The Longest Wait

Twitter is phenomenal at Oracle Open World. But for the blog readers, I am interested in the Exadata, the Linux etc, but this wait for the Fusion Apps Info is terminal. Please put me out of my misery.

It's coming!

Fusion Applications on the agenda with Larry, NOW I AM EXCITED, its been a long wait

Fusion Apps or not

The SF Chronicle today says Larry will announce Fusion Apps.

The fun then starts, I don't want to be the first person to blog because although this is my area of expertise I want to reflect and talk to people in the know first.

But am I excited, you bet. I have touched the apps, I have run the processes and I love it. The user experience is the best and will blow away anything you have ever thought about ERP.

But if they are announced then the real work starts, helping users to understand what this means, their options and no small issue of the licensing model. So let's wait, see if and what Larry says, think about it and I'll get back to you.

Am I excited yes, and I also hear Arnie will be on stage. So that's all from me today, let someone else claim first with the news, I just want to be there

OOW09 First Keynote

There are many tweets and blogs about insiders tips for Oracle Open World but one I would give you is get an access all areas badge.

Anyway now I have gott my almost front row seat I have a great view of Scott from Sun, I have never heard him speak live before and he is really funny and very clever. He started with a funny top 10 of useless innovations and the 10 important innovations from Sun. He said he felt like a proud Papa and he should be.

NFS Technology
SPARC
Open Source SOftware
Solaris
Java
E10K
Flash
Project blackbox, datacentre in a shipping container
SunRay
Chip Multi Threading

Most proud of Kicked Butt, Had fun, didnt cheat, loved our customers and changed computing for ever

ACE Director Briefing pre OOW09

As an ACE Director I arrived for OOW Thursday evening as we had a briefing in HQ on Friday. I love these days, we are ACEs because we specialise in our own particular area and are recognised for the work we do in that area, but it is so easy to become silo'd in that and not appreciate the rest of the Oracle portfolio and in these 'Complete, Open and Integrated' days you simply can't afford not to know a little bit about everything.

The highlight of the day for me was Thomas Kurian making an appearance. When he is behind a programme you feel the programme is going somewhere. Too often in Oracle I have seen great initiatives start and then get stamped out or run down when they get big enough to be on the radar of top executives. Not only is Thomas 100% behind the programme but he answered my question around ACEs in the applications space. I don't think all the Apps Executives are as aware of the programme and the value of engaging as those in the Technical area, and Thomas said he is working on that. THANKYOU Remember Thomas heads both technology and applications development so he is the right person to do this.

After the event we were given a few drinks and then taken into San Francisco to our hotel prior to the start of OOW09. Bring it on.

Partner of The Year Awards

Last year UKOUG instigated Partner Awards where our members vote for partners in 20 categories. It was a great success so I was really looking forward to this years’ awards ceremony. It was held in the Landmark Hotel and everyone had a great time.

My job is to look after the guest speaker and this year we had Carol Thatcher daughter of the Iron Lady and one time Queen of the Jungle, which is how she asked me to introduce her. She gave a very funny rendition of incidents in not only her life but all of her family. If you see me ask me about Margaret Thatcher wearing THE Terminator’s Shades at a very important funeral! When I talked to Carol about the awards I wanted her to understand how important it is that whilst Oracle give awards directly they are decided on their criteria whereas the UKOUG awards are totally independent of Oracle and voted on by customers. Carol understood immediately and said it was like comparing Political Voting in government (like mummy had) with the popular vote like Carol had to win ‘I’m a Celebrity. Very astute.

Back to the awards, the partners were very passionate about their achievements and a great evening was had by all. It was important for partners to have an evening to celebrate success in this hard economic times and for UKOUG it made money which always helps to keep membership costs down.

Oracle Open World 2009

Another hectic lead up to Open World, I have had 3 days of 18 hour days to try and clear the decks for the conference. Just like last year I have a really full on week.

As Fujitsu I am presenting #S307747 Shared-Service Oracle E-Business Suite 12, Oracle Business Intelligence Applications, and SOA on Tues 4-5 Moscone West 3020, and this is repeated in an Executive Forum on Wednesday.

I then have two Product Development Committees presentations, one a open session #312188 midday at User Group Sunday were I encourage everyone to come along and tell us what you think we should be doing on the behalf of all users next year with Oracle Development. Then I will be demonstrating our Applications Upgrade Planning Tool #307745 Wednesay 13.45 Moscone West 2002.

As an ACE Director I have been invited by Ahmeed Taylor to his OAUG Customization & Extension SIG at 3pm in Moscone West 3002 to give a FMW4APPS demo, come along and see how easy it is to take your existing EBS processes and run them as SOA processes.

I'm also giving an Unconference Session with fellow ACE Directors Basheer Khan and Floyd Teter on ‘Why We can’t wait for Fusion Applications’ on Thursday at 10.30.

I have a number of forums to attend around my actual Day Job, BI and then the Fusion Inner Circle on Thursday, so once I have attended them and the keynotes I may have time to do some work on the Fujitsu booth #1501 or EOUC booth in the User Group Pavilion and of course spend time in the OTN area with my fellow ACEs.