OTN TechBlog

Larry Ellison's keynote yesterday offered a nice encapsulation of the conference themes across the week:

1. Oracle is embracing hardware virtualization and will attempt to provide a superior product in that area (Oracle VM)
2. Oracle Fusion Apps are imminent (first three releases in early 2008), and are defined by their service-oriented architecture/pre-packaged integration with legacy apps, embedded business intelligence, and ability to function in on-premise as well as SaaS modes
3. Social apps, such as social networking, will become features of enterprise applications (such as Fusion Apps).

The keynote included a nice demo of the Sales Prospector functionality that will be the centerpiece of Oracle Fusion SFA, one of the first three Fusion apps to be released. Oracle Fusion SFA features social networking functionality that allows salespeople to select and build presentation content based on shared experience (eg, a given preso may be highly rated by the community based on its effectiveness in a given scenario).

Interestingly, Oracle Database 11g was not even mentioned. I take this omission as a tacit implication of Oracle's success in the database marketplace.

I corralled Oracle Magazine editor-in-chief Tom Haunert at the conference late yesterday afternoon; he was in rare form:

Tom, where's your blog anyway?