October 12th, 2009
Oracle OpenWorld: Getting down to business
At Oracle OpenWorld, company co-presidents Charles Phillips and Safra Catz kicked off the day’s events with a keynote speech that got right down to business about, well, doing business.
In the opening minutes of the keynote, the two took some time to reflect on what the company has been doing in the past year or so, taking time to highlight the advancements in technology that have been rolled-out not only because of the company’s investment in innovation but also because of the company’s investments over the years in companies that have a cutting-edge technology that could enhance Oracle’s offerings.
Why does that matter? Phillips was frank about it. Look at the companies that Oracle has acquired - PeopleSoft, Seibel and so on. Their technologies have been integrated into the company’s portfolio of offerings, not scrapped. If anyone has concerns about what will happen with Sun and MySQL, Phillips said the company’s track record should prove that Oracle takes the companies it acquires and makes them stronger.
No, Phillips and Catz didn’t come out swinging at IBM the way Larry Ellison did last night. But, Catz did take a moment to highlight the old ways of technology buying by using the analogy of buying a car. In previous models, companies bought their technology in piece-meal - a piece of hardware here, a piece of software there. But the biggest challenge was putting it all together on-site. If you bought a car like this, she said, you would need to bring in welders and mechanics and others to take all of the pieces to build the car. And imagine how frustrating this would be when the car is finally ready to hit the open road, only to find out that a patch or update is now required.
With that said, Oracle wants to be the company to send you everything you need, ready to go, so you don’t have to deal with integration on-site.
The keynote itself was less about the politics and competition within the tech industry - the battle with IBM, the merger with Sun and so on. Instead, Phillips and Catz welcomed folks to the stage to demonstrate real-life business scenarios. It almost seems silly to manage a project without having access to the budgets for those projects or manage inventories without real-time access to sales analytics.
That’s really the message at Oracle OpenWorld this year - doing business in a new way. The economy has sparked changes among companies from across many different business sectors - whether it’s capital investments or decisions to outsource support and services. With more than 1,900 educational sessions across five tracks, the attendees here seem to be ready to learn - and their companies, who have sent them to San Francisco to attend the show - must be ready to take the next step into economic recovery, as well.
Oracle OpenWorld is always a big event - but in recent months, the attendance at technology trade shows held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center has been noticeably smaller. Travel budgets had been slashed, training budgets had been slashed and people who might previously attended some of these shows have been handed pink slips.
But Oracle OpenWorld appears to be a vibrant show. (Could it be a strong indicator of the tech economy’s health for 2010?) The conference has taken over the three halls at San Francisco’s Moscone Center (North, South and West) and Howard Street - a major downtown thoroughfare that divides the North and South halls - is closed to traffic for the week to accommodate the conference.The city has booked more than 81,000 rooms, the company said. And the pedestrian traffic around Moscone is Manhattan-style heavy.
Imagine how crazy things would be if the city had to welcome the other 180,000 people expected to check out portions of the show over the Internet this week.
Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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