Blog: Dan Power

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Oracle Fusion -- Hope for Innovative Decision Support

My visit to Oracle OpenWorld is wrapping up on a tired, but hopeful note. For almost an hour from 3-4pm today, I listened to the product "brain trust" at Oracle discuss current developments, strategy and hopes. Chuck Rozwat, Ed Abbo, Thomas Kurian, Andy Mendelsohn and Steve Miranda reiterated the Oracle product message to a global press/analyst group.

Rozwat stressed Oracle wants/has the leading products in every category it participates in ... The goal is 1) complete solutions, 2) openness of the product line, and 3) adopting industry standards.

The message for Oracle Fusion middleware from Rozwat and Kurian is "we are on target" and some components will be released in 2008. The commitment to a service oriented architecture, Web 2.0, an integrated development "stack" and a secure, scalable deployment environment is more than marketing.

It seems that Oracle wants to pull together its diverse product line and that can only be positive for building innovative enterprisewide decision support. Whether we have IT folks who can step up and exploit the integration and diverse capabilities is more problematic. Why? Just coping with the increased complexity and rapid change in the current business IT environment is hard.

Oh well ... we'll muddle through somehow.

Mark Hurd, CEO of HP, is a good tennis player and regularly thumps Larry Ellison (inferred from Hurd's comments). Nonetheless, I don't see HP integrating forward and buying Oracle in 2008. Hurd answered "man on the street" videotaped questions in his keynote and didn't have a clear message.

Paul Otellini, President and CEO of Intel, reassured a crowd of 8-10,000 that Intel will deliver more computer processing speed and capacity using less energy. He noted data centers currently account for 1.5% of the energy consumption in the United States. By videotape, Paul introduced us to 3 Intel engineers working on the microprocessor architectures of the future. The videos were not inspiring ... incremental change, no breakthroughs from my vantage point.

Thomas Kurian, the middleware fusion guru at Oracle, gave a keynote and he was very impressive. It wasn't what he said as much as how he said it. If anyone can create the integrated development and administrative environment envisioned in Oracle Fusion Middleware, I think it is Kurian.

I did get to a Hyperion session and spoke briefly with some Hyperion partners. Perhaps some new customers are being exposed to Hyperion here, but Oracle decision support including business intelligence needs a more dedicated conference and showcase.

Well we are all using the futons for catnaps ... the days and nights are busy and long. I hope everyone walks away from Oracle OpenWorld with one good idea for improving enterprisewide applications where they work.

I'll be on a "red eye" heading back to Cedar Falls later tonight.

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