Debra's thoughts on Oracle

Sunday, 12 October 2014

My OOW14 Overview

FINALLY - I have completed my Oracle Open World round up for 2014!

Just before I left for San Francisco I blogged about my objectives for Oracle Open World, and just how busy I expected to be.

* Oracle ACE Program funds my trip to HQ & OOW

I think we can agree the main message was Cloud, but there were lots of other messages:

A good general overview is from Tim Hall blog

Hardware - engineered systems are selling and being improved all the time. R&D is working on improving performance in all components.

ZDNet blog has good coverage here

Database - last year there was a lot about 12c and many people have already adopted this. There was a lot more about In-memory and something I was really pleased to learn was that the functionality is already being used in traditional apps, something that in the past simply took too long.

Big Data - defiantly not a buzz word, something we see everywhere and Oracle recognizing that they are not the solution to everything, but adding to the solution pot by introducing Big Data SQL so that Oracle skills can be used across all kinds of data even the raw data processed by Hadoop. Here my recommendation is Mark Rittman blog

Middleware - mainly around new releases and availability of PaaS, and the Mobile Application Framework - I really recommend Lucas Jellema blog.

Traditional Apps - more functionality still being released, they apps are NOT dead. Lots of new mobile apps
CIO Today has good coverage in their blog

Cloud Applications -

At the ACE briefings I attended Thomas Kurian quoted these stats and later in this Oracle Cloud press release

20,000 companies use Oracle Cloud Applications and 23bn transactions & more than the number of credit card transactions each day globally - amazing.
But I have to agree with Floyd Teter WHY did Oracle split their Cloud Application sessions over three separate buildings? It didn't work, and I'm still exhausted.

Return to my OOW overview

My OOW14 - ACE Director Briefings

Seat belts were fastened for 2 days of information overload and even more importantly the opportunity to ask questions of the people who make Oracle products what they are.

I find ACE directors in two camps on how they think about these days, some and I guess the split is about 50/50, moan about how little there is in their area. I am in the other camp who think the event is about expanding the knowledge of the areas we don't specialise in. If I came just to learn about Cloud Applications I would be very disappointed.

As an ACE director you have access to the Product Managers in your area, probably have the opportunity to be part of beta testing and either a Customer or Partner Advisory Board. There probably isn't anything you don't know going to be shared at this event you don't already know, unless it is an announcement to be given in a keynote and then you will get it here.

Photo courtesy of Yury

My camp, and I am very clear about this; comes to these briefings to learn about the whole Oracle stack, not perhaps in great detail but enough to understand direction, offering and the bigger picture. We are treated like the intelligent people we are and not given the marketing speak, and if something doesn't make sense to me I can clarify with a fellow director who is in that area afterwards. Likewise when someone wants to know about Cloud Applications they will ask someone like Floyd or myself.

If I had to chose between these briefings (and the UX day) or OOW itself, this would be my choice; luckily my employer sees the value in both.

The 2 day event is under NDA, or Non Disclosure and as ever Duncan Mills was there to ensure no one stepped over the line. As an ACE Director you are expected to be active in social media, and thus it is difficult to tweet knowledge under NDA and so we end up getting quite silly with what we do say. Within the room it is very funny but for those out in the wild following us they must think we are all nuts.

As well as the usual topics covered I was particularly interested in the Mobile Applications Framework as I first heard about this at Kscope and really pleased to learn many mobile apps were being launched not only for Cloud Applications but also for traditional apps, 14 for EBS alone.

Jeremy Ashley and Jake Kuramato repeated some of what they covered the day before at the UX event around ' Shinny Things' and knowing how the demo worked I furiously tweeted so I came up on the demo of wearables, ever the gamer Floyd Teter joined in but I have to say I won, finally on this occasion.

