So last day here in the Bay as Openworld starts to wind down...
Last night was the Appreciation Event where Oracle threw a huge 'party' for its customers. It was held in the Cow Palace (15 minutes outside the city). The building is enormous and looks like it was once a huge cattle market but is now a venue for gigs and so on.
Interestingly, the key themes of the conference - eco-responsibility and energy efficiency - were completely tossed aside as Oracle laid on a wanton exhibition of excess. There was enough food to feed any number of African nations for a month, free buses from the centre transported what must have been around 20,000 partygoers there and back and the beer, wine and spirits flowed freely.
There were 3 entertainment areas: a main stage where Billy Joel performed and two tented areas which housed Lenny Kravitz and Stevie Nicks. Around all of that was a gigantic tented village strewn with armchairs, sofas and candle-lit tables. The place looked like it had been lit and furnished by Laurence Llewellyn Bowen on speed. I have never witnessed such a thing in my life before. Think T in the Park but with comfy chairs. Well, I guess some of us are getting on a bit and it was nice to get a wee rest.
Stevie Nicks was actually pretty good. I was hoping that the enigmatic Mr Fleetwood would do his stuff (he was listed as sharing the bill) but he only made a fleeting appearance right at the end. Amazingly, he still has the beard and ponytail but it is now pure white. It's the first time I have seen him since the infamous Brit awards a few years ago. Must have taken its toll.
Anyway, Billy Joel and Lenny Kravitz are not really my cup of tea but they seemed to get a good enough reception from the wrinkly crowd.
We watched a good bit of the Stevie Nicks set and everything was going well until she shouted right at the end "Oracle rocks!".
For me, that was time to go home and a fitting epitaph to an amazing week.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Larry Ellison tells us what we want to hear
Last full day for us and what a day it was. Out came the big guns with Charles Schwarz from Sun, Michael Dell from Dell and, of course, Larry Ellison from Oracle all making keynote speeches.
First up at 8:30 sharp was Charles Schwarz. He picked up, like everyone else this week, the common theme of eco-responsibility. Interesting point that the cost of powering a server has now outstripped the cost of buying it. So that means that all of the big boys are looking at how they can engage with the green agenda and make energy efficiency savings. And, of course, they are all desperately trying to stake a claim to being the first or the only or the best in terms of how they are approaching the problem.
Virtualisation came up again with Charles Schwarz announcing Sun's (did you know that SUN stands for Stanford University Network? No, neither did I) vmx platform. Being Sun, its roots are firmly in the open source community and the XEN project. It's interesting to see Sun's strategy for growing its business. Rather than trying to sell products directly, it stimulates overall demand by releasing free technologies that ultimately lead to more hardware sales. Charles Schwarz gave the example of java. It's the development platform of choice, of course, and can be found on 90% of the world's PCs along with 6 billion mobile devices. Wow.
So Sun has made its pitch in the virtualisation market with a number of interesting products:
The VM engine - or Hypervisor as I suppose we should call it - is available at http://www.openxvm.org/
Sun also impressed by being one of the vendors with sufficient courage to undertake a live demo. And it worked. Nearly.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any better, on came surprise guest Michael Dell (more of him later) to announce a partnership with Sun. So you can now buy Dell boxes loaded with Solaris.
Another interesting theme this week has been the constant references to social networking tools. Almost all of the big boys have included Facebook type technologies in their latest product releases. Great. Now you can see the CFO out drunk with all his pals in Oracle Financials.
After lunch, it was Michael Dell's turn. He told us how Dell was doing all it could to fight climate change and made a commitment to be carbon neutral by 2008. As predicted it was all about virtualisation and server cooling efficiency. A bit too much of a Dell commercial but a good session.
Interesting things to see too. Dell now have an online facility where you can load up a machine image and get Dell to build you as many boxes as you want with that image.
Also got a demo of a yet-to-be-released tablet featuring multi-touch technology. Think touch screen and being able to use all your fingers at once. You had to be there.
