Can't make Oracle Open World - How about Croatia?

The HrOUG conference is on at the same time as Oracle Open World which saddens me as I had such a great time at this conference last year and the setting is just magical.




So if you want to speak at a great conference and can't get to Open World,s eriously consider Croatia, and make sure you combine it with time to visit this beautiful country. Rovinj, Croatia - October 13th-17th 2009

Quick - don't miss your chance to be part of something big

UKOUG is the best conference in the world and what makes it so good is the content, the speakers. This year is even better we have 7 events covering the Oracle Community and we are currently looking for papers for the last two, the JD Edwards Event and the Technology & E Business Suite.


And if you want to attend these must attend events then we are 2 down 5 to go. Click on the picture above, read all about it and select the event for you.

UKOUG Conference Series - what do attendees think

This video is an excellent way to see what people really think of conference, and well done to the office for the idea.



It is now just two weeks to the PeopleSoft conference and I am looking forward to this very much. We have a signed copy of PeopleSoft Developer’s Guide for PeopleSoft & PeopleCode (including XML Publisher) to give away to attendees at this event

Fusion at Collaborate

At Open World Oracle gave 2 hours of Fusion Application demos and yesterday there were another two at Collaborate 09. They were not simply a repeat there was more to see.

More than enough to satisfy those who think there is nothing there, and for that I am very grateful. I gave 3 presentations at Collaborate and in all 3 members of the audience said Fusion wasn't really a product.

I don't want Fusion released until everything is in place, tested and those required trained, so no rush but IT IS REAL. I have said before I am privileged to be involved in the Fusion Inner Circle where I learn more about Fusion Applications and this too met in Orlando. Oracle are really working hard to keep your user group leaders involved and up to date, but we are all under Non Disclosure Agreements so cannot yet share the information, but when the time is right you can be assured that your user group will be well briefed.

My presentations were around the technology used to write Fusion Applications, the Fusion Middleware and what you can do today with existing applications. In each presentation I had many people who had not understood this and again I cannot thank the ACE Program enough for enabling me to be able to give that message.

Collaborate last day today and I'm sad it has been a great conference but I am ready to go home, share what I learnt with my colleagues and get ready for the UKOUG PeopleSoft event later this month.

Finished - Pressure Over

Yesterday I gave my JDE Presentation and two things happened that made my day. One person from the audience told me it was the best presentation he had attended and it should have been a keynote, and Nadia Bendejdou attended and was very complimentary.

I want to publically say thank you to both Nadia and Nishit Rao from the Fusion Middleware Team for all his help on this.

The Oracle ACE Program is about recognising 'Software Evangelists' and empowering them with the knowledge whilst leaving them independant of Oracle. Thanks again for including me in that program.

Nadia and I also demonstrated the Oracle Applications Planning Tool we have developed in the IOUC and took part in a panel session.

So my official duties are over and I can get on with enjoying the conference. There is some Fusion Application demos which I am also looking forward to.

Its Official - I will talk about Anything

Today I gave my first PeopleSoft specific presentation at Collaborate 09. For a while I have been giving a Fusion and Apps Unlimited presentation with a SOA demo, thanks to the ACE FMW Program and back in January Sue Shaw of QUEST asked if I would give this to JDE and PeopleSoft audiences. I said yes, and today my favourite quote rang in my ears.

"Commitment is doing the thing you said you would do, long after the mood in which you said it has gone".

It would be easy here to explain I am neither a PeopleSoft or a JDE user but that is not QUITE true. My daughter is currently on an internship in Australia with the Outward Bound School and she has limited Internet access. One day she asked me to log onto her university for her results and the screen said 'Welcome to PeopleSoft'.

The presentation went well and my demo was actually a 'canned' demo from the FMW team which is better, I couldn't screw it up and it is now available for QUEST members to download.

Tomorrow is JDE and then at the end of the month I have the UKOUG PeopleSoft Conference to repeat it at.

Keynote at Collaborate - Oracle talks about Support, Acquisitions and New Releases

The keynote for Collaborate was this morning with Charles Phillips and he had a lot of good things to say to an audience who wanted to hear them.

Support Changes:

Waived first year of Extended Support:
EBS 11.i.10 till Nov 2011
JDE E1 8.11 till Dec 2010
Siebel 7.8 till May 2011
10gR2 Database till Jul 2011

Extended Support, waiving additional support fee.
PeopleSoft 8.9 Jul 09 - Jun 11

Continued S1 support for EBS 11.5.9 till Jun 2010

Oracle Press Release.

New Releases

He also announced the launch of BI Applications 7.9.6 and EBS 12.1 and also talked about PeopleSoft 9.1 expected around Collaborate time.

Sun

Obviously people wanted him to talk about Sun and he didn't disappoint within what he can say, he explained it was the 57th Acquisition and is simply an extension of their existing strategy.

He talked about the excitement of having the operating system and the hardware and how it meant they would be able to deliver value at all levels.' Apps to disk'. Investing in the future of Java is also key.



Charles talked about how Collaborate gave Oracle the opportunity to give mid year announcements to customers rather than via the press.

Another tradition Charles has is to take these opportunities to speak to user group leaders and this too was a very sucessful meeting.

Collaborate 09

Today is the big day, Collaborate starts.

