Alas!  It’s the end of Oracle Open World 2007, but the band played on and news from the event keeps on coming.  From the Saturday Night Live Darrell Hammond’s impression of Larry himself to Charles Phillips’ outline of the company’s acquisition strategy (dubbed ‘acquired innovation’), Oracle outdid itself this year. 

So, what did Oracle offer this year……..

•  Phillips unveiled the new virtualization server software for Linux and additions to Oracle’s application integration products.
• The premiere of Oracle’s new Application Integration Architecture (AIA) and the Application Integration Foundation pack both key for successfully software integration across platforms.
• A promise from Ellison that new Java-based applications will have BI built in.
• Other announcements included: Latest version of Oracle Fusion GRC Intelligence and Oracle Enterprise Manager; Updates to Content Management Solutions.

And, of course, who can forget the entertainers!  My personal favorite, Billy Joel introduced Ellison for the conference keynote.  Performances for Oracle world included Lenny Kravits, Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood. 

We had an amazing dinner at Gary Danko’s, located near Fisherman’s Wharf in SF. A must dining destination next time I’m in SF. Deciding the forego the Billy Joel concert, we took a cab ride to the downtown SF hotel, Clift, buying a table there and finishing a large bottle of Grey Goose vodka and Moet Chandon champagne. We would have gone on further, were it not for the club’s closing at 2 am (privately, I was relieved it did). But the kicker was having to still pack and catch a shuttle to the airport at 4.50 am. Yep, I got almost no sleep.  Oh, boy, I’m too old for this.  �

Greetings from Oracle OpenWorld in SF. Well…the weather’s been great all in all. There are swarms of Oracle attendees here! Here, there, everywhere. The conference attendees’ have taken over downtown SF, which is remarkably clean and has a very good feel to it. The dining experiences so far are pricey but on the disappointing side. (And I’ve eaten at some expensive one’s thus far). Many veteran attendees say the conference has gotten too unwieldy and that Oracle should break the conference apart to serve its various constituencies e.g. technical, apps, Siebel, PeopleSoft, etc. The chief compliant is that it’s gotten too marketing focused. But still, the draw of SF, the draw of meeting peers, etc. is a strong one. I wonder if Oracle makes money on this ala Gartner’s business model? Have to look into that one.  It’s said that over 42,000 are attending this year, but I haven’t seen the official figures just yet.

So, we’re off to the races and Oracle World is looking mighty fine. Ellison’s eloquent walk down memory lane on Sunday evening was the topic of much discussion today both in the media as well as on and off the show floor. Can you believe that Oracle is nearly 30? And, with age comes mellowness. It seems that Mr. Ellison has been getting kudos for his speech and media pundits are publicly acknowledging his newfound mellowness.

It’s Sunday night and I’m getting ready for Oracle Open World. It should be a good show this year beginning with the kick-off event to the evening events. We also believe that Oracle will have a lot of news this year that will significantly impact software licensing across all products.

See you out in San Fran, folks.

Remarkably, my flights to Chicago and from Chicago to Palm Springs left on time today. One is always advised to bring either work or plenty of surplus reading in anticipation of delays. You still get drinks for free on the flight (American Airlines) but you pay for the mediocre food offerings. This week IAITAM; next week Oracle World.

I couldn’t be more thrilled. Miro’s Eliot Colon was featured in IT Week on Sept 17, 2007 (UK edition).

Tomorrow I travel to Palm Springs, CA to attend the 5th annual IAITAM conference. (IAITAM is the acronym for International Association of IT Asset Managers). The folks at IAITAM are a good bunch. In my view they’ve assembled a good team of professionals. I’m excited to attend –and speak- at this conference. My topic will cover ‘Smarter Oracle Software Licensing’ and one of my key themes will be to discuss Oracle compliance.

What I like about IAITAM is their focus on the burgeoning field of IT software license management and all that goes with it: software compliance and IT audit. In my seven year’s at Miro, I still find many enterprises across North America that still don’t have their IT software management house in order, so when the software vendor knocks at the door and asserts their right to audit, it’s a mad scramble to gather the information necessary –and worse. Things could get very costly in terms of time, energy and treasure.

I just spoke to a client today in Florida who shared with me that they were involved at this moment with an “external audit”, meaning one of their software vendor’s was auditing them. He went on to say that his company is quite lucky to have him and a few others’ around that have a history with this software vendor, because they know the history and know where to find, say, a specific e-mail from a few years’ back that spelled out such and such. He complained to me how much time and energy this audit was taking up. And finally, he added that all’s is well, that they were indeed in compliance. Still, that underscores how much time and energy an external software audit takes. You had better be ready.