sboiling

Oracle employee Day Two.

Things are starting to happen. We had a bunch of folks from both sides have a sit down in Redwood Shores last week to really start to figure out product strategy and product roadmap for the future. Where and how does the acquired BEA technology fit with the Oracle technology? All of a sudden we have two application servers and two service buses and two (or maybe more) portals. What are we going to do with all these tools and what is our toolbox going to look like?

Well, we're working that out some more internally and have some 100 day deadlines that we're aiming for. Externally, save this date, July 1, for more information. Charles Phillips and Thomas Kurian will host an, "informative briefing that will explore how the addition of BEA products to Oracle Fusion Middleware creates a best-in-class combination, advances a common vision, and reinforces Oracle's middleware strategy." Register here

There were no more jelly beans today, but we did have the special gift of an Asia Pacific wide conference call to introduce BEA to Oracle ;-)

-Sean

Oracle employee Day three

I knew that I had to do this at some point and I had been putting it off all week. So I did it today. It was wet. I had time put aside. A few of my colleagues had also got theirs done my now so I knew there would be people around for help if I got stuck.

What am I talking about? Getting myself on the Oracle network. Yay!

It was one of those classic IT installs. You know those times when you need to do step 1, but before you start step 1 you have to do a, b and c. And you can't do c until you have the password from step 2, but you can't do step 2 until you've completed step 1. Arrgghhh.

Or as a colleague of mine said it's like the old joke about the bomb disposal manual over two pages, "First cut the blue wire", turn the page, "before cutting the blue wire you should ensure...".

It was painful. Slow. Draining. Mind-numbing. But necessary right? And don't get me wrong, good on our IT folk for having a terrific set of step-by-step instructions for us to follow, I just wish there weren't so many steps and so many ID's and so many installs.

I'm off to Melbourne tomorrow to meet some more Oracle folk and to talk about product roadmaps. I'll post more info here as soon as I can.

-Sean

Oracle employee Day Four.

OK, so it wasn't May 10, but the Phoney War ended today. There were no invasions. No new governments formed. But the next phase in this great plan started. I met some Oracle people.

They walked on two legs, ate normal food (not live rodents), and didn't seem to have that horrible scaly skin and two heads that I had been warned to expect (or if they did the second head was well hidden).

It was great for me to finally meet some Oracle folk. We were able to talk about respective teams and their skills, the likely product mix and product roadmap for the future... and we finished the day with a beer or two. Which was nice.

-Sean

Oracle employee Day Five.

My first week as an Oracle employee draws to a close with more exposure to Oracle people as we plan a product roadmap session for the Sales Managers and Sales Consultants. We got some Product Management people in, along with a couple of us from the Sales Consulting side of things and have planned a full day of product roadmap training next week before going straight into the full Oracle Sales Kick-Off for Australia/New Zealand.

It is a positive, high-energy, full of momentum time for us here at the moment. I'm really looking forward to the next few months as we get our teams integrated and start to work around a consistent, coherent, class-leading set of products.

I can't wait.

-Sean