I am speaking in teh QUEST stream about Fusion Technology for both JDE and PeopleSoft, what do I know about these applications I hear you ask and you are right, I know nothing, but I have friends who do and they will be on hand to answer questions.

The Oracle ACE Fusion Middleware program has helped me to demo the technology to EBS audiences and my sessions have been very well received by the business community. QUEST asked me to do the same for their applications and with the help of Nishit Rao of Oracle I have some canned demos of SOA to bring the message right back to their applications.

I ma also demoing the Future Applications Planning Tool on Wednesday with Nadia Bendjedou, this is a tool the user groups under the IOUC have been developing to help you articulate and understand how Oracle Technology and Best Practices can help your Organisation.

I will of course also drop in on the Fujitsu stand and help out with my American Cousins.

Collaborate 09 and Swine Flu

I wrote this on my final leg to Orlando for Collaborate 09. Many people have already arrived, it is amazing how much I learn through facebook. Then I met Borkur Steingrimsson from Rittman Mead at Orlando airport, we did the natural thing and had a great big hug, I forgot that according to NBC we should only have elbow tapped.

I am not laughing about the outbreak of Swine Flu or rather H1N1 virus, it is very serious and it is right that we have plans to deal with it, but I think there should only be one source of information and that is what the World Health Organisation was set up to do. As of today they say dont stop travel. On CNN yesterday the story was about how people are just fed up of the story.

Our own Ronan Miles was unwell last week, not swine flu (probably just man flu) but he decided to cancel his trip out to Collaborate. Not only did he feel awful physically but he felt bad about cancelling although it was great to see the number of other user group leaders around the world sending their best regards and he will be missed. He did the right thing, would you want to sit next to someone with a cold on a plane? I had a cough after 12 hours on a flight to Tokyo before the swine flu outbreak and the next day someone I had never met gave me a packet of face masks in the street. So at least I have some if needed on my flight home.

I hope it does not have a big impact on Collaborate, the financial situation is already affecting all conferences as some companies look to cut back on 'junkets', perhaps conferences should be moved to less exotic places in the future. I am not saying Birmingham UK is not exotic but we never get people complaining it is a junket.

So back to the conference, if you see me, hug me, I am not ill and not scared of you.

Insync Australia

I was honoured to be invited to speak at Insync the Australian Applications Users Conference. I was looked after by Daniel Strassberg of QUEST who then extended the hospitality to me staying with his family afterwards.

It was a great conference and those attending got a lot of value out of it. I hope those organisations who think conference attendance should cease or be scaled down because of the ‘Credit Crunch’ understand what the consequences are.

I gave 3 presentations, ‘Extending your E Business Suite with Hyperion’, ‘Future Applications Planning’ and a joint presentation with Richard Ward of Oracle Australia on SOA. During this presentation I again used the ACE FMW tool kit and gave a live demo. It was a little slow but that’s OK, however I was even more nervous than normal as Alex Gorbahov was in the audience. With someone of his intelligect in the room I felt I was at a professional review and I believe he even twittered he was there, so no pressure!



Richard has already blogged about the presentation and he also refers to the youtube video recorded by Oracle who wanted to hear about the ACE Program and my SOA analogy. I truly believe that when I have a concept down to a very simple level that I can understand that should be the starting point of my own presentations. So I have been explaining SOA and the way we now look at integrations as they way we charge all our gadgets with USB - Reusable, Simple and redeployable. Do you agree?

What I would give to see Larry's Shopping List

Why are we caught out by each of the Oracle Acquisitions? We know they are running at aproximatley 1 a month and have done for almost 5 years, there is no sign of it slowing down and actually there should be great deals in a recession so if you have the cash why not?

The week before Oracle announced the acquisition of Sun, I was in Tokyo. I was actually on my way to Insync in Sydney but more of that in the next post. I work for Fujitsu and it was a real honour to have the opportunity to visit our head office and I also got to visit Oracle Japan.

Larry Ellison was in the Oracle office the day I visited which is not too much of a surprise as Open World Japan was the following week however he changed his plans and flew home early and he didnt stay for the conference. I was surprised and yet I should have guessed he had some shopping to do, it all made sense when the Sun acquisition was announced the following week.

It is too early for Oracle to talk about the details but there are many people who can see some of the benefits and impacts, including our own Ronan Miles from UKOUG who gave this interview in Computer Weekly

UKOUG Conference Series - Update

Hard to believe after all the planning but the first of our conference series is over.

The Irish Conference took place last week and with 170+ was a great success.
We used a new venue which was very good and worked well and they gave us lots of support. Feedback from delegates was very positive and we had 3 spontaneous volunteers to assist with SIGs, etc.

SO what is next? Well it is the PeopleSoft conference and if you are a PeopleSoft user I urge you to attend. Feedback from past years is you want your own event and UKOUG have not only listened but acted.
I know that we are all under careful scrutiny of costs currently but if you have UKOUG membership there is no additional cost and the value of the conference is easy to justify. You will learn from your peers about what you can do with your systems today, network with people like yourself and understand more about Oracle's plans.

So I urge you to think hard about the event, look at the agenda and plan your visit. And if you are not a PeopleSoft user look at the other events in our conference series and see what we have in your area.

UKOUG Conference Series 2009 – One Conference, many events