do you believe is the market opportunity for your firm in terms of mobility? Is there a ‘white space’ that has not been targeted by other firms?
Mobility in India is mostly being driven from within the organization. Today, organizations want to be able to extend their enterprise applications to mobile devices because keeping the workforce connected empowers everyone to make decisions, take action, and stay informed. What we are seeing is that Mobility is taking the same trajectory as that taken by the Web when it came into being. Today, nobody questions the need for a web presence. Similarly, time has come when it is imperative to have a mobile presence for all applications and services.
With respect to specific sectors, Oracle foresees tremendous opportunity for mobility in the higher education sector. Currently, more than 50 percent of India’s population is under 25 years old. But as opposed to developed countries, where the percentage of skilled workforce is between 60 percent and 90 percent of the total workforce, India records a low 5 percent of workforce (20 to 25 years) with formal vocational skills.
There is a pressing need for accelerated reform in the higher education ecosystem to equip India’s youth with skillsets that enhance their employability in a digital economy – With Apps tailored to specific education or coaching needs, enabling faculties or educational houses to provide management information and decision support systems, Education Systems that leverage Enterprise Mobility are ahead of the game from both, value creation and sizing the bigger market share perspectives. Therefore, universities and colleges are looking to ensure that information is available anywhere, anytime via any device to enterprise applications. This has led to a surge in the demand for enterprise mobile applications in the education field. We offer universities a complete mobile solution to help colleges reduce the financial burden of deploying new technologies for curriculum updates and provides scalable services to address fluctuating demands.
2. From a technology point of view, what is the unique differentiator you have over other firms?
Oracle Mobile Platform provides a common technology framework for building, integrating, securing, deploying and managing mobile apps on any device. It supports a multi-channel, multi-device framework that allows building apps once and deploying them to iOS, Android and other platforms— with web, native and hybrid delivery. It leverages Oracle Fusion Middleware infrastructure to expose enterprise applications and data as web services and restful API’s that allow easy integration between mobile apps and back-end systems. This means that the same platform that you use to develop and maintain your enterprise applications can now be extended to develop, integrate, secure, deploy, and manage your mobile applications.
Apps created with Oracle Mobile Platform integrate easily with each other as well as with third party applications based on Java and other industry-standard languages and protocols. This platform also protects API’s to uphold corporate security and compliance policies, with comprehensive capabilities for mobile identity management and mobile application management.
Oracle provides the industry’s most complete, end-to-end offering aimed at reducing the risks associated with smart mobile devices. This is one of the unique capability that Oracle provides with respect to providing security in the mobile space. With a complete set of security-focused capabilities—including access and authentication, single sign-on, application containerization, corporate application store —Oracle Mobile Security enables organizations to rapidly adopt and deploy new mobile technologies and applications, and segregate and manage corporate data and applications without interfering with mobile users’ personal data and applications.
3. Can you share some details on the future strategy? How do you see the potential for Oracle in the education sector with respect to different technologies such as cloud and mobility?
Modern students are more connected and empowered than ever before. They arrive on campus – either physically or virtually – with high expectations. And as student expectations continue to rise, so will the pressure for colleges and universities to deliver personalized, seamless experiences demanded by modern students. Therefore, the next frontier for mobility will see mobile devices enhance learning to make content more engaging. Mobile learning is set to become a permanent feature in schools, colleges and universities, worldwide.
