Technology is critical to sustaining Nigeria’s new economic growth, says Naklicki

    Written by Adeyemi Adepetun

   Oracle-Janusz Naklicki is the Vice President, Africa, Turkey, Central Asia, Oracle Corporation. He spoke to ADEYEMI ADEPETUN in San Francisco, USA, a fortnight ago, on some germane industry issues, especially the need for Nigeria to sustain its present economic status with huge concentration and massive investments in Information and Communications Technology (ICT). 
HOW did you see the business of technology in the countries you oversee, especially in Nigeria?

My experience with Africa started over three years ago when I began to cover Oracle Africa transition countries inside the continent. And now I have taken over the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

   I see tremendous opportunities in Nigeria, cum Africa in terms of business volumes and in the development of the societies on how ICT can contribute to the economies and leap frog the growth in several ways.

   My strategy for Africa is the coverage. There is need to bring to the continent more technology products, especially from Oracle. I have come to realize that there has been no major difference in Africa and other emerging markets.  Coverage means reaching customers everywhere, not only Lagos or Abuja, but in all major cities. It also includes smaller countries in Africa. This should be done through investments.

   Oracle Corporation has over the years invested in in our partners; channels; customer relations; products; skills and trainings.

    Oracle’s relevance has come to bear on several partnerships we have built with governments across the globe in terms of positioning itself as IT firm of choice and help economies sustain their growth. 

    Today, Nigeria has become the largest economy in Africa and we believe that to sustain such a huge profile requires massive investments in innovation, technology among others.

     So for us, our concentration has been to look at what solutions Oracle can offer to make life easy wherever we operate and we are already doing that in Nigeria. We have entered into several partnerships with government on technology development.

Are African governments, especially in Nigeria responding to calls for technology advancement?

I think we have noticed tremendous response from governments. We have completed several projects and currently working on some others with IT involvement from the developers, business leaders from governments.

   Government is really focusing on developing the economy via information technology. Oracle is bringing the example of how things work from the examples of USA, UK, Europe and the rest. We are coming with references on what is required here and how it was delivered there.

    In addition, there has been tremendous adoption from the government. For example, we are working with some states in Nigeria where the governors are looking at using technologies as a tool for good governance. 

    So, the discussion with the government has moved away from where Oracle is just been seen as a reseller or Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEMs) but into where we have partnerships that goes beyond just using technology for themselves,  but also looking at how do they use it as capacity development initiative going forward.

    We can say now that there are lots of states governments now calling on Oracle, as against us going to them. They are asking how they can leverage our solutions and technology for their performances in the management of Nigeria as a country.

     At the Oracle Open World, so many announcement about partnership and capacity building in Africa. There is a partnership with the Lagos State government.  It is currently on going.

Can you be more specific about states in Nigeria that you are in partnership with for ICT growth?

Indeed, we have seen where more state governments are coming into the folds for ICT development. For instance, Edo State we are already working with them on several solutions and capacity building. We have started looking into employee readiness; student development and introduction of Java as a curriculum among others.

   There have been serious tractions. On the table now, we are engaged with seven of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Our partnership is to look at ways by which we can use technology to drive governance.

   I may not be able to mention others because the discussions are on, but I am sure you know very much well about our partnership with the Lagos State government. The other five are in the very early stages.

From Nigeria to other part of Africa, what do you see as challenges limiting faster ICT growth?

I think the major challenge revolves around skills. This is why we have developed the capacity building programme. We believe we can bring the whole breath of technology, the super powers of Oracle solutions to bear on some of these challenges. Our believe is that after capacity training, someone needs to take the solution to the people because the computer is just a piece of metal, meaning that without the people, it is useless. 

   Capacity building is our priority. We believe that creating the proper skill set is crucial to developing a technology based economy.

 This partnership with some States Government in Nigeria, is it a one-off thing or what?

This is the Oracle Academy programme. We have implemented it in many countries. It is a project that has come to stay. We are using it to transfer knowledge everywhere we have our footprints.

   There is a new dimension to it because we have set up partnership with our channel partners. This is a very active platform that has several schedule of workshop. We are developing the skills with our partners and we have more than 200 partners in Nigeria and other part of Africa. They are indigenous partners present here in Nigeria.

    This will allow them bring our solution offerings to our various customers because they understand the market better and several local laws that ensure proper services.

    In addition, like we mentioned in Lagos and other parts of the country where we look at three key areas in terms of readiness. There is a part where we talk about employee readiness; workforce readiness and youth readiness. The whole idea of what we want to work out is to start looking at how to build capacity, starting from when these kids are in Secondary schools and the universities, that they need to do certain courses and start to build them up for effectiveness, say in Java applications; eBusiness and other data base technologies.

    We have other part, which is the employee readiness. This is one of the things that are very key and dear to the heart of the Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, where he is talking about how to start training the people.  They want technologies that allow them to take informed decisions.

Apart from capacity building with government, does Oracle have solutions that can facilitate the growth of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs)?

