Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Oracle OpenWorld recap: information overload...

I spent today in an invitation-only industry analyst day at Oracle OpenWorld, after spending the last two days attending OpenWorld sessions and exploring the seemingly infinite exhibit areas.

One of the great things about being a software industry analyst is that you occasionally get invited to events such as OpenWorld, with breakout sessions such as the ones I attended today. The analyst day included several Oracle senior executives presenting business and strategy updates, a customer panel, and lots of opportunities for discussions, Q&A, etc.

The scale of OpenWorld is amazing -- it's actually several conferences in one, due to Oracle's many acquisitions over the last few years. While there's definitely an overall database management system (DBMS) theme, given Oracle's database roots and business model, OpenWorld is also the customer/developer event for customers of acquired companies such as BEA, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel.

I'm suffering from a serious case of information overload at the moment, but I'll try to capture, in the next few posts, some of the reasons why I think today, with some surprising news from Oracle, is going to be considered a major milestone in the database -- and overall enterprise software -- business.

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