It’s not even 7am here in San Francisco but I’m wide awake and raring to go on day four of Oracle Open World – a conference that has kept me extremely busy.
Day two at OOW13 seemed to have a focus on Big Data, with one Oracle exec coming out with the revelation that "Big Data will be big!"
Day three included keynote speeches from EMC’s CEO, Joe Tucci, and EMC’s EVP of product operations, solutions and marketing, Jeremy Burton.
Data reared its head again, and the cloud was another topic up for discussion. Tucci commented: "Database admins need to spend more time in the front office with the business, rather than in the back office."
EMC hopes that its ViPR solution will help that to happen. Put simply, it’s software-defined storage and storage virtualisation. Burton explained that it will simplify storage and he expects it to empower database administrators.
We knew on day four that we would definitely hear much more about cloud computing and, sure enough, we did as Oracle announced its Database as a Service, Java as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service.
But it wasn’t what was announced that generated the most chatter – it was who announced it.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison was due to make the announcements in a keynote speech. Right up until the very last second, bewildered organisers at the event were still preparing the crowd for his imminent arrival. Only at the very last second did they, and the audience, realise what had happened.
He had blown off the speech in favour of joining Team Oracle USA on their yacht after they won two races to tie the Americas Cup 8-8 in the first-to-nine competition.
The very knowledgeable Thomas Kurian, executive VP of product development at Oracle, took to the stage to fill in but many of the thousands of customers in attendance were not happy, leaving the Moscone Conference Center in their droves when they realised Larry was a no-show.
But one exhibitor, who asked to remain anonymous, was quick to sing the CEO’s praises. He said: "What Larry does is he helps companies to make a sh#t load of money. Say what you like about him, but he’s a smart motherf%*&er."
