OTN TechBlog

Many, many thanks to the Oracle Asia R&D Center Team that worked closely with us to get the blogs.oracle.com migration successfully completed. If you're wondering, BOC now runs on Six Apart's Movable Type Enterprise (v. 1.5) on top of Oracle Content DB. (Upgrade to MTE4 planned for the near future.)

You'll note that we also got a new aggregator out of the deal. This is great! (Oracle bloggers, start tagging your entries - based on the number of "identity"-related tags I see, it seems Nishant Kaushik is the only person doing any tagging!)

Stand by for blogs about Oracle's Fusion Middleware Strategy announcements later this morning; lots of interesting BEA-related news to come.

Update (July 2): Archived Webcast is now available from this page.

Oracle President Charles Phillips has just completed his introduction of the Webcast, characterizing the BEA deal as "not just another acquisition" and explaining the reasons why: including the facts that BEA was a leader and pioneer in the middleware area, because it offered a complementary product set/architecture, and because of its strength in key markets, especially China.

But here's the key take-away: All BEA products will continue to be supported under the same timelines previously published by BEA prior to its acquisition, and there will be no forced migration policy. (This approach is quite similar to the well-known Apps Unlimited one, which according to Charles has resulted in a 96% renewal rate for PSFT apps, e.g.).

Charles also said that Oracle will be taking a "pragmatic" approach to product integration - in other words, "best-of-breed" will be the watchword going forward, as usual.

Thomas Kurian is still in the process of deep-diving, which I cannot relay in its entirety. But here are the points that I personally find the most interesting:
- Some products are "Strategic" (immediate integration into Fusion MW stack), some are "Continue & Converge" (some redesign necessary with gradual integration into stack; support for at least 9 years), and some are in "Maintenance" mode (those same products identified as such by BEA pre-acquisition; support for at least 4 years)
- WebLogic Server is now Oracle's strategic JEE container and will be integrated into Fusion Middleware stack immediately; OC4J dev to continue though. TopLink/JPA, Coherence, SCA, and other key technologies will be areas of "convergence" with WLS.
- Technical direction is to continue to modularize the AS under the OSGi model.
- JRockit is "critical" JVM technology for Oracle going forward, but Fusion Middleware will continue to support other JVMs
- (Added July 2): Tooling: JDeveloper will remain Oracle's strategic IDE, but the Eclipse-based Workshop will continue to be available (and it's now free, just as JDeveloper is); eventually Workshop will become part of the Oracle Eclipse Pack offering
- SOA: all components will continue to be hot-pluggable; combined platform offers tools, middleware, governance, and packaged components
- SOA: Oracle ESB and AquaLogic ESB to be converged into the new Oracle Service Bus
- BPM: Oracle to combine system-, human-, doc-, decision-centric BPM into single runtime under combined BPEL/BPMN metadata model
- Portal: WebCenter Framework and WebCenter Suite continue their key roles, Ensemble and Pathways to provide lightweight REST-based portlet assembly in those offerings; continued development of WebLogic Portal and WebLogic AquaLogic UI (now called WebCenter UI) but eventual integration with WebCenter portfolio
- Systems management: Enterprise Management Packs to be extended to BEA products; BEA Guardian will be integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager
- SOA Governance: AquaLogic Enterprise Rep becomes Oracle's SOA governance repository; Oracle Service Registry will continue as the UDDI registry
- Support: No forced migrations; BEA products to be supported under pre-existing policies (before acquisition); existing Fusion Middleware support to be extended by 1 year

I will provide some interesting tidbits from Thomas' upcoming briefing with bloggers later this AM.

BTW: The first wave of BEA-related downloads and product info can now be found on OTN.

