There have been several outreach sessions and we have been introduced to several support and sharing opportunities.

I am looking forward for our AquaLogic group to broaden our knowledge base with our new associates at Oracle.

Evelyn Schichner
User Group Leader, Northeast BEA AquaLogic Products

“Potential” is the most loaded word in the English language; to paraphrase Charles Bukowski, every baby in its crib has more “potential” than I.

(I’d like to add for the record that I am not an Oracle spokesperson, this is only my personal opinion.)

I suggest people do the same, but let’s be honest here. Tomorrow’s Webcast, which is going to be as much marketing as substance (and that’s not a knock on marketing, just a recognition of how these things work), will hardly amount to the sum total of “fact” when it comes to this acquisition. We happen to believe strongly that user experience is what matters most.

And it would seem that BEA users have some misgivings about the purchase. What we wanted to get was a good-sized sample of users six months after the initial news of the deal and prior to the July 1 announcement. What do you think users do when it’s six months after a major vendor has been purchased and they aren’t sure what direction the new owner intends to take? They plan contingencies. I think it’s fair to say we got a good slice and that it indicates Oracle has got some skeptical BEA customers to convince, people who report their top contingency (should they need one) may not necessarily be Oracle.

That doesn’t mean Oracle’s done anything wrong or that these users will go shopping for new vendors, but it certainly does indicate that unless you’ve got the Gettysburg Address of Webcasts planned for tomorrow then it will be the follow through that matters more than the mission statement.

Michael Meehan

http://www.oracle.com/features/hp/middleware-strategy.html

Justin Kestelyn
EIC, Oracle Technology Network