Last of all, there was a demo of desktop streaming technology. A kind of cross between thin client and a PC, you have a diskless workstation which pulls its OS image from a server. But as it still has CPU etc in the case it can handle processor intensive operations like video in the same way as a normal PC. Quite good that was.
We then had a last plug outlining Dell's green credentials again. I suppose it is worth mentioning that they do offer free recycling of Dell products to consumers. Others take note.
Last keynote was Larry Ellison. He was in bullish mood and keen to tell us how Oracle can solve all your problems and be green while doing it.
Yet again, we had mention of virtualisation with the launch of Oracle VM. It's free to download and has lots of VM templates so worth a look. If you want support it's about £1k per annum for 4 CPUs. clearly aimed at taking a slice of VMWare's market share. It's also certified against all Oracle apps. I had a long talk with the guy who leads the development team yesterday and he was very excited about its capabilities. It is definitely something I will be looking at when I get back.
There was also a strong pitch about unbreakable Linux. According to Larry, Oracle has just taken Red Hat and fixed all the bugs. You can even switch your support (effortlessly) from Red Hat. Hmmm.
We then had a demo of some new Fusion applications which were interesting enough but sales force automation doesn't really butter my toast so I had a metaphorical snooze.
Larry was then back up for some Q&A. Nothing new or particularly interesting until someone asked him about licensing (no, it wasn't me). He said something along the following lines:
Oracle's preference is not for named user or processor based licensing. We would rather sit down with customers and work out a deal that allowed them to use what they needed. It doesn't matter if you are a small or large business. Just go talk to your sales people.
Now that is not a direct quote - I was actually too stunned to write it down - but it's close enough and Gavin was sitting beside me and he heard it too. This is something we will certainly be speaking to Oracle about in the very near future.
Reeling from this (I suspect a few Oracle sales guys were too) we headed off for a final session on Oracle Web Services Manager. As I suspected, this looks like something we need to give serious consideration to.
In short, it is a J2EE app which controls and manages web services. It can do cool things like:
And tomorrow the adventure is over and we come home.
First up at 8:30 sharp was Charles Schwarz. He picked up, like everyone else this week, the common theme of eco-responsibility. Interesting point that the cost of powering a server has now outstripped the cost of buying it. So that means that all of the big boys are looking at how they can engage with the green agenda and make energy efficiency savings. And, of course, they are all desperately trying to stake a claim to being the first or the only or the best in terms of how they are approaching the problem.
Virtualisation came up again with Charles Schwarz announcing Sun's (did you know that SUN stands for Stanford University Network? No, neither did I) vmx platform. Being Sun, its roots are firmly in the open source community and the XEN project. It's interesting to see Sun's strategy for growing its business. Rather than trying to sell products directly, it stimulates overall demand by releasing free technologies that ultimately lead to more hardware sales. Charles Schwarz gave the example of java. It's the development platform of choice, of course, and can be found on 90% of the world's PCs along with 6 billion mobile devices. Wow.
So Sun has made its pitch in the virtualisation market with a number of interesting products:
- the ultrasparc T2 CPU which is optimised for virtualisation and can 'run' 64 operating systems on a single CPU
- a new VM engine and management console
- a new storage virtualisation project (ZFS) based around the use of commodity storage. This one looks worth keeping an eye on
The VM engine - or Hypervisor as I suppose we should call it - is available at http://www.openxvm.org/
Sun also impressed by being one of the vendors with sufficient courage to undertake a live demo. And it worked. Nearly.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any better, on came surprise guest Michael Dell (more of him later) to announce a partnership with Sun. So you can now buy Dell boxes loaded with Solaris.
Another interesting theme this week has been the constant references to social networking tools. Almost all of the big boys have included Facebook type technologies in their latest product releases. Great. Now you can see the CFO out drunk with all his pals in Oracle Financials.
