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:

• end-to-end web service transaction manager tied in to SLA management
• lifecycle tools such as rolling patch management
• configuration management tools

There are some potentially real tangible benefits for the Citizen Account architecture in particular around the configuration manager tools although it would mean allowing direct access for Oracle into our infrastructure. I feel a conversation with Security is imminent. Again, something I need to explore on my return.

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.