Kevin O’Brien Blog

Register for the live launch of OPN Specialized:

Join us for a one-hour virtual event as Judson Althoff, Penny Philpot and Nick Kritikos discuss the OPN Specialized program, its benefits and how you can specialize. In addition, you will hear from regional OPN leaders on the impact OPN Specialized will have on you.

Partners or anyone else looking to hear Oracle's official thoughts on cloud computing should read this recent interview with Richard Sarwal, SVP Product Development for Oracle Enterprise Manager. It is a quick and insightful read.

For those looking to go into more depth on the private clouds - take a look at the whitepaper: Platform-as-a-Service Private Cloud with Oracle Fusion Middleware.

3 recent SOA topics for partners to take a look at.

1) Check out the recently published SOA Manifesto. David Chappell, vice president and chief technologist for SOA at Oracle, has great coverage on his blog.

2) SOA Suite recently became available on Amazon EC2. For more info, take a look at the SOA Suite Team Blog.

3) Watch Oracle SOA ACE Mark Simpson with UK partner Griffiths Waite talk about the benefits of the new OPN Specialized program while at OpenWorld.

Matt Chivers caught up with Bret Piatt from Rackspace at OpenWorld. Brett provides his perspective on utility computing. And likens corporate datacenter build outs to building your own power plant rather buying off the utility's grid. He also speaks to the opportunity for SaaS ISVs running Oracle Platform for SaaS within Rackspace's managed hosting or cloud environments.

Rackspace had a busy week at OpenWorld including: a demo of Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic running on a Rackspace Cloud Server™ during the keynote of Hasan Rizvi, SVP of Oracle Fusion Middleware, exibiting in the SaaS and Cloud pavilion, and Lew Moorman's participation in a cloud panel at the Oracle Leader's Circle.

Lydia Smyers had a chance at Oracle OpenWorld to connect with Jesse Gunder, VP Sales & Marketing at Kaba Workforce Solutions. Check out their conversation from the OOW exhibit hall floor. Jesse talks about Kaba's Validated Integration to E-Business Suite 12, PeopleSoft Enterprise HCM 9.0, and PeopleSoft Enterprise Time and Labor 8.9.

Jesse also gives a quick demo of how an employee would use their ID to "punch the timeclock" with a B-COMM terminal. And of course in the background that data flows through the Validated Integration to PeopleSoft Time and Labor.

So we're 2 days into Oracle OpenWorld and it has been a great event so far.

Sunday morning we held a SaaS & Cloud Special Interest Group meeting for Partners. We had over 150 attendees and a lively Q&A session. Partners were interested to hear about the momentum of the SaaS for ISVs program. SaaS for ISVs has been launched worldwide and seen tremendous early adoption by ISVs building on the Oracle Platform for SaaS.

The afternoon Oracle PartnerNetwork Forum event had a larger crowd than last year with 2000+ in Moscone South. The exciting news for the day was the launch of the OPN Specialized program by Judson Althoff, SVP of Worldwide Alliances & Channels. We also heard Oracle President's Safra Catz and Charles Phillips speak about the importance of Specialized Partners to Oracle and our mutual customers.

The VAR Guy was in attendance at the SaaS and Cloud SIG and blogged about the session. He also caught up with Judson Althoff to discuss the newly launched OPN Specialized program as well as SaaS opportunities for Oracle partners - video below.

Oracle OpenWorld is right around the corner. We have arranged a great set of SaaS and Cloud activities for the week. I'll summarize them below... in priority order of course

1) Register for the Oracle PartnerNetwork Forum and attend the SaaS & Cloud Partner Meeting (Sunday, October 11th from 10:00 to 11:30am PST). At the Forum event you'll have the opportunity to hear from Oracle executives Charles Phillips, Safra Catz, and Judson Althoff.

2) Come see the SaaS & Cloud Partner Pavilion (Monday, October 12 - Wednesday, October 14, Moscone South, Booth 221). The Pavilion features partners including Wipro, Amazon, OpSource, and Enteros.

3) Attend OpenWorld sessions specifically for partners, including my session - ID S311783: Learn How to Partner with Oracle in Your Transition to SaaS (Wednesday, October 14 from 1:00 to 1:30 pm PST).

4) Attend Partner Sessions:
• Callidus: S307767 Deploying a SaaS Application on the Oracle Platform
• OpSource: S308509 - Get Ready to Sell: 2010 Is the Year of Enterprise SaaS
• CSC: S309755 Software-as-a-Service Transformation Demystified and Accelerated
• Accenture: S310396 Oracle and Accenture Point of View on Using Oracle Applications and the Amazon Cloud - Accenture will share their experience in deploying Oracle Apps in the Cloud
• NetApp: S312566 Clear Up the Cloud: Key Infrastructure Requirements and Real-World Implementations

5) Attend General Sessions:
• S308942 Develop Software-as-a-Service Applications on the Oracle SaaS Platform - For all developers & architects building new SaaS Apps or converting existing apps to multi-tenancy
• S311937 Cloud/SaaS/On Demand: Delivering Software the Way Customers Want to Consume It - Oracle On Demand Presentation on SaaS & Cloud offerings & vision.
• S309525 Identity Management and the Cloud: Stormy Days Ahead?
• S311356 Oracle Database in the Cloud
• S308721 Cloudy Days for Service-Oriented Architecture?
• S309451 Building a Distributed Computing Infrastructure, Using Oracle Coherence
• S308592 Software Assemblies in Oracle Fusion Middleware for the Virtualized World
• S312109 Provisioning Oracle RAC in a Virtualized Environment, Using Oracle Enterprise Manager
• S308460 Enterprise Data Services in the Cloud with Oracle Fusion Middleware
• S307483 Castle in the Clouds: SaaS-Enabling Oracle ADF Faces Applications
• S310084 Databases in the Cloud: Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database on Amazon Web Services

Well if you have 10 minutes burning a hole in your pocket then sit tight and get an overview of what we're doing with SaaS for ISVs. Matt Chivers was kind enough to interview me in a video podcast format.

Listen to what Judson has to say about Application Integration Architecture for Partners (AIAP) and Oracle Validated Integration.

Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels, talks about the partner opportunity with Application Integration Architecture.

Great video with Steve Datnow from HumanConcepts talking about the value his company gets by partnering with Oracle and validating their integration to Oracle applications.

Steve Datnow, CTO at HumanConcepts, shares how integration validation has helped reduce development costs, improve customer confidence, and maximize their market visibility.