After lunch, it was Michael Dell's turn. He told us how Dell was doing all it could to fight climate change and made a commitment to be carbon neutral by 2008. As predicted it was all about virtualisation and server cooling efficiency. A bit too much of a Dell commercial but a good session.
Interesting things to see too. Dell now have an online facility where you can load up a machine image and get Dell to build you as many boxes as you want with that image.
Also got a demo of a yet-to-be-released tablet featuring multi-touch technology. Think touch screen and being able to use all your fingers at once. You had to be there.
Last of all, there was a demo of desktop streaming technology. A kind of cross between thin client and a PC, you have a diskless workstation which pulls its OS image from a server. But as it still has CPU etc in the case it can handle processor intensive operations like video in the same way as a normal PC. Quite good that was.
We then had a last plug outlining Dell's green credentials again. I suppose it is worth mentioning that they do offer free recycling of Dell products to consumers. Others take note.
Last keynote was Larry Ellison. He was in bullish mood and keen to tell us how Oracle can solve all your problems and be green while doing it.
Yet again, we had mention of virtualisation with the launch of Oracle VM. It's free to download and has lots of VM templates so worth a look. If you want support it's about £1k per annum for 4 CPUs. clearly aimed at taking a slice of VMWare's market share. It's also certified against all Oracle apps. I had a long talk with the guy who leads the development team yesterday and he was very excited about its capabilities. It is definitely something I will be looking at when I get back.
There was also a strong pitch about unbreakable Linux. According to Larry, Oracle has just taken Red Hat and fixed all the bugs. You can even switch your support (effortlessly) from Red Hat. Hmmm.
We then had a demo of some new Fusion applications which were interesting enough but sales force automation doesn't really butter my toast so I had a metaphorical snooze.
Larry was then back up for some Q&A. Nothing new or particularly interesting until someone asked him about licensing (no, it wasn't me). He said something along the following lines:
Oracle's preference is not for named user or processor based licensing. We would rather sit down with customers and work out a deal that allowed them to use what they needed. It doesn't matter if you are a small or large business. Just go talk to your sales people.
Now that is not a direct quote - I was actually too stunned to write it down - but it's close enough and Gavin was sitting beside me and he heard it too. This is something we will certainly be speaking to Oracle about in the very near future.
Reeling from this (I suspect a few Oracle sales guys were too) we headed off for a final session on Oracle Web Services Manager. As I suspected, this looks like something we need to give serious consideration to.
In short, it is a J2EE app which controls and manages web services. It can do cool things like:
- add ws-security to plain SOAP messages
- manage many and multiple endpoints
- enforce different security policies at runtime
- monitor web services and report on e.g. SLA breaches such as delayed messages
And tomorrow the adventure is over and we come home.
Day 4 begins
Beautiful sunny morning here on the Bay with temperatures in the mid-70s predicted. Looking out from the 13th floor hotel room, all I can see is clear skies and no fog.
Today's the big keynote speech from Larry Ellison who is sharing the slot with Michael Dell, eponymous owner of the hardware company. Will be interested to see what kind of reception Mr Ellison gets. I predict lots of whooping.
I also have a session on Oracle Web Services Manager to look forward to. It conflicts with a boat trip, which Oracle UK is arranging, around San Francisco Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge. I am turning down the hospitality to bring you the latest on OWSM. Now that's dedication.
More later.
Today's the big keynote speech from Larry Ellison who is sharing the slot with Michael Dell, eponymous owner of the hardware company. Will be interested to see what kind of reception Mr Ellison gets. I predict lots of whooping.
I also have a session on Oracle Web Services Manager to look forward to. It conflicts with a boat trip, which Oracle UK is arranging, around San Francisco Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge. I am turning down the hospitality to bring you the latest on OWSM. Now that's dedication.
More later.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Tech Hog Heaven
A fine set of events today as some great heavyweights took us through some landscape-changing developments in the world of IT.
