Larry Ellison’s Oracle human capital management keynote results in questions on IBM, SAP, games, and island real estate.

After a whole day of sessions at Oracle HCM World in Las Vegas and a one-hour keynote by Larry Ellison, perhaps it is just not surprising that among the HR professionals in attendance desired to ask the fame CEO questions on topics except human capital management.

Ellison was only too happy to oblige, talking about acquisitions, competitors, acquisitions, games, and his plans for the island of Lanai in Hawaii, which he bought in 2012 for an estimated $500 million.

Of course, topic A for Ellison throughout his “Modern HCM is Social HCM” keynote was Oracle HCM, the socially enabled application suite that Oracle lately touts as its fastest-growing cloud computing offering. Ellison called HCM and customer-experience apps an important systems at any company or government agency because they facilitate communications and manage the crucial information around people, whether they’re employees or customers.

[Want more on Workday’s alternative to Oracle HCM? Read Workday Brings Consumer Web Experience To Enterprise Apps.]

Recapping the high points of Oracle HCM Cloud, including its recruiting, onboarding, training, career planning, talent-review, and workforce planning functionality, Ellison said what distinguishes Oracle HCM from other HCM systems is its social underpinnings.

“In case you examine the user interfaces, it appears like a social network, and that is good because the majority know the way to make use of social networks,” Ellison said.

Decrying “20th century HR apps” that required “three-week training courses” and did little greater than “cut checks and allow you to request vacation days,” Ellison mentioned social not just with the intention to hook into LinkedIn for recruiting, but in addition to tap employee referrals.

“The bad news is you get so much more candidates it’s worthwhile to sift through using these social techniques,” Ellison said. “That’s why we’ve got these analytics that assist you identify the superior candidates that you really want to begin interviewing promptly.”

Oracle HCM’s built-in analytics also spot when you find yourself prone to losing a key employee or in case you have a manager who loses more people than she or he should, said Ellison.

“The Talent review process does constant risk analysis in the employee base right down to groups and individual employees,” he said.

Ellison finished his keynote in true Ellisonian style, creating a litany of claims about Oracle HCM Cloud’s unique characteristics. “We’ve the best HCM system that has an integrated social network,” he said. “We are the just one that has integrated recruiting and social sourcing within the core HCM system. … We are the just one with integrated learning management and the only real one with predictive analytics inside the system.”

There are certainly other HCM vendors with embedded social functionality, learning management tools, and analytics (Cornerstone, SAP, and Workday among them), so there should be some nuance in Ellison’s interpretation of “integrated” or, perhaps, in his definition of “HCM system.”

It’s not that attendees didn’t ask anything about HCM throughout the Q&A session that followed Ellison’s keynote. For instance, one attendee asked in regards to the best method to handle onboarding during acquisitions given Oracle’s experience with such deals. Ellison responded that the right approach is situational, dependent on the corporate being acquired. He cited the purchase of Sun, a tremendous company, as very different from acquiring a tiny startup with a number of dozen employees.

The more colorful and fascinating answers followed the off-topic questions. Asked about Oracle’s competition, Ellison followed up on remarks he made last week at a cloud event by clarifying that SAP and IBM are still Oracle’s largest competitors, but they’re “not those we’re paying all that much attention to,” he said.

“As we plan to compete, we’re building modern, socially enabled applications within the cloud; SAP doesn’t try this. That’s something that Salesforce does or Workday does,” he said. “We’re taking a look at providing our database within the cloud and our Java services inside the cloud, and that’s the reason not something that IBM does; that’s something that Amazon does.”

Maybe Ellison’s distinction here’s that SAP bought, and didn’t build, SuccessFactors? Or that IBM offers DB2 within the cloud, but not the Java that Oracle acquired with Sun?

Asked concerning the promises of technology, Ellison talked up many positive benefits to society, but he lamented the hours children spend playing games in place of riding bikes or twiddling with real balls.

“Kids prefer virtual games to real games because it’s easier,” he said. “Everybody gets to be Lebron James in virtual reality. Kids think, ‘This is so cool; I’m Lebron.’ No, you are not!”

Responding to a request from a guy who identified himself as a brand new Oracle employee and a local Hawaiian, Ellison spent greater than five minutes detailing his plans for experiments in green energy, smart agriculture, and improved schools and public facilities at the island of Lanai.

“There are things we’re doing so far as logistics, power generation, power distribution, irrigation, desalinization which might be a model for a next generation of technology,” Ellison concluded to a round of applause.

Ellison’s HCM rundown might have seemed a piece 101 to HR veterans aware of these applications, but he clearly had a company grasp of the flaws, seemed relaxed and open, and, as always, didn’t fail to entertain while sharing Oracle’s version of reality.

Too many companies treat digital and mobile strategies as pet projects. Listed here are four ideas to shake up your organization. Also within the Digital Disruption issue of InformationWeek: Six enduring truths about selecting enterprise software. (Free registration required.)

Doug Henschen is Executive Editor of InformationWeek, where he covers the intersection of enterprise applications with information management, business intelligence, big data and analytics. He previously served as editor in chief of Intelligent Enterprise, editor in chief of … View Full Bio

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