Oracle put on quite a show last night, or at least the pre event
hype suggested it. The Oracle marketing machine which I greatly admire went
into overdrive and Larry even joined twitter. The event, a live webcast (but available for replay) was to talk about their Cloud and Support offerings.
I am not sure I learnt anything, but I did see a cool demo
from the boss himself of Vitrue one of the latest acquisitions (coming thick and
fast at the moment).
Larry talked about all of the Cloud Offerings at Oracle Open
World 2011, he did a great job, wove a really integrated story and did the demo
himself. I was really impressed. Most wasn’t available then but that is what
OOW is about, the roadmap, what are they working on, it was good. There was something
for everyone, from the database to the applications, the hardware to the new
and exciting social tools.
So last night I expected to hear more were available, but I
think all I heard new was that Oracle are now using Fusion CRM, “we eat our own
dog food and it tastes great”, and a new to Oracle buzzword of Social Relationship Management.
Read blogs (this is a good one) about what was said at the OOW11, and compare
with the press release from yesterday.
So why did yesterday happen? I am sure there were reasons,
kick start their new Financial Year, answer questions of their critics or just
show off the new toy, but to me there was a horrible feeling of déjà vu. Their
Cloud offerings sound fantastic, their Fusion Applications are fantastic, but
after the enforced quiet period (6 of the 7 years Larry referred to last
night), we had over a year of hype with no delivery. They were worth waiting
for, but many customers looked elsewhere during that period as there was no
clear availability which the competition exploited. Don’t do it again Larry,
give us a timeline.
Support was what was first alluded to at the Sun Townhall in Jan 2010,
so nothing new there either, but be careful, when Mark Hurd says you are paying
no extra, he means than Premium Support, not the basic 22% most of us pay.
I am still uncomfortable with the American need to 'compeditor bash', I used to think it was just Larry, but the tweets last night showed yet again it is a national sport. We British are just too nice.
I doubt Larry reads my blog, but it doesn’t matter, now he has
the tools to understand in real time how we feel about last nights event, it
was certainly fun to be part of the twitter flow, it was very busy with one
notable exception.
@LarryEllison Next Tweet Please
5 comments:
You have hit the nail on the head! Good write up.
I know you are a great supporter and evangelist of Oracle Fusion Apps. I thought I should let you know that Oracle is still aggressively trying to sell sun-setting apps and not Oracle Fusion Apps. This only strengthens the rumor that Oracle Fusion Apps is still not ready for showtime after all these years!
Mohan, I seriously beg to differ on two points. First what are you suggesting is sun setted? All the Apps Unlimited products, EBS, Siebel, Psft, JDE have not been sunsetted and have lots of life in them. Secondly Fusion Apps that have been released are ready but and there has been no secret here, release 1 is not the complete footprint, so for most people it is not possible to replace. For these reasons it is absolutly right that in many cases a new customer is sold the APps Unlimited product set. Adoption of Fusion Apps will be mainly via Co-existence and over time the balance will shift.
Wondering what the 100 Cloud Applications Larry mentioned were? Here you go http://fscavo.blogspot.co.uk/2012_06_01_archive.html
Hi,
I attended to that show and I had exactly the same feeling. I though it was my problem just lost in traslation but I see that I was not the only one.
If you check the Fusion site they send you to the regional sales contacts, I sent an email to the Spanish one asking further info how to contract Fusion Financials in the cloud, how many licences are needed as minimum, etc... and I am still waiting the repply.
Thanks for your blog.
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