sboiling

First post on the new home of Oracle blogs and boy, a lot has been happening in the last couple of weeks.

Oracle Australia/New Zealand Sales Kick-Off - a look back over the last 12 months and a look ahead to the next 12 months across the three lines of business; Database, Fusion Middleware and Applications.

A few days of planning what Fusion Middleware Sales Consulting should look like in Australia and New Zealand. Who makes up the leadership group, how we mix the skills and abilities of this new merged team.

We publicly launched the Fusion Middleware Roadmap. It was a 2am gig for an Australian audience, so we' made sure it was recorded. You can find the replay here.

I attended the Politics and Technology Forum in Canberra, hosted by Microsoft and featuring some leading lights in those two fields in a couple of panel discussions - Matt Bai columnist and "non-blogger" (his words) from the New York Times, Mark Textor from Crosby Textor, Annabel Crabb of The Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Black from QUT (get that blog going again Peter). Sitting members Joe Hockey, Kate Lundy and Andrew Bartlett who to his enormous credit joined us on his last day as a Senator - and has a proper blog, not just a member for so-and-so website for press releases. This group was topped with everyone's favourite election analyst, Anthony Green from the ABC.

The event was recorded - well, live streamed actually - by Nick Hodge and twittered live byStilgherrian - you can find the tweet stream here powered by the quite wonderful summize.com.

I gave two presentations on Next Generation Grid Enabled SOA at the Gartner Application Development Integration and Web Services (ADIWS) conference in Sydney - taking some of Dave Chappell's excellent work and spinning it for an Australian audience. Slides are available here on slideshare, and I'll be posting more of my presentation work on slideshare over the next few weeks and months.

And I migrated by blog to here. So, forward motion is everything. As Walt said, "keep moving forward". Check back soon for an update or take a moment to grab my rss feed and plug it in to your aggregator of choice.

-sean

Apple iPhone 3G.

Yes it looks great.

Yes it's a dream to use.

Yes I would like one.

Yes it has first mover advantage and a host of apps available from the AppStore for it. From the sublime "the most amazing application I have ever seen", to the ridiculous "The Most Unproductive 'Productivity' iPhone App". From the fun "...Super Monkey Ball rolls with the accelerometer." to the serious "Oracle Business Applications for iPhone Available on Apple App Store".

But... an antidote is coming soon. What's that noise you can hear in the background? It's the BlackBerry Thunder - screenshots here, with different on-screen keyboards depending on if you're holding the phone in portrait or landscape mode. Noice eh?.

-sean

A new front has opened up in the battle of using IT for business competitiveness. The battle that has since Nicholas Carr, wrote "Does IT Matter?" in 2004.

Read this article to see where the battle lines are drawn today.

I'm a big fan of the work of Andrew McAfee, and hugely enjoyed his talk at one of the last BEA conferences held before the Oracle acquisition.

I'm of the view that IT does matter, but not in and of itself. IT only matters in how it is used. It matters in how it can provide, support and maintain competitive advantage. It's just one tool that a business can use to improve, but the change in pace of technology and the speed of adoption of today's latest advances mark it out as an important one.

In Andrews words, "Are the players of the game of business interested in finding out how the rules theya??re accustomed to have changed, and how to put themselves on the high side of the large spread thata??s resulted?"

-sean

As much as I try and stop myself I just can't help thinking about the iPhone 3G. I will try some sort of twelve step program from today to cure me of my addiction. I don't even have one of the blasted things yet - I'm waiting for the 32Gb version by the way, with video.

Who buys a version one product anyway? Oh what's that you say? One million people in the first weekend it was on sale. Ah, I see.

Anyway, here are some further thoughts on Mark Pesce's view of radio as the killer application for 3G. These thoughts are courtesy of Neil Shoebridge and the July 14 edition of the Australian Financial Review - the full article is available here for subscribers only. I've quoted the best bits below;

"Glenn Wheatley is back in business, bankrolled by an eclectic collection of investors including former Allco Finance Group chairman David Coe, Sydney radio announcer Alan Jones, fashion designer Collette Dinnigan and eBay Australia vice-president Simon Smith.

The investors have sunk $4 million intoa?| Stripe which will launch 25 radio stations on the Optus 3G network on July 29. The company is also in talks with Telstra about carrying its stations.

Stripe is a subscription based service with stations devoted to music genres such as heavy metal, hip hop, country and classic rock. Some of the stations use content licensed from the ABC, the BBC and British radio company Kerrang!

Optus will charge $8 a month for subscriptions to the service, splitting the revenue with Stripea?| which is run by Iain Bartram, a former Chief financial Officer of listed technology company ConnXion. Stripea??s directors include investment bankers, Gary Jones and Nicholas Goh, both of whom have worked with Mr. Coe.

Mr Bartram predicted stripe would turn over about $4 million in its first year. He said it would break even if about 1 per cent of Australians, or 210,000 people, subscribed and was aiming to sign about 1 million subscribers within five years.

Mr Coe and Mr Jones own 65% of Stripe which employs 20 people. Mr Goh and Mr Bartram own 8 per cent and 4 per cent respectively, while TalentWorks a?? the management company owned by Wheatley and his wife Gaynor a?? owns 12 per cent.

Richard East, the Australian theatre producer who owns part of the musical a??Mamma Miaa?? owns 2 per cent. Other shareholders include veteran radio industry executive Brad March, Nine Network presenter Richard Wilkins, comedian Billy Birmingham and singer Glenn Shorrock.

The list of shareholders also includes brothers Andrew and Colin Cookes who once owned the retailer Venture Stores, David Whittle from ad agency M&C Saatchia??s Mark digital marketing division (Mark devised the Stripe name and logo), investment banker Phillippe Sung and telecommunications industry executive Christopher Eyles.

Over the past year a?| Stripe has signed licensing deals with music companies Sony BMG, Warner Music, EMI, Universal and Shock Records, plus smaller specialist firms such as Ministry of Sound and Central Station.

The 25 Stripe stationsa?| have been put together by the companya??s program director Jarrod Graetz, and Pollack Media, a Los Angeles-based radio consulting firm Wheatley worked with in the 1970s when he was one of the people who launched Australiaa??s first FM radio station a?? EON a?? in Melbourne (EON later became Triple M).

Wheatley said Stripe would be producing 40 stations by the end of 2008 and about 100 by late 2009. a??The key to Stripes success or failure is the quality of the contenta?? he said.

Stripe is negotiating deals to include sport and news content in its stations. None of its stations will carry advertising. a??At some point we might include some ads, but only if they are directly related to the content of the station,a?? Mr Bartram said. a??Commercial radio listeners complain about the ads all the time. The Stripe stations will never have huge blocks of ads.a??

I think they may have a point.

-sean

What does this blog have in common with wildebeest?

It's the migration.

The migration of blog posts in the BEA/Oracle blogosphere is one of the world's most spectacular digital events. The entire herd of blog posts need to cross the vast digital plain between BEA and Oracle. Thousands of individual blog posts from mature adult posts that could be as much as three or four years old to the younger juvenile posts that are just a couple of months old are making their way to the richer pastures of Oracle.

The once fertile blog pastures of BEA and now barren and inhospitable. The new blog lands of Oracle are vibrant and healthy. New blog life flourishes here with new blog posts and bloggers springing up on a daily basis.

My long and arduous process of migration completed today with each and every precious blog post making it safely to the new lands.

-sean