OpenWorld Asserts Oracle Supremacy

Oracles annual OpenWorld conference and exhibition organized at Moscone

Center in downtown San Francisco made big headlines in November. Not without

reasons. One, 2007 marks the 30th anniversary of Oracle (founded by Bob Miner,

Larry Ellison and Ed Oates as Software Development Labs in 1977). Also, as

Ellison reminisced on a 30-year flashback tour, it marks the 10th death

anniversary of Miner (widely regarded as the heart of Oracle).

More importantly, even by the gargantuan standards of the worlds second

largest software company, this years OpenWorld with nearly 43,000 attendees was

massive. It probably is the worlds largest event targeted at enterprises and

how they can harness the powers of IT to facilitate their business performances.

Not just managing the 43,000 attendees, Oracle also managed to rope in most

of the large tech vendors as co-sponsors. Thus, not only did AMD, Dell, Intel,

Sun, HP, NetApp, EMC sponsor the show, among others, industry leaders like

Hector Ruiz (AMD), Mark Hurd (HP), Michael Dell (Dell), Paul Otellini (Intel)

and Jonathan Schwartz (Sun) delivered keynote sessions, besides senior Oracle

executives.

The exhibitor list virtually included the entire Whos Who of the tech world.

Surprise, surprise, the exhibition hall even included a stall by SAPlooks like

the software leaders mutually acknowledge and appreciate each others strengths.

Even by the gargantuan standards of the worlds second largest software company, this years Oracle OpenWorld with nearly 43,000 attendees was massive

A large portion of the Indian presence was Indian employees of Oracle and its

sponsor partners in the US, a number of Indian partners and customers of Oracle

too turned up. The likes of Infosys, Zensar, TCS, Satyam, Cognizant, Systime had

exhibition stalls while large customers like Genpact, Hindalco, Jindal Steel and

L&T were present too.

Oracle pronounced its commitment to greener IT also through OpenWorld. To

reduce carbon emission, it took small but significant measures like not

providing plastic water bottles to every attendee. Instead, every participant

was provided an empty bottle of recyclable material and sufficient numbers of

water containers put up at the venue. Paper press releases and conference

agendas were reduced; from next OpenWorld it would be completely transferred

online. One of the participants, Deloitte Consulting, was specifically lauded

for putting up a paperless show.

Vertically Challenging!



Not content with just gaining expertise in different applications, Oracle is

doing it across multiple verticals through acquisitions.

Speaking at the Oracle Industry Leaders Media Roundtable at the sidelines of

Oracle OpenWorld, Rajesh Hukku, general manager and senior VP of Oracles FSGBU

and chairman, i-flex hinted that the i-flex brand would probably be subsumed by

the stronger Oracle brand in the near future. Though brand change is a

marketing decision, ultimately it makes sense to maintain the bigger umbrella

brand. However, individual i-flex product brands like Flexcube, Revelus and

others would continue to exist, added Hukku.

Oracle currently holds 83% of i-flexs shares and has been consistently

trying to acquire the rest in a bid to delist i-flex from the Indian bourses. It

would require a little over 90% of shares to do so. The move will help it to

integrate i-flex with its business worldwide. Hukku, however, declined to

comment on the open offer issue or timing.

Larry Ellison reminiscing on 30 years of Oracle: Oracle was founded by Bob Miner, Larry Ellison, and Ed Ontes as Software Development Labs in 1977

FSGBU Flexes Muscle



Today, Oracles FSGBU is present in 120 countries, including a large number

of developed markets. It boasts of marquee clients in first world markets like

Allied Irish Bank, Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank and UBS amongst others.

In North America too it is particularly strong with its Revelus product for

Risk and Compliance; four out of Top 10 banks including Wells Fargo and Wachovia

amongst others are its customers.

In line with Oracle president Charles Philips assertion earlier in the day

about the importance of the Application Integration Architecture, Hukku agreed

that FSGBUs prime mandate at present is to integrate the best-of-breed

solutions. While the Oracle Fusion Middleware would provide the horizontal

application stack, we are providing applications that incorporate the business

processes.

A Tale of Retail



Oracle Retail has come a long way with 1,900 customers, incorporating

merchandise and supply chain solutions from Retek; profit optimization solutions

from ProfitLogic; enterprise applications; middleware and database technologies

from Oracle; store solutions from 360Commerce; human capital management from

PeopleSoft; and transportation management and logistics from G-Log.

The continuing depreciation of the US dollar and rising oil prices could soon

hit the retail market, even though the impending festival season is almost there

starting from Thanksgiving.

The challenge for our solution would be to help retailers better manage

their businesses in such a scenario, especially to help them cut corners with

more efficient management of their supply chain and other business processes,

reminded Angove.

Telecom, Utilities Gain Ground



Bhaskar Gorti, senior VP and general manager, Oracles Communications GBU and
Quentin Grady, senior VP and general manager, Oracles Utilities GBU were also

present in the interaction.

While Gorti welcomed the boom in telecom sector worldwide contributing to the

business, he mapped the differing growth patterns in distinct geographies. In

developed markets like North America, where mobile penetration itself is much in

excess of 100%, Oracle applications help telcos and related communications

companies to manage the complexities created thereof.

While eight of the worlds top ten mobile operators run Oracle applications,

in India too 90% of telecom operators including the likes of Bharti are

partnering Oracle.

According to Grady, on the other hand, the biggest challenge for Oracle

applications in the utilities sector has been to successfully mitigate the

various challenges of different deregulations in the last few months. Oracles

pursuit for excellence in the utilities sector (here it lagged behind SAP)

started with the acquisition of SPL WorldGroup, known for its revenues and

operations management expertise in utilities and gained further thrust with the

acquisition of Lodestar earlier this year.

Rajneesh De



The author was hosted in San Francisco


rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in