Firstly, Intel's Paul Ottelini gave us an insight into microprocessor developments. The new 45 nanometer processor is out (today, I think) and the word is it is faster and less power hungry than its predecessors. Power and energy have been key themes this week with all the big players laying out their green credentials. Ottelini quoted some interesting facts: like Data Centre power consumption in the US accounts for over 1.5% of all power consumption. In his view, the exponential growth in data (with data stores growing by at least 50% every year) storage and processing and the amount of power needed to service it is ultimately unsustainable. The big guys are all getting together to reduce power consumption, reduce floor space and reduce heat. According to Intel, this means that every new microprocessor has to be reinvented from scratch. And it is a long drawn out process. To maintain Moore's Law - Moore is an Intel man, apparently - Intel needs to be thinking 4 or 5 years down the line. In fact the next generation of 32nm microprocessors are already on the production line ready for 2009 release.
Only odd note was Otellini's bizarre drawing of parallels between the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the guys who work at Intel. And I so much wanted to shout "architect is a noun!".
To keep the green thing going, Oracle's Head of Customer Services announced that Oracle would be joining the Climate Savers initiative. Seems that a couple of big players are all making the correct noises about commitment to low-energy computing. The news was so good I immediately went and blagged myself a free t-shirt.
Next up was Thomas Kurian. He is the man behind Oracle Fusion Middleware and introduced a whole raft of new developments that were simply breathtaking. Oracle has clearly invested an enormous amount of time and effort into the new Fusion Middleware product set and is intent on pushing forward with a strategy of holistic IT provision. Fusion will be the glue that allows Oracle to join all your products together and run them for you whether it's integrating SAP and eBusiness Suite or using mashups and desktop gadgets to enhance the business user's experience. Things to look out for are
Firstly, Intel's Paul Ottelini gave us an insight into microprocessor developments. The new 45 nanometer processor is out (today, I think) and the word is it is faster and less power hungry than its predecessors. Power and energy have been key themes this week with all the big players laying out their green credentials. Ottelini quoted some interesting facts: like Data Centre power consumption in the US accounts for over 1.5% of all power consumption. In his view, the exponential growth in data (with data stores growing by at least 50% every year) storage and processing and the amount of power needed to service it is ultimately unsustainable. The big guys are all getting together to reduce power consumption, reduce floor space and reduce heat. According to Intel, this means that every new microprocessor has to be reinvented from scratch. And it is a long drawn out process. To maintain Moore's Law - Moore is an Intel man, apparently - Intel needs to be thinking 4 or 5 years down the line. In fact the next generation of 32nm microprocessors are already on the production line ready for 2009 release.
Only odd note was Otellini's bizarre drawing of parallels between the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the guys who work at Intel. And I so much wanted to shout "architect is a noun!".
To keep the green thing going, Oracle's Head of Customer Services announced that Oracle would be joining the Climate Savers initiative. Seems that a couple of big players are all making the correct noises about commitment to low-energy computing. The news was so good I immediately went and blagged myself a free t-shirt.
Next up was Thomas Kurian. He is the man behind Oracle Fusion Middleware and introduced a whole raft of new developments that were simply breathtaking. Oracle has clearly invested an enormous amount of time and effort into the new Fusion Middleware product set and is intent on pushing forward with a strategy of holistic IT provision. Fusion will be the glue that allows Oracle to join all your products together and run them for you whether it's integrating SAP and eBusiness Suite or using mashups and desktop gadgets to enhance the business user's experience. Things to look out for are
- Web Center - an eclectic mix of Frontpage, Social Networking tools and Oracle Portal that allows you to add all sorts of elements to your web site, Intranet and desktop
- Adaptive Access Manager - a security tool that fits into your single signon and learns user habits so that it can automatically identify unusual patterns and force additional challenge responses if required
- Oracle VM - Oracle has worked with the open source Zen project to provide a free (yes that is free) virtualisation product. It's due out tomorrow (you can probably download it right now)
- Oracle Web Services Manager - out of the box ws-security. This is one I will be following up as, at first glance, this looks like a natural successor to the local CAS Gateway
There are many, many more.
