Oracle Open Underworld
I decided to save Oracle Corporation lots of money by not attending Oracle Open World in San Francisco. Initially, my manager spent a lot of time trying to dissuade me but as soon as he uttered the words 'Billy Joel' and 'Prince', I immediately volunteered for some billable work in Sunderland to help pay for Doug's complimentary red sleeping bags.
Doug Burns, Tim Hall and John Scott seem to have a real problem conquering jet lag while Mark Rittman just does 'the British thing and goes down the pub'. While I don't travel to the States that often, I did attend a Microsoft training course in Seattle last year. As I don't sleep on planes, I do recall being quite tired when we disembarked and slightly annoyed when my colleague volunteered to navigate and let me concentrate on driving.
However, after checking into the hotel, having a walk around the lovely harbour and getting something to eat, I remember feeling pretty good. In fact, after a couple of drinks, I was ready put my Amex card behind the bar but my colleague insisted on dragging me back to my bedroom screaming 'But we must go to bed at 22:09'
Anyway to OOW; Oracle Apps Lab launched Oracle Mix which is a version of an internal Oracle networking site (which I am ashamed to admit I only discovered recently) and there is a short discussion about Oracle's gradual adoption of such networking and community tools. I must say I preferred the name 'Connect' to 'Mix' but still, if anyone wants to link up, you know where to find me.
Andrew Clarke has a typically British and impartial review on Larry Ellison's opening keynote while Eddie Awad has recorded some fun micro-interviews with Oracle staff and bloggers alike. Interesting to put a face and voice to people I only know from their Internet presence.
The other announcement thus far of note is Oracle VM. Virtualisation is a strong growth area (I meet lots of Siebel customers deploying or planning to use VM) and this is an obvious market for Oracle to enter to complement Enterprise Linux.