As I’m sure many of you will know, “the first rule of ACED is to constantly talk about ACED”. So every year they put us in a room for the 2 day ACED Briefing where “the first rule of the ACED Briefing is don’t talk about the ACED Briefing”. You can guess, this is going to be devoid of spoilers! 🙂
I think it is safe to say, the main focus areas of Oracle OpenWorld 2014 are reasonably predictable, but a number of the announcements related to those areas of focus are not so predictable! I think there will be something for everyone next week! That’s all I’m going to say about the ACED Briefing content! 🙂
Now for opinion time. This is obviously affected by what I heard during the day, but also what has been happening for the last couple of years…
In my opinion, Oracle getting into the “cloud business” over the last few years has been one of the best things to happen to the company! Why do I say this? Because “eating their own dog food” while trying to build a portfolio of cloud offerings has given them a very specific focus. Pre-cloud, many of the features that will be spoken about next week would probably not have been on the radar, even though customer’s wanted them. Now, there is a *very* big driver for getting this stuff done. If Oracle need it to build their cloud, it’s going to happen!
“I don’t care about Oracle’s public cloud”, will be the cry from some out there. Fine. You don’t have to care, but their cloud is built on the Oracle database, WebLogic, the Fusion Middleware stack, their engineered systems etc. If you care about any of the individual building blocks, Oracle’s public cloud will have a positive effect on those building blocks. Making those products lean, fast and flexible is a really important focus when you are trying to use this stuff at the scale Oracle are!
So when you are listening to the array of announcements over the coming week, I would like you to ask yourself a few questions:
- Is this feature good for building Oracle’s cloud?
- Do I think this feature would exist if Oracle didn’t need it for their cloud?
- Can I make use of this feature, independent of Oracle’s cloud offering? (If I could afford it)
At the end of OOW14, when you look back as a whole, I think most people will see how Oracle entering the cloud business has had a really good knock-on effect on their product set.
On a personal note, it was fantastic being at the ACED briefing. I missed it last year and it was great to meet up with everyone again. OOW is so big it is easy to miss people. Having so many of my Oracle friends in one room is brilliant! Happy days…
In the evening I was going to go straight to bed, but Carry Millsap persuaded me to go out to eat. Well, I say persuaded me, but really I just wanted to be near him because he’s so pretty! 🙂 Cary, Kerry, Frits, Martin, Bjoern and myself went out to a little Mexican place and I got a brilliant burrito, which I scoffed, whilst teaching them to speak proper English. They now understand the words minger, minging, muggy and bellend.
Cheers
Tim…
PS. As any conspiracy theorist knows, the public denial of the Oracle Games Console (OGC) by Thomas Kurian is proof of its existence. I believe it uses technology reverse engineered from the wreckage recovered from Roswell.