I then took the opportunity to have a look around the massive exhibition halls here at Moscone. The usual tat was on hand. Interesting to see Mr Leith at work. The man is a professional freebiehound.
This afternoon saw the much awaited session with Tom Kyte (of Ask Tom fame). He spoke to a packed audience in the Yuerba Buena Gardens Theater and took us through his top 11 (hoho) features of the new 11g database. A lot of this was over my head - hey, I'm not a DBA - but even I was impressed with some of the new things on offer. The main thrust of the 11g database is availability with a whole suite of improvements designed to keep those applications running and allowing you to tweak settings, add instances and optimise SQL on the fly. The biggie is Real Application Testing. This is a facility that allows you to take a slice of production data and replay it against various different hardware and software configurations. There even a scenario where you can run destructive tests against your test system and then restore that test system to its previous state using the flash data archive facilities.
Other improvements such as new partitioning capabilities, encryption for tablespaces, finer grain dependencies and new data compression techniques make this a major new development in the database marketplace. An enthusiastic and knowledgeable audience asked many questions and the man himself received a great cheer at the end. Probably the highlight of the conference so far.
Tomorrow sees a keynote speech from Larry Ellison - I'll try and remember to take my camera this time (or rather try to remember to put the memory card back in it) so I can get some photos to give you a flavour of this amazing event. I am amazed at simple things like how they manage to get lunch to 43,000 people, all the Oracle red-liveried buses and the sheer scale of everything.
A highlight for me today too was the performance of the presenter at the Sun Microsystems booth in Moscone North. He got a member of the audience to handcuff him and lock him in a small, steel box. Said presenter then did an escapology act of which Houdini himself would have been proud, all the time lacing the air with appalling puns about how much Sun did thinking out of the box. A real star.
Big day tomorrow with Larry's keynote and a much-awaited session on the mysterious Oracle Web Services Manager. I'll let you know how it goes.
Another day dawns
Just coming up to 7 a.m. here in Bay City and I'm checking today's schedule. After breakfast we catch the Oracle shuttle bus from right outside the hotel and ride down a dozen blocks or so to the Moscone Centre where the conference is being held.
First up is a keynote speech at 8:30. Looks like a joint effort from Oracle's Thomas Kurian and Intel's Paul Otellini. Will be packed out as usual no doubt so need to get in early. The old eyes can't see much even with these gigantic screens they have in the main hall.
Highlight of the day should be the session with Tom Kyte this afternoon. Tom, of Ask Tom fame, will be telling us the Top 10 things about the new 11g database. Should be interesting.
Jim Kinney is also scheduled to meet the computer press later. Will keep you posted.
More later.
First up is a keynote speech at 8:30. Looks like a joint effort from Oracle's Thomas Kurian and Intel's Paul Otellini. Will be packed out as usual no doubt so need to get in early. The old eyes can't see much even with these gigantic screens they have in the main hall.
Highlight of the day should be the session with Tom Kyte this afternoon. Tom, of Ask Tom fame, will be telling us the Top 10 things about the new 11g database. Should be interesting.
Jim Kinney is also scheduled to meet the computer press later. Will keep you posted.
More later.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Off we go
According to the Oracle people there are over 43,000 delegates at Openworld. And it feels like it. The whole place is simply seething with bug-eyed, bag-clutching zealots.
Anyway, the sightseeing is well and truly over and it's good to get down to some proper tech stuff.
Last night saw Larry Ellison and Safra Catz go through a riveting history of 30 years of Oracle's achievements. What started as a 4-person company has grown to the behemoth we all love and respect today. Lots of in jokes and guest appearances by people who used to have long hair. Nice.
