We had the opportunity to attend Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco this week. The conference was again the usual spread out affair, with e.g. JavaOne happening at the Hilton, the HR events happening at the Palace Hotel etc. Official attendance was 60k+ - it felt the same as last year.


 
So take a peek:


 
 
If you can't watch - here is the gist:
 
Top 3 Takeaways
 
  • IaaS is here - There was something missing on the Oracle Cloud architecture, and that was IaaS. As Ellison shared candidly, Oracle built SaaS, realized that it needed PaaS and building PaaS it needed IaaS. So Oracle found its way to the cloud top down, with the important auto-scaling feature coming in 2 weeks / later this year. Pricing is attractive, as Ellison put it - Oracle dedicated instances will be at 50% of AWS flexible instances cost wise. And Storage will be at 1/10 of AWS S3. So cost will not be an issue / argument moving to Oracle's cloud.
     
  • More Multitenancy, please - Oracle introduced multitenancy at the database level 2 years ago with Oracle 12c, this year it showed the transfer of a database container from data center A to data center B while writing to the database. And it introduced the largest extension to WebLogic, making JVMs multitenant, a key reliability and flexibility addition to running Java applications (needless to say Oracle announced Docker support, too).
     
  • SCM closes the suite - SCM was the holdout on the Oracle Cloud Suite, and Oracle announced key new additions and products to address this gap. Coupled with the also announced e-commerce products, this announcement as well as the progress of the rest of the SaaS products makes the Oracle offering likely the most complete suite in the cloud. Or on premises as Oracle keeps supporting the duality of deployment. 
 
Top 3 Positives
 
  • The chip-to-click stack becomes more real - With autoscaling the Oracle integrated tech stack learns a key trick to become a cloud infrastructure stack in regards of operational TCO. But also good news for on premises customers who can run workloads in a more elastic way.
     
  • SaaS Suite gets complete - With key SCM functionality and a new e-commerce suite Oracle adressess both gap and good house-keeping in its SaaS suite, which is now complete in terms of all major funtional areas.
     
  • Differentiation Sprinkles - No other large application vendor talks as much and has an as clear DaaS vision as Oracle. The analytical models are sane, too, as a quick conversation with the Datalogix team concluded. And then Oracle keeps creating value for the citizen developer and citizen integrator, allowing business end users to create mobile, web applications and integrations. 

    Top 3 Concerns

    • Will it all work? - Oracle is likely to undertake the largest engineering project with developers having the same logo on their paychecks. It all has to work seamlessly together, and Oracle has a checkered quality record in the past. To be fair, quality issues have been much less creating headlines for the vendor in the recent past.
       
    • Can Oracle sell it? - The challenge moves now from engineering to go to market, sales through direct and indirect channels. Oracle needs to onboard 1000s of partners in order to maintain the same relevancy in the future that it has today.
       
    • A relationship test - Oracle customers usually have less love lost for their vendor than for most other vendors in the market. That relationship needs to improve in order to become a service provider, where renewals are frequent and regular. Very different to the perpetual license model.
       

    MyPOV

    Oracle keeps executing along the vision of the 'IBM of the 21st century' - the single stop for everything an enterprise needs - on premises and in the cloud. The cloud viability has been notched up by significant degrees with the product progress shared at this OpenWorld. Good for customers, as they will get stronger and richer products. It is clear that horizontal integration inside the layers of the technology stack (e.g. a complete SaaS Suite, an powerful PaaS platform) are desirable for customers. How many layers of vertical integration are desired is less certain and will be the interesting story to watch, as we never had that many layers to deploy hardware and software to in the past, and the once upon a time model of the IBM stack feel apart in the 70ies of last century. Exciting times ahead, we will be watching and analyzing, stay tuned.

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    I compiled a short presentation with all first 22 press releases of this OpenWorld being discussed - take a look:
     
     
    No time to watch - checkout the presentation below:
     
    Oracle OpenWorld - A quick take on all 22 press releases of Day #1 - #3 from Holger Mueller



    More on Oracle OpenWorld:
    • News Analysis - Quick Take on all 22 press releases of Oracle OpenWorld Day #1 - #3 - read here
    • First Take - Oracle OpenWorld - Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways - read here
    • Event Preview - Oracle Openworld - watch here

    Future of Work / HCM / SaaS research:
    • Event Report - Oracle HCM World - Full Steam ahead, a Learning surprise and potential growth challenges - read here
    • First Take - Oracle HCM World Day #1 Keynote - off to a good start - read here
    • Progress Report - Oracle HCM gathers momentum - now it needs to build on that - read here
    • Oracle pushes modern HR - there is more than technology - read here. (Takeaways from the recent HCMWorld conference).
    • Why Applications Unlimited is good a good strategy for Oracle customers and Oracle - read here.

    Also worth a look for the full picture
    • Event Report - Oracle PaaS Event - 6 PaaS Services become available, many more announced - read here
    • Progress Report - Oracle Cloud makes progress - but key work remains in the cellar - read here
    • News Analysis - Oracle discovers the power of the two socket server - or: A pivot that wasn't one - TCO still rules - read here
    • Market Move - Oracle buys Datalogix - moves more into DaaS - read here
    • Event Report - Oracle Openworld - Oracle's vision and remaining work become clear - they are both big - read here
    • Constellation Research Video Takeaways of Oracle Openworld 2014 - watch here
    • Is it all coming together for Oracle in 2014? Read here. 
    • From the fences - Oracle AR Meeting takeaways - read here (this was the last analyst meeting in spring 2013)
    • Takeaways from Oracle CloudWorld LA - read here (this was one of the first cloud world events overall, in January 2013)

    And if you want to read more of my findings on Oracle technology - I suggest:
    • Progress Report - Good cloud progress at Oracle and a two step program - read here.
    • Oracle integrates products to create its Foundation for Cloud Applications - read here.
    • Java grows up to the enterprise - read here.
    • 1st take - Oracle in memory option for its database - very organic - read here.
    • Oracle 12c makes the database elastic - read here.
    • How the cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
    • Act I - Oracle and Microsoft partner for the cloud - read here.
    • Act II - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Salesforce.com - read here.
    • Act III - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Netsuite with a touch of Deloitte - read here. 

    Finally find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
    2012, 2013, 2014 & 2015 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

    Business Research Themes

    Tech Optimization

    Roles

    Chief Information Officer

    Tags

    cloud, fusion, middleware, nextgen apps, nextgen hcm, openworld, oracle