Another highlight for me was Bob Evans Chief Communications Officer who talked about the PR behind Larry and Oracle. At one point he stated he knew me from Twitter and I was both honoured and horrified; later in the week he apologised for embarrassing me, apparently I went very red, but I don't mind, he has promised to work with the ACE program on a program similar to analyst education for those who are interested. I also talked to him about why this year the ACE program was excluded from the Press / Blogger program for OOW and he will look into that too.

But by far the most important part of the event is the Thomas Kurian session. Thomas is the biggest supporter of this program, he comes along gives us a very fast but very comprehensive run down of the announcements to be made at OOW and then opens up to Q&A. Remember that NDA we are all under, he leaves nothing out and trusts us completely. A big responsibility but that is the benefit of being at Director Level of the program and why it is reviewed individually each year.

Thank you to Roland Smart who leads OTN, Victoria Lira who runs the ACE program assisted by Jennifer who has replaced Lillian who recently left to work with InterRel.

Back to My OOW14 Recap

My OOW14 - Oracle Applications User Experience Day

The now traditional OAUX training day was the Wednesday before OOW, and this year was opened up to a few select partners in addition to the user advocates of which I am one.

It was a great day with a full room at the conference centre in Redwood Shores and a lot of the UX team there to share their expertise. The day kicked off with Jeremy Ashley their VP talking about their work and setting the scene for the workshop.

They went through all the UX messages which I know are the major differentiator with Cloud (previously known as Fusion) Applications. There were breakout groups for the different families HCM, ERP, CX and Extending.

Extending is really important to me as in my new role I will be responsible for the move by Certus into PaaS. Amazing here is their Rapid Development Kit and we will certainly be using this with their help.

There was some talk about the UX of Fusion being made available to traditional apps but at this stage no program name was given, later in the week we got to know this was Alta. Press Release

In the afternoon Jake Kuramoto and Jeremy did a session on Shinny Things - wearables and other new technologies they are looking at, and my favourite quote from Jake "google glass is so last year" - this looks like fun and it is, but there is also a very serious side to this as Oracle needs to understand where this technology can be used in the enterprise. One area I am very interested in is the use of voice especially in mobile and the Oracle agreement with Nuance (Dragon software) makes this very real.

Jake's team have also created a wearable for OOW which I got to try out at their showcase event. You pre registered your interest priorities in the five areas they were showcasing and the wearable lit up the colour of the stand to visit first. Then once you waved the wristband in front of a device on the stand the colour changed to match your next priority. It was a bit of fun for this event but imagine being able to select online where in a shopping mall or even just a department store you want to visit and a wearable tell you where to go. GPS for shopping - brilliant.

The pitch back participants plus Ultan and Misha from UX team.

At the end of the day they had a pitch back competition, and I was part of it along with Gustavo Gonzalez Figueroa , Lonneke Dikmans, Floyd Teter and Sten Vesterli. We all got a prize but the overall winner for the undisclosed objective of BS bingo was the big man himself, Floyd. Always a gentleman the picture shows his humility in victory. But seriously Floyd along with the rest of us really believe in the UX work at Oracle and the value it has to the development if their applications.

The day then ended with a small reception but it wasn't the end of UX for OOW, it got a mention on several keynotes especially Larry's first one, but let them tell you their story.

I also got to help out in one of the UX sessions during OOW.

Thanks again to everyone in UX especially Misha for a great day.

Return to my OOW overview

My OOW14 - User Groups at OOW

First I have to say well done Oracle, the User Group Pavilion at Oracle Open World has found the right home, please keep it there next year.

User groups are all about community and having them next to OTN, Oracle's own community, they were easy to find, prominent and proved excellent for conversations about user groups around the world.

EOUC had held a competition to get a new logo as it really needed updating and it was great to see it on our stand:

I have for many years attended the IOUC meetings on behalf of UKOUG but this year they moved to just before OOW, and it clashed with my ACE Director commitments; so no IOUC for me and anyway UKOUG were well represented by James Haslam and Fiona Martin our Member Advocate Chair.