This morning saw the real beginning to the conference. Charles Phillips from Oracle kicked things off with a keynote speech outlining Oracle's future strategy in some very important areas. The main thrust seems to be around world domination. Oracle is positioning its future portfolio around integration. So regardless of what system you have for payroll, financials, manufacturing or service management (or whatever) be assured that Oracle has an adaptor or connector that will seamlessly link your legacy (e.g. SAP) system to the Oracle juggernaut. As much as anything this was a statement of intent. And an impressive one at that. For Oracle, the gloves are off. Not content with supplying APIs to allow custom code development between applications, Oracle is now providing fully formed BPEL processes that will even further blur the already increasingly grey areas between business analysis and the tech stack. The future's bright and it's red not orange.
Next up to the plate was Hector Ruiz, MD of AMD. He quickly picked up on the theme of virtualisation which looks like the Next Big Thing. Backed by his quadcore Opteron processor, Hector outlined the vision of a new permanently connected generation and the challenge of delivering ever-increasing and bloated content to those with the attention span of a gnat. And not the brightest gnat in the swarm at that. A succession of AMD supporters came up onto the stage and reiterated the view that processor power (again) was due to increase exponentially. Oh well.
Next up for me anyway, was a welcome break from strategy and a sojourn into the real. I attended a couple of well-presented sessions on Oracle Enterprsie Manager and ID Management.
The OEM session was excellent. Clearly there are many Oracle support processes within our environment that can be automated and that's something I'll be taking up with Sopra when I get back to Scotland. Interesting to see the future vision of Grid Control. In keeping with the earlier keynote message, there was a clear indication that Enterprise Manager will start to invade a higher business space in future. So while OEM may currently be the reserve of the DBA, it is quite clear that Oracle's vision is to extend that functionality right up to the business analyst and even the end user. 'Leveraging the business value stack' is what it's called, apparently.
Current OEM release is 10g r4 which is impressive enough. Presenter Martin Pena also took us through some stunning developments due in R11 (currently planned for release sometime in 2008 - they're all being very cagey unfortunately). Winners for me are:
Next up was a fascinating and somewhat fiery session on identity management. I've been trying for months to get some kind of definitive statement on what Oracle Access and Identity Management Suite is and does - sorted within a one hour session this morning. Remember we have an unlimited processor licence for use in the public sector in relation to the Citizen Account. I am keen to make sure we can properly exploit this deal and there was plenty of food for thought in the session this morning. Definitely something I will be taking up with Oracle UK wne I return. I have also set up a session with the presenter to explore further some of the themes he raised on the day.
Last thing in the morning was a keynote speech from the HP head man, Mark Hurd . Nothing particularly new to report although he did make some good points about the newly connected generation and how we, as IT people, are going to try (or struggle) to satisfy their demands. His main thrust seemed to me to be about convergence. If recent stock market manoeuvres are anything to go by, he hinted, do not be surprised if some big IT companies merge with or take over some other big IT companies.
Well, that was the morning. Time for a turkey sandwich and back to the hotel to do some real work. Spent the afternoon finishing off a presentation, specifying some work I need done at Caird and Ingram Street and trying to arrange some circuit end shifts for the Ingram Street data centre move. What joy. Amazing how much progress you can make when you are a couple of thousand miles away from the office.
Bit of relaxation later on as Mr Kinney, Mr Leith (Sopra) and I retired to the Carelian Room on the 52nd floor of the Bank of America for a cocktail reception. Fantastic sunset views over San Francisco. Then back to our more modest surroundings to complete some work. Nice to see Mr Kinney sitting working away at a laptop on the bar at the hotel to complete a press release. Don't think this trip is anything other than hard work!
Another full day becomes tomorrow. Hope you can join me for the write up.
Anyway, the sightseeing is well and truly over and it's good to get down to some proper tech stuff.
Last night saw Larry Ellison and Safra Catz go through a riveting history of 30 years of Oracle's achievements. What started as a 4-person company has grown to the behemoth we all love and respect today. Lots of in jokes and guest appearances by people who used to have long hair. Nice.
