2011 Say Bye-bye!
Every year around this time I write two columns one on the year that was and another on what I expect the new year to bring. There is no methodology for this process and I believe this lack of method is important. I take a blank screen and fill it up with what has been [...]
The Closed World of Oracle Open World
Insofar as I characterized Oracle Open World as a communications disaster in my last blog post, I think it’s fair to explain why I feel this way and what it means for Oracle and the market. Oracle Open World is singularly the worst customer event I attend every year, a forced march so large and [...]
The Customer Comes Second…..Oracle’s Software Stack Engineered for Investors
I spent much of last week sorting through the absolutely overwhelming communications disaster called Oracle Open World in search of some clarity on Oracle’s vision for its customers, and have come to the following conclusion: Oracle’s applications customer strategy just isn’t about making things better for its customers. The problem with the Oracle of today [...]
Open World Day 1 #OOW11
Oracle is a big company and that point gets driven home when you start to go in-depth on their products. At a show like OpenWorld which is dedicated more or less to touching on every aspect of the business, you can quickly get out of your depth. Since the opening keynote on Sunday the talk [...]
#OOW11 WTF! Larry Cancels Marc, Oy…
WTF! I’ve been writing, talking and meeting all day. I thought I had the night off when this bombshell went off (it comes directly form Twitter): “RT @Benioff: Larry just cancelled my keynote tomorrow! Sorry #oow11! Join me @ St. Regis AME Restaurant at 10:30AM! The show must go on! Sorry Larry!” There are so [...]
Who’s the top innovator: SAP or Oracle? A customer’s query from SAP’s Sapphire User Conference
Coming down from the dais after a panel discussion on mobility, I was approached by an attendee with the following story. He was on the IT staff at a Fortune 500 company that was a wall-to-wall Oracle shop, and his boss, the CIO, had sent him to Sapphire with the following mission: make sure that [...]
Oracle OpenWorld Cloud Orthodoxy
Writing about the seminal event for CRM at Oracle Open World — the public cloud computing debate between Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff respective CEO’s of Oracle and Salesforce.com — is tougher than coming up with rent and alimony. There are so many threads to pull together and I have so much history following the [...]
Beyond Spend Classification – Examining Oracle’s Latest Procurement Enhancements (Part 2)
In yesterday’s column examining some of the latest solution enhancements from Oracle in the Spend Management arena, I paid particularly close attention to how the provider is attempting to become more flexible with available deployment models and app…
Beyond Spend Classification — Examining Oracle’s Latest Procurement Enhancements (Part 1)
Earlier this fall at OpenWorld, Oracle unveiled a number of new product enhancements in the Spend Management arena. Among these, the press and analysts latched most onto Oracle’s announcement of an entirely new spend classification capability. But be…
Oracle Fusion Apps Have Finally Arrived…Kinda
Today was a long anticipated day in the most recent chapter of Oracle applications. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s CEO, announced “code completion” of Oracle Fusion Applications in his keynote speech at Oracle’s annual OpenWorld Conference. While Ellison’s announcement was much anticipated and has begun to answer many questions, many questions still remain.
How To Interpret Today’s [...]
