Collaborate 09

The biggest ain’t always the best when choosing an Oracle vendor

If you were asked to choose between IBM Global Services and the lesser known Solution Beacon for your consulting needs, which would you choose?

Hint: don’t be too quick to pick IBM. It seems that when it comes to picking a vendor or consultant, IT professionals believe larger more global companies such as IBM or Oracle aren’t always the preferred choice.

According to a VendorRate Trade Show report from Collaborate ‘09 in Orlando last month, Solution Beacon was the highest rated vendor of the approximately 200 attending the show.  The lowest rated vendor was Business Objects, with Oracle Consulting, Deloitte Consulting, Microsoft, BMC Software, ADP, Symantec Enterprise Storage and Verizon Wireless rounding out the bottom, according to the report.

VendorRate collected responses at Collaborate from nearly 400 IT professionals, who rated the vendors on a scale of 1 to 10 in 10 categories, including communication, timeliness, usability, reliability and customer service.

Three of the lowest rated vendors provide global consulting services. In a BusinessWire article, VendorRate CEO Rick Schaefer is quoted as saying, “Small and medium sized vendors continually score at the top of the charts while the big consulting organizations receive the lowest scores.”

Joining Solution Beacon at the top was Feith Systems & Software, Quest Software, Sun Microsystems Server, Oracle Software, Dell, HP and TUSC.

Here are a few of the highest and lowest scorers in specific categories, according to the report:

Best in Expertise: Solution Beacon and Sun Microsystems

Best in Communication: TUSC

Best in Recommend: Feist Systems and Software

Lowest in Recommend: ADP

Lowest in Timeliness: BusinessObjects

Lowest in Reliability: Microsoft

What do you think of these results?  Do they surprise you?

Oracle users can attend Collaborate 09 virtually

Coming to the rescue of cash-strapped IT professionals unable to attend Collaborate 09 in Orlando (May 3-7) the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) announced it will be hosting virtual sessions. IOUG officials said that companies registering at least one employee for the conference are then eligible to set up virtual access for everyone in their organization.

The IOUG plans to offer 40 virtual sessions over the course of the conference. IT professionals interested in Webinar sessions, which range between 30 minutes up to two hours, can be customized to best suit their specific educational interests.

Conference officials explained that obtaining a license for one seat provides unlimited access to virtual sessions.

“We recognize companies everywhere are looking for ways to save. This option takes into account economic conditions while still allowing members to get value from networking, continuing education and best practice sharing,” said Ian Abramson, President of the IOUG.

Collaborate 09 organizers, which also include the Oracle Applications User Group and Quest International Users Group, said they expect 5,000 people to attend the conference to be held at the Orange County Convention Center West.

Those interested in registering for virtual attendance can do so at:  http://www.ioug.org/collaborate09/attending/virtual.cfm.

If you are planning to attend Collaborate 09 virtually, let us know. If you have attended other Oracle conferences virtually, let us know what your experience has been and we’ll share it with the rest of the SearchOracle.com community.