This morning saw the real beginning to the conference. Charles Phillips from Oracle kicked things off with a keynote speech outlining Oracle's future strategy in some very important areas. The main thrust seems to be around world domination. Oracle is positioning its future portfolio around integration. So regardless of what system you have for payroll, financials, manufacturing or service management (or whatever) be assured that Oracle has an adaptor or connector that will seamlessly link your legacy (e.g. SAP) system to the Oracle juggernaut. As much as anything this was a statement of intent. And an impressive one at that. For Oracle, the gloves are off. Not content with supplying APIs to allow custom code development between applications, Oracle is now providing fully formed BPEL processes that will even further blur the already increasingly grey areas between business analysis and the tech stack. The future's bright and it's red not orange.
Next up to the plate was Hector Ruiz, MD of AMD. He quickly picked up on the theme of virtualisation which looks like the Next Big Thing. Backed by his quadcore Opteron processor, Hector outlined the vision of a new permanently connected generation and the challenge of delivering ever-increasing and bloated content to those with the attention span of a gnat. And not the brightest gnat in the swarm at that. A succession of AMD supporters came up onto the stage and reiterated the view that processor power (again) was due to increase exponentially. Oh well.
Next up for me anyway, was a welcome break from strategy and a sojourn into the real. I attended a couple of well-presented sessions on Oracle Enterprsie Manager and ID Management.
The OEM session was excellent. Clearly there are many Oracle support processes within our environment that can be automated and that's something I'll be taking up with Sopra when I get back to Scotland. Interesting to see the future vision of Grid Control. In keeping with the earlier keynote message, there was a clear indication that Enterprise Manager will start to invade a higher business space in future. So while OEM may currently be the reserve of the DBA, it is quite clear that Oracle's vision is to extend that functionality right up to the business analyst and even the end user. 'Leveraging the business value stack' is what it's called, apparently.
Current OEM release is 10g r4 which is impressive enough. Presenter Martin Pena also took us through some stunning developments due in R11 (currently planned for release sometime in 2008 - they're all being very cagey unfortunately). Winners for me are:
- end-to-end web service transaction manager tied in to SLA management
- lifecycle tools such as rolling patch management
- configuration management tools
Next up was a fascinating and somewhat fiery session on identity management. I've been trying for months to get some kind of definitive statement on what Oracle Access and Identity Management Suite is and does - sorted within a one hour session this morning. Remember we have an unlimited processor licence for use in the public sector in relation to the Citizen Account. I am keen to make sure we can properly exploit this deal and there was plenty of food for thought in the session this morning. Definitely something I will be taking up with Oracle UK wne I return. I have also set up a session with the presenter to explore further some of the themes he raised on the day.
Last thing in the morning was a keynote speech from the HP head man, Mark Hurd . Nothing particularly new to report although he did make some good points about the newly connected generation and how we, as IT people, are going to try (or struggle) to satisfy their demands. His main thrust seemed to me to be about convergence. If recent stock market manoeuvres are anything to go by, he hinted, do not be surprised if some big IT companies merge with or take over some other big IT companies.
Well, that was the morning. Time for a turkey sandwich and back to the hotel to do some real work. Spent the afternoon finishing off a presentation, specifying some work I need done at Caird and Ingram Street and trying to arrange some circuit end shifts for the Ingram Street data centre move. What joy. Amazing how much progress you can make when you are a couple of thousand miles away from the office.
Bit of relaxation later on as Mr Kinney, Mr Leith (Sopra) and I retired to the Carelian Room on the 52nd floor of the Bank of America for a cocktail reception. Fantastic sunset views over San Francisco. Then back to our more modest surroundings to complete some work. Nice to see Mr Kinney sitting working away at a laptop on the bar at the hotel to complete a press release. Don't think this trip is anything other than hard work!
Another full day becomes tomorrow. Hope you can join me for the write up.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Sighstseeing in the rain
Well I thought Scotland was grey and rainy but the Bay takes some beating. A bright, grey morning beautifully camouflaged the horrors to come and we returned to our hotel via cable car around 6 pm drookit, bedraggled and footsore. Didn't spoil the day too much as we got the chance to take in some of San Francisco's sights. I was warned before I came here that the Bay's main claim to fame is fog and I can confirm that is indeed the case. Oh and it does a good line in rain too. A lot of it. Wet but warm.
