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Oracle’s San Francisco “OpenWorld” Two weeks ago I went to San Francisco to attend the 8th Oracle OpenWorld conference. The over 42,000 attendees from every region of the world gathered to experience one of the world’s largest business and technology razzmatazz events, this one apparently a world record in terms of conference attendance. Also attending the conference from Botswana was a delegation from the Department of Information Technology in the Ministry of Communications Science & Technology, led by the Director, Ms Joyce Mpete. Two key themes ran across the event – firstly that of Oracle wanting to revolutionise the software industry, and secondly that of data and identity security. Oracle President Charles Philips in his opening keynote address, emphasised that owning enterprise software should not be surrounded by complexity, and by extension, high cost. It was Oracle’s objective to revolutionise software by building ‘a consistent, standards-based architecture across world-class applications, middleware, data management, administration and security.’ Called “Oracle Fusion Architecture,” it is the blue print by which Oracle products will seamlessly work together, have reduced complexity, be more secure, more automated, pre-tested and pre-integrated so that less effort (and high priced consultant support) will be needed. Regarding security, Oracle plans to extend its leadership in data security through innovations in identity management, access control, authentication, user provisioning and single sign-on. According to Philips, success in this area has already pushed sales of Oracle’s Fusion Middleware software to over US$1 billion. Although there were numerous keynote presenters from Global IT luminaries like AMD’s Hector de Ruiz, Dell’s Michael Dell, HP’s Mark Hurd and Sun’s Jonathan Schwart; the highlight of the event, as usual, was Oracle’s own CEO Larry Ellison. He talked of the emerging technologies that will be needed in the future to adequately develop, deploy, manage, and secure the information systems that are redefining the way businesses operate. Ellison also used the opportunity to controversially launch Oracle’s comprehensive support of the Red Hat Linux operating system. Oracle has from early days chosen to use Linux as it was freely accessible, open, and standards based as opposed to propriety software such as Windows. In promoting the use of this system it has had its security certified for use by Governments as well as setting up support teams across the world. The four day conference presented opportunities to interact and network with Oracle specialists, Oracle’s business partners as well as hundreds of customers who exhibited a wealth of experience on their implementations of Oracle based solutions. A feature of the event was the presence of over three hundred exhibitors demonstrating their wares. Oracle OpenWorld is a forum that should definitely be attended by Oracle users. It can also be attended on a visitor basis whereby it can be used as a shop window in this very competitive environment. This conference was a real eye opener for me. Having encountered Oracle first as a user, and over the past year as a reseller, it was a fantastic opportunity to understand the breadth and scope of products available from this mighty power in the enterprise software arena. It was also a fantastic opportunity to network and interact in the open areas, and social events that were held around the conference. They even had Elton John, who played for over two hours to entertain the Oracle faithful. What an experience! - top - [home] [about us] [people] [products] [investors] [training] [conferences] [news] [contact us] Copyright RPC Data 2005 | |