Yes. There are solutions. Several solutions! One of our strategies is to lower the barrier of entries so that the SMEs can come in so that they can enter the IT transformation. We do this by firstly by introducing the product that are well adopted by SMEs globally like the Accelerator Programme or the JD Edward solutions among others. We have solutions in our portfolio that allows SMEs to grow if they buy into it.

    The other dimension of addressing this dynamic market is through the cloud. We have lots of cloud services that can help SMEs to grow. In fact, so many were introduced at the 2014 OpenWorld. This Cloud we are talking about is about scalability. You start small and grow gradually. What we are saying is that you start low as an SME by getting the infrastructure, which is a computer, get the applications from our database and leave the other back end solution for us. In fact, I think Oracle now has about 72 cloud services.

   These are services that are attractive to the African market if they can explore it. Cloud is the way to go.

How do you define Cloud Technology?

In the Nigerian reality, you don’t have to have power from the grid to get power. I leant when I got to Lagos recently that virtually everybody has a generating set….it is a serious issue. There are lots of entrepreneur in Nigeria and their zeal is amazing. The Nigerian society is very vibrant. So for cloud technology, all you need to is to get a computer and you transfer the maintenance of the software infrastructure and architecture to Oracle. Let Oracle worry about the challenge that comes thereafter.    

  What we do or to simply define Cloud Technology is we provide a platform where your solutions are secured in the cloud. It is Oracle that worries about the back end solutions and the IT, while a customer worries about his or her customers.

   The analogy I can give is that for me I don’t think about how water is purified. All I do is to get to the tap and get water because there are smart people working on that to ensure water is good and runs adequately. The same thing Oracle does with the Cloud technology. All are saying is that you as a customer concentrate on satisfying the customer, while we provide the back end support for the business. When Larry Ellisson came with this idea 30 years ago, he didn’t call them cloud, but something like network computing and others. So today, we have several solutions in that regards that are fast tracking growth of businesses.

For all these technologies, cloud and others, how will you describe their adoption rates in this part of the world?   

The adoption rates have been impressive. In fact, it is being explored in several areas, transport; retail; finance, even with SMEs large and small. The adoption has been fantastic. There have been speeds of adoption.

   Atimes, I am very surprise about the list of our customers because it is not only the big players, the small operators are embracing our solutions and services, this is because the barriers of entry have been lowered.

   If you look at what is currently happening in Africa in the last five years in terms of broadband, there have been so much improvement. The connectivity five years ago was probably through one or two cables, but today there are several fibre optic cables even in Nigeria today. Look at what is happening in the mobile world in Nigeria, it is impressive and I know there will be more growth if the policies are maintained.

What assistance can Oracle give to Nigeria’s local software sector, especially the startups?

That is an area we hope to do more because software development is a low asset sector. For software development, you don’t need big assets, all you need is a PC or laptop and you are on to develop software. All that is required is the software development skills. This is where Oracle comes in. We have the Oracle Network Partner Programming designed to attract and develop the small and large IT complex across the globe. Everyone can join the network.

  Today, even small companies are getting access to the facilities and software for free as long as they within the programme. There, they have access to experts, trainings, developments and skill acquisition initiatives.

    We have also come to realize that customers prefer specialize partners that satisfy them in a very special but scrutinize them. So the best way for Startups is to join Oracle Networks so that they can enjoy the tools; trainings; expatriates’ attention; technical support.

   The programme has been in Nigeria for so many years now.

Can you explain some of the new solutions unveiled at this year’s Oracle OpenWorld and relevance to the present day challenges in business, organisations among others?

The Oracle OpenWorld is probably the only single period of the year that Oracle comes with so many announcements. They range from cloud; services, computing among others. In one of the sessions, I couldn’t finish counting some of the new solutions that were unveiled at this forum.

    I think the most exciting one is the Software as a Service (SaaS), so that developers can use the cloud to develop applications that can solve business problems. If you recall, Larry Ellison in his speech announced the zero data loss application, probably the only single best product in the backup with the press of a single button. The products are amazing. Most of our customers wants solutions that meets their demands as fast as possible.

    I think, Larry Ellison himself announced about 19 solutions, I can’t say of other executives who also made several announcements.  I think the bottomline is that Oracle is offering customers different solutions as infrastructure and as a service. Oracle this time focused on creating options that meet the demands of the customers across the globe.

What is the future of technology in Nigeria amidst all these solution being offered by Oracle?

Let me make this clear, Nigeria and the rest of Africa are like any other place in the world that are fast adopting technology. Nigeria is even adopting technology faster than some developed economies of the world.

   We have seen passion and commitment from the people here. People have come to believe that they need technology to fast track so many things and that is good. It will help the economy. Technology is critical to the growth of any economy. Check developed economies today, they are moving fast because of technology and I think Nigeria should follow that trend, especially now that it has become the largest economy in Africa.  I see IT becoming the major contributor to the economy soonest.

    Technology is required to sustain the growth of the present economic status if Nigeria must play big in the global economy. It must encourage inventions, innovations among others.

    I can also say that Oracle is ready to assist, already we are well positioned with the government in terms of using technology.

 Culled from http://www.ngrguardiannews.com