San Francisco seems to me to be quite European in character. At times, wandering around the streets, you feel that you might be in Barcelona or Paris rather than the USA. Broad, palm tree-lined avenues down near Fisherman's Wharf give a flavour of the mediterranean; pastel-washed houses cling to the cliffsides in best Spanish or Portuguese fashion; and the bars and pubs of the centre are straight from Temple Bar.
People are extremely warm and friendly although - perhaps a cynical streak being displayed here - there is the eternal suspicion that all that niceness is seeking a dollar plus tax plus at least 15% service charge somewhere at the end of the transaction.
So no sign of Openworld yet. Breakfast in Chinatown followed by a walk, up of course, to Coit Tower - a bizarre monument erected thanks to a donation from Lillie Hitchcok Coit who was rescued by the Fire Department at the age of 8 and held a fascination for the men in black to her dying day. Then a whstlestop tour around Alcatraz, some lunch with the sealions and then aimless wandering around Pier 39 shops trying to find something (anything!) for the womenfolk back home. If only they understood how much pain had to be gone through to select gifts that will undoubtedly be poorly received.
The general demeanour was not improved by the constant companion of rain that followed us around Pier 39 and onward to Lombard Street - supposedly the crookedest street in the world - where we picked up the cable car back to the hotel.
Tomorrow promises to be brighter and at last we get Openworld started. So no more of this...
but plenty of this....
More to follow tomorrow when Openworld finally gets underway.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Here we are in San Francisco
Some 23 hours after waking up in dreich old Scotland we arrived in sunny San Francisco 2 hours ago ready for Oracle Openworld. Almost a whole day out of my life hanging about in airport departure lounges or sitting in planes watching cruddy movies I wouldn't even consider at home, listening to some good country music (mostly the Hackensaw Boys, Dixie Chicks and Kasey Chambers) or subjecting my travelling partner to the kind of banal drivel that only long enforced incarceration can elicit.
The event itself doesn't start until Sunday when Larry Ellison will be making his keynote speech and we all get the chance to marvel at Oracle's successes over the last 30 years. Rumour has it that Billy Joel and Prince will be making an appearance. I wish I had known that before I packed my toilet bag this morning.
Haven't even unpacked the bags yet so photos of the Bay area (or more probably the goings on at the Moscone Centre) will need to wait.
There seems to be a great sense of anticipation here about this event as everyone I've spoken to (admittedly only immigration officials, taxi drivers and hotel porters so far) has simply assumed that's why we're here.
Tomorrow's plan is to get some sleep and shake off this travel lethargy, maybe do a bit of sightseeing and plan for the coming few days. Key things I'm looking to find out about - and straight from the horses' mouth:
The event itself doesn't start until Sunday when Larry Ellison will be making his keynote speech and we all get the chance to marvel at Oracle's successes over the last 30 years. Rumour has it that Billy Joel and Prince will be making an appearance. I wish I had known that before I packed my toilet bag this morning.
Haven't even unpacked the bags yet so photos of the Bay area (or more probably the goings on at the Moscone Centre) will need to wait.
There seems to be a great sense of anticipation here about this event as everyone I've spoken to (admittedly only immigration officials, taxi drivers and hotel porters so far) has simply assumed that's why we're here.
Tomorrow's plan is to get some sleep and shake off this travel lethargy, maybe do a bit of sightseeing and plan for the coming few days. Key things I'm looking to find out about - and straight from the horses' mouth:
- should we be looking at Oracle Web Services Manager as a potential evolution of the local CAS Gateway
- how can we better exploit some of the tools like Oracle Access Manager that we have licensed across the public sector
- what new features will the 11g database offer (looking forward to a session that Tom Kyte is running on that one)
Off to get some food and drink and prepare for Alcatraz...
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