I have just returned from COLLABORATE 11, the Oracle user conference, and I have a lot of stories to tell. It was at THE event where the technology user group(IOUG), along with Quest and OAUG got together to share experiences with Oracle and Oracle-based technologies. I always believe if you are into Oracle technology there is no event like this one anywhere else in North America. This is where Oracle and users truly collaborate to educate the community.
The conference started in an inspirational manner, as Dan Thurmon, the author of Off Balance on Purpose spoke. He talked about how once we master something, we must challenge ourselves to change and get even better. Check out this video of Dan to see what he is about. It makes you realize that in today’s ever changing technology world.
This conference proved this to me. I even had a theme song playing in my head…. “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, in 1963 Bob Dylan seemed so insightful and this week was that very same to me. So on the week when I celebrated the same birthday as the song, I came the same realization. What is changing is how Oracle is delivering solutions. It showed that there are disruptive technologies which are ready for primetime.
I see two technologies which as Enterprise Data Architects we need to consider. First is Exadata and appliance solutions. And for me the second is Open-Source technology like MySQL. With Exadata, Oracle has brought together the best of Oracle database technology with Sun hardware to optimize data access. It’s not perfect, but it is coming and the wave is beginning. Larry Ellison just told us, that there is $2 Billion worth of Exadata orders in the pipeline. The secret sauce are the optimized disks and data retrieval. It was interesting to Ask Tom Kyte (at an IOUG lunch with Tom event), how he saw the Exadata technology is changing how we do our database deployments. He says its not quite as easy as the marketing team would like people to believe, but he did say that this machine in the right hands can achieve significant benefits. I also attended a presentation where someone basically used the Exadata very much like a traditional Oracle RAC implementation. So I begin to believe that the “Art of Exadata” will be the secret sauce. It will include people who understand architecture, database design, database deployments, SQL optimization and a little bit about hardware. Exadata’s time seems to have arrived
The other is open-source. Products like Java and MySQL are both open-source products which are now becomes part of the our corporate fabric. I am beginning to see much of the same needs we had 20 years ago when Oracle was doing the same thing for databases. The same management concerns need to be addressed to optimize the use of MySQL. Discussions on backups, optimization, replication and high-availability have become pressing concerns people need to address.
Of course the real value that I get from events like COLLABORATE 11, are the networking opportunities. I get a chance to meet and discuss interesting subjects with many people; each who add to much knowledge base. I get to know and understand how Oracle plans to move forward. One such example is Willie Hardie, the VP of Database Product Marketing and a great supporter of the IOUG, and who won the IOUG Ken Jacobs award recognizing the person at Oracle who has helped the user community in numerous ways. Here he is with IOUG President Andy Flower receiving his award:
And thanks to my friends at The Quest user group, who focus on PeopleSoft and JD Edwards who brought in Jim Lovell and Fred Haise from Apollo 13 frame to recount the experience from that flight, which blasted off in 1970 on my birthday, before encountering their infamous issues. Here they are today as they spoke during the event.
If you have never been to an event like this; it should be time to consider it. There is nothing like it. I made new friends and helped people who were attending for the first time feel welcome. It really is a community experience and one that Facebook or LinkedIn can not replicate. Plan to be at COLLABORATE 12 in Las Vegas, April 22, 2012, and get on the Hogwarts Express; it’s time.
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