UKOUG 2009 - getting ready

I am writing this from Jury's hotel in Birmingham. This is the favourite hotel for the overseas speakers and this year I thought I would stay here. Last year I found myself having to walk the last few yards back to my hotel on my own, and this hotel is closest to the favourite speakers pub.

It is Saturday night and I have a bit of a routine. The Sunday before conference id very busy for the board, we have a board meeting, a volunteers meeting, and this year we also have a meeting to review the paper selection process. This all kicks off at 1pm and living in N Ireland the first flight on a Sunday would not get me here in time so I have to arrive Saturday. I don't actually mind that because it gives me time to settle in and to make the hotel my home for the week. There is a supermarket directly opposite and i bu a 2 litre bottle of water and a bunch of flowers. Then I cut the top of the bottle and use it as a vase.

I also iron everything and get fully unpacked, and although not for this blog, I have to make sure Stanley is settled. Then my favourite tradition, down to the German Frankfurt Market which comes to Birmingham every Christmas. Has the mandatory bratwurst, curry sauce and washed down with gluhwein.

SO I am happy. Ready for UKOUG which this year I am very excited about as we are bringing the first public demos of Fusion to the UK.

JDE Conference Event UKOUG

Just a few weeks until our UKOUG Conference JDE Event. I am really looking forward to this. As ever we have great support from Oracle with both John Schiff and Lyle Ekdahl over from the US who are coming over because they care about their customers.

There will also be an analyst from gartner giving us something to think about.

Lyle will host a roundtable with the title 'What's the Fusion Story' come along to this very interactive session and then we have a special offer for you. Any one who has attended as a delegate one of the other UKOUG 2009 conference event days including JDE can attend free the Wednesday morning (2nd December) of the Technical & EBS conference event where there will be a 2 hour demo of Fusion Applications.

And if all that is not enough (only joking) I will be presenting at the JDE conference about how you can use Fusion Technology today with JDE.

So if you haven't booked yet, what are you waiting for?

Welcome - Fusion Applications

If you work for an organisation that wants to be first with fusion Apps, get in touch I want to be part of that.

I have publicly said I thought Oracle were wrong to stop talking about Fusion Apps but they have now and more importantly removed the NDA 'gag' so let's not worry about the past and start talking.

First, just to make it clear we are allowed to talk about Fusion Applications but they have not yet been released so every presentation from Oracle is still going to include the 'Safe Harbor' statement. (T shirts available). Oracle will release the Applications once all the validation is complete and they are happy it is ready for the market.

I hope that now people understand that Fusion Applications are a completely new User Experience built entirely with Fusion Middleware. That means that you can take whichever part of Fusion Apps works for you and integrate it to your existing applications or take it all or simply build your own Fusion portfolio.

I keep on saying it, but it is all about choice. If you haven't seen a demo yet then try and do so. UKOUG has 2 hours of demos on the Tuesday of their conference repeated on the Wednesday.

So start listening to your user group or to those people who know, like Floyd Teter (despite his horrible comments about me in his blog). As the Unconference I asked Floyd and basheer khan and Beth Correa to talk about their thoughts on the Fusion Validation we have all been privileged to be part of, and we all agree we expected mind blowing technology but it is simply the user experience that will make Fusion Apps the success that they will be. .

Open World Wrap Up

My friends on facebook will know I have struggled to get back into the swing of things post Open World. The 26 hour turn around between arriving home and being back on the road was OK, I like being busy but the last week has been harder but expect a complete fest of posts today, I am on a roll!

My headliner for Oracle Open World was obviously Fusion Applications but this year there was actually an awful lot going on.

I think I will quickly cover the other important things and then come back to Fusion Apps in the next post.

Oracle kept the Complete Open and Integrated strap line which is I think quite a testament (although Integrated was the first thing to go Friday when the events people started to strip the Moscone).

