Hottest topics out of Oracle OpenWorld

There was a lot to ponder at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 aside from the obvious news items: A new Exalogic super-duper Web server that is also–depending on your point of view–a cloud in a box or the return of a DEC VAX. Also Fusion Apps which, pardon the skepticism, have been on their way now for a long, looooong time.  There was an intriguing deal with Amazon Web Services under which AWS will use Oracle VM in a portion of its cloud reserved for running Oracle enterprise applications.

All well and good and worthy of discussion. But here are the real questions coming out of the show.

1: Can the appeal of Oracle’s technology overcome customer FUD?

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Oracle OpenWorld 2010: The low point

SAN FRANCISCO–Wow. Larry Ellison really knows how to put the OOW in Oracle OpenWorld. We’re heading into hour two of his second keynote but the major chunk of the audience that is still sentient is gone.

Which co-president should be giving him the hook? Safra Catz? Mark Hurd? I guess those big salaries do not carry with them any ability to rein this guy in.

Earlier on there were some yuks as Ellison responded to Marc Benioff’s earlier jibes. Benioff had mocked Ellison’s view of ExaLogic as “cloud in a box.”

Ellison: “What does Marc think the cloud runs on? Boxes!” In Salesforce.com’s case, he added, it’s about 1,500 boxes. True dat.

Of course Larry started all this Sunday night by disparaging Salesforce.com as a false cloud.

From the number of slides being shown, Ellison really has bought into the IBM model. Next year we’ll be seeing slide decks of Oracle’s latest mainframe.

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Benioff returns Ellison fire, but peacefully

Marc Benioff said he came in peace but managed to counter comments from former-boss Larry Ellison pretty forcefully this morning. He did his best to cut Oracle’s upcoming Exalogic “cloud in a box” down to size. Continued »

Oracle and Amazon team up for their own reasons

Oracle needs to prove it “gets” the cloud. Amazon needs to show that its Web services are ready for the enterprise.

Hence the deal under which Amazon will cordon off part of its vaunted cloud computing environment to sell  Oracle enterprise applications. That portion of Amazon’s EC2 cloud will run Oracle VM, a slight departure from the Xen that underlies the rest of its services (Oracle VM is based on Xen.)

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Top channel takeaways from Oracle OpenWorld 2010

SAN FRANCISCO–Oracle’s really packing in the news at Oracle OpenWorld thus far. New Fusion Apps due out early next year. A new Linux distro. A new Exalogic super-duper Web server appliance to come in the next 12 months. A little hissy-fit then make up session with HP. What more could you want?

For Oracle and Sun channel partners, here are the top line items out of the big event.:

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Hurd, HP settle

They may not actually have kissed and made up, but Hewlett-Packard and its former CEO settled a lawsuit Monday. HP sued Mark Hurd after he accepted the co-presidency of Oracle Corp. just weeks after being ousted from HP.

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Oracle Exalogic unveiled (kinda)

SAN FRANCISCO–As expected, new Oracle hardware – the Exalogic elastic cloud – got the spotlight at Oracle OpenWorld 2010. Continued »

Exadata/Exalogic front-and-center at Oracle OpenWorld

SAN FRANCISCO–The Moscone Center North hall –which funnels the thousands of Oracle OpenWorld attendees into the keynotes was festooned with Exadata machines, knights-in-armor and a huge poster touting Exadata and Exalogic.  The latter–perhaps a business intelligence appliance?–is probably the next hardware/software system soon to be announced by Larry Ellison.

Stay tuned to find out what Exalogic is and what’s up with the knights? (Update: Oops! They’re not knights but Iron Men.)

(Update again: More on Exalogic here and here.)

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Mark Hurd says hey to Oracle partners

Newly-minted Oracle co-president Mark Hurd introduced himself to a few thousand Oracle partners Sunday afternoon. And he reiterated what they’ve heard for months now from other Oracle execs:

Specialize and sell more of Oracle’s stuff, er stack.

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Ellison: Integration is big, services not so much

SAN FRANCISCO–As the masses gather for Oracle OpenWorld here it’ll be interesting to see how much of the big show will highlight more integrated systems, more Exadatas, perhaps the “VM Machine.” More ZFS appliances. You know, the “Software. Hardware. Complete” vision of Larry Ellison’s dreams.

On its first quarter conference call last week, the Oracle CEO talked up integration big time–reiterating his iPod-for-the-data-center message but also played up the need for Oracle to make nice with services companies–yes–even IBM. Actually, especially  IBM.

Asked if Oracle needed to purchase a big services company as HP did with EDS, he demurred.  “IBM’s services business seems to be the dominant part [of the company and] their product business is important but secondary.   We look at it just the reverse.”

 ”One thing we want to to do is obviate the need for services so if we do a good job integrating our apps together, making them easy to install and upgrade, you don’t need as many services…hardware and software together..storage and server and the OS and apps you don’t need as much integration services, he said.

On the other hand, he said Oracle has a good rapport with IBM’s aforementioned services business and looks for that relationship to expand–most notably in banking where Oracle has vertical application expertise, he said.

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