Update (11:51am) - I just want to add some choice quotes/points from Thomas during his call with bloggers:
- "BPM makes SOA declarative"; this is a big requirement from customers
- "When we don't have a product offering in a particular market, we try not to stretch the truth about that"/"We want to be clear about what we're solving, and what we're not solving" (in reference to question about SOA governance from Vance McCarthy)
- "Why do you need a single BPM runtime? Because every system process has human-oriented behavior, and every human process has system-oriented behavior"
- "Today, the notion of a grid that runs on someone else's server is called 'cloud computing' "
- "SOA and grid/cloud are very complementary"; it is much easier to deploy a stateless SOA (workload, services) onto a low-cost-hardware grid than otherwise
- Oracle is exploring the concept of a packaged product in the "SOA Grid" area, but that would be difficult

Here are some content assets that will surely make today's announcements more "real": There are several demos out there on OTN (with more to come) now, including:

- Connecting JDeveloper to WebLogic Server and Deploying ADF Applications
- WebLogic Server Application Redeployment
- Deploying AD4J Agent on WebLogic Server
- Enterprise 2.0 User Experience

(SOA-related demos to appear later this week).

That helps!

For you Canadians on holiday (or anyone else who may have missed it live), the Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategy Webcast of July 1 can now be accessed on demand from this page. There are a number of podcasts listed there as well, each of which maps to a specific product.

I must confess that I don't understand why these podcasts were published in the "OFM Radio" feed, which has a subscriber base that pales in comparison to that of the OTN TechCast show, but I suppose I can steal some of this content and syndicate it that way too.

This is something you'll want to know: Registration is now open for the Enterprise 2.0 Boot Camp on July 28 in Redwood Shores.

Most of you would agree, I'm sure, that the "soft" issues pertaining to deployment/use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies in the enterprise ("Enterprise 2.0" for short) - cultural change, privacy, best practices, internal collaboration - are top of mind right now. What company worth its salt has *not* considered, or begun to consider, the organizational impact of such deployments (exclusive of specific technology choices, which comparatively speaking are rather tactical in nature)?

We think these issues are really important, and we also think that the people affected by them are eager to share their concerns and experiences, as well as to hear those of others. Why do we think this? Because at Oracle we are going through this same process. For example:

- What are the privacy and HR implications of internal social networks?
- What are the "fiduciary" responsibilities of employees in the blogosphere?
- What is the business value of building "community"?

Notice that I have not mentioned technology here, because these questions are pertinent and important regardless of your platform/technology choices.

Perhaps most interesting - and also most risky - is the unconference format of this event. After a brief welcome, we will encourage attendees to form their own working groups/sessions and follow through accordingly. At the end of the day, we'll all rejoin for knowledge transfer, networking, and drinks. We don't expect every attendee to be familiar with this format, but we think it's important that the event itself align with the principles involved.

Enterprise 2.0 Boot Camp is free, and we'll get breakfast and lunch. Please do register, because we'd love to hear from you there.

Some supporting resources: Mix group, wiki

Can it be possible that Oracle OpenWorld is just 2 months away? Apparently so.

As is our custom, we have built out a preview page in the OTN portal that offers all kinds of useful info, such as the fact that beer will once again be available in the OTN Lounge in the afternoon (hey, so it really IS a "lounge"!).

You'll also find a rundown of the Oracle OpenWorld Unconference, the expected swag list for OTN Lounge visitors, etc.

Most important, there will be several "lounges" at OpenWorld this year. Don't be fooled by imitators! Oracle ACE Office Hours, daily iPod Touch raffles, free software & T-shirts, and special "Welcome Wagon" swag for BEA-ers can only be found at the OTN Lounge at Moscone West, Floor 3 (same spot as last year) and no place else.

Finally, the OTN Webpage I referenced here will transform at show time into a one-stop-aggregator for all online community activity, so you do want to bookmark this URL.

Just in time for the Enterprise 2.0 Boot Camp in a couple weeks, today WSJ Online subscribers will find a great Business Technology blog post entitled "Why Most Online Communities Fail".

The author, Ben Worthen, hits the nail squarely on its head:

Businesses launching online communities repeat a series of blunders. First, they have a tendency to get seduced by bells and whistles and blow their online-community budget on technology...(They should) spend resources identifying and reaching out to potential community members instead of investing in software that makes predictions, or even social-networking technology.

