I am so ready for Oracle Open World - are you?
My demos are done; my collateral is all shiny and virtualized; all the sessions are looking superb; I've got twitter hooked up to my facebook which is linked-in to my plaxo, I've got an extra battery for my blackberry so I can blog-note (blog during the keynotes). I've got all my Oracle-wear cheerfully ironed.
I feel like the moment right before finals week combined with going to Disneyland for the first time. I can't help but to feel a bit reminiscent and write a blogtharsis. How did I get here? Why am I waving the Oracle flag proudly as I do laps around the Redwood city lagoon? Ok that part is a hyperbole, probably the security would stop me for that one.
Almost 5 years ago before at Oracle I was just starting my first day at BEA, trying to figure how to spell ESB, SOA and BPM. Before that I was part of an acquisition by BEA at another startup where we prided ourselves on seeing how many EbXML, Rosettanet, EDI 850 purchase order transactions we could send before you could say the words "dot.com bubble". And before that, I was working with smart-cards and biometric minutiae on something that looked like the set for CSI minus the dead bodies.
So how did I end up on data-side? It is the last place I thought I would be actually. But data is at the roots of proceses, at the heart of SOA, it's the content of an ESB flow, it's deeply linked in EDI transactions, arguably one of the most ironic triggers for building service oriented architecture - a subject for another blog on another day.
I am happy I am here. There's a lot of interesting work going on where data integration and data management has a key foundational role. And it isn't just foundation for SOA - although that is something I can talk for hours on.... but there's also business intelligence (BI), master data management (MDM), and data governance...and it will only grow because frankly ... data is everyhwere, hence the name of this blog.
So this is why I am super jazzed for Oracle Open World, I am eager to see my friends from BEA, my new friends at Oracle, and welcome our customers and partners. I've got my Oracle towel ready... maybe I can have Phelps sign it for me!
