OpenWorld 2010: ACE Director Meeting – Day 1

Yesterday started by me waking up at silly o’clock. The joys of international travel. At least I can see on twitter that I’m not alone. 🙂

ACE Director Meeting – Day 1

Since we are not allowed to talk about the content of the meeting, I’m only going to mention the opening talk by Thomas Kurian who gave an overview of the big announcements at OpenWorld this year.

Now you people out there know how cynical I am at times and how underwhelmed I’ve been about some of the previous years big announcements. Well this year I’m blown away. I’m genuinely excited about the events this year. I’ve read some of the press speculation and quite frankly they have all underestimated this years OpenWorld by several orders of magnitude. The press are going to be hit by a barrage of new stuff right across the company. I defy anyone who truly understands enterprise computing to not be impressed by the breadth and scale of the announcements this year.

The thing I liked most about Thomas Kurian’s talk was the passion he delivered it with. I’m not talking about that crazy Ballmer on crack football coach fake crap. I’m talking real passion for the products and the direction of the company.

From my own perspective, I think Oracle taking over Sun was the best thing that could ever have happened to Sun. I know a lot of the Sun fanboys would disagree, but let’s be real. Sun was terminally ill. They had lots of good people, lots of good technology, but were incapable of giving it any direction at all. They were a mess. The only way they were going to survive was by getting some vision. Enter uncle Larry. I must admit to not understanding Oracle’s motives for the Sun deal, but this year it’s all starting to make sense to me. I look forward to seeing the press frenzy.

The evening was quite sedate. Just some food in the bar then bed. I woke up again at silly o’clock this morning. Once again, lots of ACEDs on twitter obviously suffering the same timezone issues. The early rise allowed me to get myself up to date and do some Yoga, which was great after a day of travelling and a day of sitting in meetings.

The downside of doing Yoga in a hotel room is they tend to have a lot of mirrors. In my head I know I look like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, but there was this fat, hairy guy staring back at me in various contorted positions. Quite off putting. 🙂

Next stop, round 2 of the ACE Directors meeting…

Cheers

Tim…