And this:

Businesses say that their primary objectives are generating word-of-mouth marketing and increasing customer loyalty. Yet the metric that businesses use most often to measure success is the number of visits to the site.

If you've seen me speak or present, you'll remember that one of my favorite statements is "I don't care about page views", which often elicits gasps from the audience.

Community is about community and community leaders, folks (eg Oracle ACEs); don't be seduced by eye candy!

One of the great benefits of the Oracle-BEA integration has been a tremendous influx of new blogging (and Twittering) talent. (This process has only just begun in fact.) Here are just a few of the new stars in the Blogs.Oracle.com firmament (there are others on the way), most I would think formerly of Dev2Dev:

Aseem Bajaj (WebLogic Server)
Sean Boiling (Middleware)
Bob Rhubart (Architecture)
Michael Stamback (SOA Governance)
Chris Tomkins (Service Bus)

I also want to welcome some other new blogs and bloggers, not specifically BEA-related:

Social CRM Blog
Oracle Developer Tools Blog
Oracle Certification Blog
Oracle OpenWorld Blog
Visualize This (Enterprise Visualization Blog)
Pervasive Computing Blog

May I remind any new bloggers reading this post, BTW, that we need your name here (and here for Tweeters). This is a wiki-based self-service process now, so get to it.

Signing off for now and for the following week, as I intend to be drinking Tecates on the beach, with no digital connections whatsoever.

The very first Enterprise 2.0 Boot Camp, which set up shop yesterday at Oracle HQ, is now history. Although the "recruit" attendance was not what we expected - there were a lot of no-shows, perhaps to be expected on a Monday - the feedback was excellent.

Ajay Gandhi, previously from BEA and now a senior member of Oracle's Enterprise 2.0 team, provided a nice, balanced introduction. We had two very good overviews of corporate blogging, an introduction to social media strategy from our own Marius Ciortea, a wiki primer from Stewart Mader (formerly of Atlassian), and perhaps best of all, a deadpan delivery of "Enterprise 2.0: How You Will Fail" from the illustrious Bex Huff (an Oracle ACE Director). The latter was a source for some particularly good quotes, such as my favorite: "Where there is lack of shared purpose, information sharing leads to chaos." Amen, my friend.

More color is available at the Boot Camp wiki; we expect all presos to be available there shortly.

There were some surprises. First of all, despite the fact that we explicitly targeted LOBs as recruitment targets, most of the people who showed up were in IT. I was also surprised to see virtually all of Oracle's global advertising team there - I'm not sure why exactly, but kudos to them for playing.

The working group was small, but it was active, with plenty of questions pertaining to privacy/security (one recruit from a bank was particularly discouraged by these challenges) and metrics/measurement. We're all in the same boat, folks.

All in all, a good time was had by all. Will we do more? Yeah, I think we will.

On midnight (or thereabouts) on July 31, the Dev2Dev and Arch2Arch portal URLs will redirect to OTN.

This is a bittersweet event; on one hand, a familiar experience for a whole lot of developers will no longer be available. But on the other hand, the content and services they have come to expect from those portals will live on under the OTN umbrella.

You can find the text of the migration notice that was email to the Dev2Dev/Arch2Arch lists last week here. It's a nicely packaged set of links to all the URLs BEA-ers will need to know and contains information about the Edocs, forums.bea.com, and commerce.bea.com sites as well. You may also want to reach Bob Rhubart's post on the same.

I'm happy to address any questions or concerns in comments, or, you can jump into Oracle Mix for that purpose.

Just a quick "congrats" to the top 25 user-validated presenters who will be joining the Oracle OpenWorld agenda. Eight of them happen to be Oracle ACEs or ACE Directors, natch. The Oracle OpenWorld Blog has the full list.

Someday, someone in the community management best practices area will do a case study about this, do mark my words.