As I didn't attend perhaps I have no place commenting but actually I personally was disappointed with the agenda. The reason for moving it to OOW was to ensure as many groups as possible could attend, and when it was in January some groups had to choice just one visit to San Francisco. I understand that, many years ago when the IOUC was relaunched it was after OOW for the same reason but people were simply too tired, and this time they did plan it for the Thursday and Friday before.

However to me the big values of the IOUC were as I mentioned in a post several years ago:

1. Networking with other groups

Whenever you hold a usergroup meeting you will achieve this, and OOW itself with the Pavilion is a natural place for leaders to meet between sessions.

2. Sharing best practice

I understand there was plenty of sharing and I am sorry I missed the Java user group Devoxx and their session on Devoxx4kids

The Devoxx for Kids Initiative is amazing and they had a full house at their event in San Francisco and even got a mention in Larry's Java keynote

Fiona on our behalf talked about our Application Innovation Initiative where we are having SIGS and events focusing on new technologies and applications for existing applications users.

3. Oracle Product Managers giving briefings

These didn't happen, simply because the meeting was not at Oracle HQ and most product managers were busy in their run up to OOW. What I really liked about having these in January was that you had had time to understand the messages from OOW and start conversations about them with your members.

4. Oracle Marketing sharing their plans for following year

The plans for the rest of this year were shared but January coincided with Oracle having just completed plans for the next financial year.

5. Cross user group initiatives
These had all but died off a few years back which is a real pity, the Support Group did a lot to ensure groups had a way too talk to Oracle on general matters and the work the Product Development Community did in the development of Fusion Apps is one of my personal highlights in my Oracle life.

So I would rather they moved back to January, but things die if you don't keep trying to improve them, so Oracle were right to try.

Back to My OOW14 Recap

My OOW14 - EOUC 12 Short talks on 12c

In my OOW14 Objectives post I talked about the planned 12 Short Talks on 12c
session I was hosting for the EOUC. As I said usergroups have their own dedicated content on the Sunday of OOW, and the EOUC had a stream with presenters as voted by the various EMEA user groups.

The idea of the session was 12 presentations all about the 12c database and was proposed by Ralf Koelling from the DOAG and I volunteered to host. I knew it would be a big job, 12 of the best speakers all with their own way of preparing for events, so I wasn't optimistic I would be able to control them all.

Douwe Pieter van den Bos included an article on this session in his OOW OTech Magazine edition (page 23) and OTN's Bob Rhubart created this blog and podcast which I really recommend as you can Hear Jonathan Lewis discussing table dancing.

I sent out a PowerPoint template including an intro slide that showed a picture of Jonathan Lewis, gave them a slide number limit, and a deadline for sending to me so I could get it spliced into a single deck.

Twelve professional presenters with an unbelievable track record, but follow instructions....no
Three (in addition to Jonathan) sent them back still with Jonathan's picture, another three used their own template including one with a different resolution, others completely ignored the number guideline and Alex Nuijten decided to be white on black slides and some didn't turn up until after we arrived in San Francisco.

The original line up was

      1. Upgrading to 12c: What Will It Break? Jonathan Lewis, Oracle ACE Director, OakTable
      2. The Optimizer in 12c. Christian Antognini, SOUG, Oracle ACE Director, OakTable
      3. Data Pump Enhancements in 12c. Osama Mustafa, MEOUG, Oracle ACE
      4. Pattern Matching in 12c. Gurcan Orhan, TROUG, Oracle ACE Director
      5. PL/SQL Security Enhancements in 12c. Alex Nuijten, OGH, Oracle ACE Director
      6. Data Redaction in 12c. Oded Raz, ilOUG, Oracle ACE Director
      7. A Case for the Multitenant Architecture, Even with a Single PDB. Tim Hall, UKOUG, Oracle ACE Director, OakTable
      8. How Does Oracle SQL Developer Manage Multitenancy? Ami Aharonovich, ilOUG, Oracle ACE
     9. Multitenancy: Impact on SaaS.   Kashif Manzoor, MEOUG, Oracle ACE
    10. Oracle Multitenant in Standard Edition: (How) Does This Work?    Julian Dontcheff, OUGF, Oracle ACE Director
    11. What Features Will 12c Offer Traditional Oracle Apps? Bjoern Rost, DOAG, Oracle ACE Director
    12. In-Memory—Enables Us To? Dimitry Volkov, RUOUG, Oracle ACE

