Oracle Open Week - Monday September 19, 2005

The Oracle Open World event is again at the Moscone Center in beautiful downtown San Francisco. The weather is a pleasant 75 degrees with sun.

Oracle Corp has included in this years venue the People Soft group and the JD Edwards group (purchased by PeopleSoft while Oracle was purchasing Peoplesoft). Oracle President Charles Phillips told a user group session that there were 35,000 attendees at this combined event. Based on the crowd and total lack of available hotel rooms, I believe it.

This year’s theme is Oracle10g and Grid computing. Oracle is calling the integration between their applications, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards Fusion…which is also the theme of the event appreciation party to be held this Wednesday evening. Oracle has adjusted their acronym OFA to mean Oracle Fusion Architecture.

I arrived on Monday at noon. The event actually started last Saturday, the 17 with SIG meetings (special interest groups), Oracle X-Treme Sessions (workshops on Grid computing) and a movie night. Sunday’s highlights included more SIG meetings and the welcome reception sponsored by EMC Corp…featuring comedian Dana Carvey.

Oracle President Charles Phillips started today with a welcome keynote followed by a keynote address from Paul Otellini, Intel Corp President and CEO. Sessions started today at 11 am and ran thru 5:30pm. The concurrent sessions included Oracle database tracks, Oracle Applications tracks, PeopleSoft tracks, and JD Edwards tracks.

I spent the majority of the afternoon in the exhibition hall. There were the usual vendors I am used to seeing at OOW (the training firms, the hardware firms, and the vendor tools firms) along with new vendors to OOW such as PeopleSoft vendors and consulting firms, and JD Edwards vendors and consulting firms. The Oracle Camp Grounds were broken into at least 5 groups: Oracle Database 10g, Systems Management and Security, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle E-Business Suite, and Peoplesoft/JD Edwards. I find these camp grounds particularly useful as you can find your area of interest and work one-on-one with the Oracle experts, typically from the development labs themselves. I find this is a good place to network with people who can answer my questions.

I also visited the bookstore where I saw a couple of my books for sale! I purchased myself a new Oracle baseball cap and a new Oracle jacket. There was a variety of Oracle stuff for sale…even stuff for the little ones called ‘Oracle Kids’.

I have regularly attended this event since 1995. The past 6 or so Open Worlds have been at the Moscone Center. Oracle used to host these in various parts of the country (my first one was in Philadelphia). I always bump into many people that I’ve met through the years.

My evening was spent with friends on Fisherman’s Warf, enjoying Ghirardelli chocolate.