The first keynote was Rather like a goodbye speech from
Scott McNeally – reminiscing. This Oracle-Sun keynote very credible and strong support from the audience. I personally hope the acquisition is approved quickly so that both organisations can move on so that the users can see what it means for them. I think it will be a good thing, there is plenty of competition out there and as long as Oracle don't make the mistake of shipping everything on SUN only, customers will continue to have choice and integration. I thought the Java and Solaris components were more important than the tin but then Exadata is now all about the tin so Larry never fails to surprise.

On the left in this photo is my great friend Dan Norris, who has given up his ACE Director status to join Oracle in the Exadata team and he is one excited person who is loving his job. His enthusiasm about what Exadata can do is so obvious. I have no doubt he and the team he is in will be busy with the big $10 million dollar challenge that Larry threw down to IBM users.

Charles and Safra had a joint keynote and Safra made a joke about Open World being called 'Open' as part of the Complete, Open and Integrated message. Luckily they then kept to technology and had a number of demos of where their applications are being integrated to give industry solutions. They talked about how they didn't realise how difficult it was to integrate separate systems until they rationalised Oracle's internal IT a few years ago.

Thomas Kurian talked about the innovation that has come from the development and about the breadth of that innovation. The headliners were FMW 11g and the latest release of the database. He stated every second of every day someone downloads an Oracle Product.

In Larry's main Keynote He talked more about SUN and Exadata, he talked about Next Generation Support.My Oracle Support in the Cloud unified with Oracle Enterprise Manager on premise. Patching proactively based on your configuration. When it arrives, if users adopt it,, this will make a real difference. Then he talked about Fusion Applications. I was very worried I really thought it might get dropped. The first presentation in the slot seemed to go on for longer than I expected, then Larry started his presentation and then introduced Arnold Swarzenegger to the stage who was excellent but when Larry took back the microphone we eventually finished 45 minutes late.

Arnie was fantastic, he played the 'dumb foreigner' made jokes about himself but actually had a very important message, that technology is key to success in so many areas. It was a motivational speech and very funny.

This year Oracle had all the keynotes on a Live Stream which was great especially the day I couldn't leave my hotel room because of the rain. But don't be fooled in thinking it is an alternative to being at Open World. Yes it is great to hear the leaders on the main stage giving you their spin on the message of the day, but the real value is in the smaller sessions and the demo grounds talking to the people in development and anyone you want to meet in the Oracle World is there.

In fact another great friend Mogens comes to open World every year and often does not even enter Moscone. He takes over a local hostelry and meets up with all those he needs to over a beer. This year he held 'Closed World' were each day a speaker from OOW had a more in depth technical opportunity to interact with the greatest Oracle minds around.

But if you weren't able to get to OOW Oracle did interview each keynote speaker and record short videos which are well worth viewing.

The Proud Fathers

I can finally talk about Fusion. I have received the following email from Oracle

Hi Debra - the NDA for blogging about Fusion Apps is lifted. Here are some screen shots -

So it would be wrong not to share them with you

I had intended not to blog until I have thought about what to say more thoroughly but the announcements today was what I have been waiting for a long time. I am as I have said before privileged to be a part of the process so there was nothing today I had not seen but I had not been able to share that with you.

What I enjoyed most was the beaming smiles on the faces of Steve Miranda and Chris Leone, proud fathers finally getting to share their offspring with the world. I have been big critics of the insistence of waiting for the right time and I am not sure if they waited longer than necessary but now it is out we can talk about what it means to software users.









Today in a presentation I asked if people remembered \Navigate from the old EBS 10.7 days, I looked back at it nostalgically but we really were laughing about how archaic it seemed, well in years to come we will say that about silo'd applications. The integration story from Oracle culminating in Fusion Apps, is not the software of the future it is here today.


So if you have questions come along tomorrow morning and hear from 3 Fusion Apps Geeks who have had their NDA lifted about 'how we can't wait till Fusion Apps are here' or should I say we can't wait until they are General Availability. Find us in the Unconference (the best OOW sessions) next to the OTN lounge at 10am. I will be joined by 2 very special friends Floyd Teter of ORCLville and Basheer Khan

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