Unfortunately Kashif Manzoor was taken ill the day before flying out to OOW and had to withdraw, I did try and find a replacement but with no luck, so I had to do it, more on that later.

Dimitry Vilkov had to pull out a few weeks before OOW but promised us slides and a video. However when the video turned up it was over 9 minutes long and the whole idea was 5 minutes each! So I have included his slides and video in the download but bought in my secret back up speaker to do the In Memory on the day! Yes I got SQLMaria Maria Colgan to come speak, after all she comes from Ireland originally so defiantly an EMEA speaker.

I jiggled the agenda slightly so Maria could go earlier than planned as she had a keynote to get ready for, and then I moved the Impact on SaaS until just before Bjoern as actually the benefits are very similar technically. But you know me, not very technical so I talked about the business benefits and how actually Oracle's Apps strategy is behind a lot of the R&D in all the technology including the database.

These changes in 12c make running a cloud easier and cheaper and a better customer experience, which ultimately keeps the cost down. so as the world starts to adopt Cloud Applications 12c ensures Oracle are able to provide the best platform at any level.

But going back to the overall session, it was split over two timeslots each with 45 minutes. I thought it would take a while for switch-overs so did not think we would have much spare time, but I had underestimated their professionalism.

The crowd was building and we were almost full as we started.

I introduced the session and Milena and Ralf were my time keepers. Thanks to Graham Wood who lent us a 2nd projector so we could have the clock show up on the wall, unfortunately Graham couldn't attend the session and I spent 3 days carting it around trying to catch up with him, luckily it was light.

Jonathan went first (the podcast explains why) and finished on exactly 5 minutes, the bar was set. Then the others just got on with it and we had almost 20 minutes for Q&A after the first 6. I was worried about that but actually we could have had more, people were so engaged.

Then we had a lesson in Big Data, despite having told Oracle both in advance and on the day that both sessions were combined, everyone, yes everyone had to march out, queue up and be rescanned to enter the room for the 2nd half. Apparently they wouldn't have the data they need if we didn't.

Again after the 2nd half we had plenty of time for more Q&A and the event finished on a real high.

I have had so much feedback, people who want to do it again, so let us have your ideas as to what topic to do next.

Back to My OOW14 Recap

My OOW14 - Speaking

As well as the EOUC 12 short talks on 12c that I hosted (and spoke in at the last moment) I had 2 other speaking sessions and a customer lunch.

I was included in the AppAdvantage Lunch – the only partner present not sponsoring but I was there in my capacity as guest author on their blog and joined in the discussion raising the topic of importance of dialogue between business and IT.

Rick & I Selfie

This gave me the idea for my OTN tech tip video.

Then later in the week I was to join Rick Beers from the AppAdvantage team in a panel session on technology assisted deployments and upgrades. Unfortunately on the day I was the only panellist but I loved it the interaction was great, Rick had a slide set and I gave my opinion and ideas on each topic.

On Thursday I was the demo-babe for the First Time UX experience session, a bit nerve wracking as my new boss Tim Warner attended. It was not a bad turn out for the end of the conference and an important message as there are still a lot of people who don't know what to expect. I was also able to share real life experience from users.

I didn't have a session accepted for OOW this year and yet still ended up with several. Thanks to the different Oracle programs who reached out to me and I loved being part of yet another amazing OOW.

Back to My OOW14 Recap