Oracle Links Its Service and IoT Clouds

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Can the Internet of Things (IoT) improve customer service? Oracle is betting it can.

Today, the Redwood City, Calif.-based enterprise software maker announced an integration between its Service Cloud and IoT Cloud offerings. The former, one of many parts of the company’s Customer Experience Cloud Suite, delivers a variety of web and social customer service, contact center and field service management capabilities. Meanwhile, Oracle IoT Cloud enables IoT device data collection, processing and analytics.

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Together, Oracle believes they can help usher in new ways for businesses to engage with customers and perhaps even solve issues before they become big problems. Key to the effort is an open-source integration called the Oracle Service Cloud-Oracle IoT Cloud Integration Accelerator.

“The IoT Accelerator enables service agents to remotely control smart devices, troubleshoot and address issues from within the Service Cloud application,” according to an online support document. Once linked, the code can automatically generate an incident within Service Cloud if fault is detected in an IoT device. Users can then evaluate historical performance data and attempt remote repairs.

“The Internet of Things is fundamentally changing the way consumers interact with brands and in the process, it is creating volumes of data that organizations can leverage to transform the customer experience,” said Meeten Bhavsar, senior vice president of Oracle Service Cloud, in a statement. “By delivering a packaged integration between Oracle Service Cloud and Oracle IoT Cloud, we are able to accelerate the time to value, while lowering the complexity of IoT projects.”

Enterprises can now harness Oracle’s combined Service Cloud and IoT Cloud capabilities to give their business practices and workflows a more customer-centric spin, added Bhavsar. “For brands, this also means they can easily take advantage of IoT data and make it actionable across engagement channels to deliver exceptional customer service experiences.”

Oracle isn’t the only major business software provider that’s banking on the IoT to help businesses connect with their customers.

Last year, Salesforce announced its own IoT Cloud. The service employs a real-time event processing engine called Thunder, enabling businesses to incorporate connected device data into their customer service and engagement activities.

Salesforce broke from tradition this spring by operating the offering from Amazon Web Service’s (AWS) cloud data centers instead of its own facilities.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.