IOUG blogs

This time of year is always a special one in my world. It is the time when I am getting ready to attend COLLABORATE 10 in Las Vegas. This is the conference for Oracle users by Oracle users. It is also the time when I am wrapping up my hockey season and starting golf. And finally it seems to be a time when a lot of your work comes together and you begin to see the potential benefits of the work you’ve done over the winter.

First is the greatest conference to attend if you use any part of the Oracle technology stack. This is the first time we will get together to ask Oracle where are we and where are we going? What does the Sun acquisition mean and how should I prepare. I really encourage people of take part in person but if not then attend online via the best value access to the priceless information. Take a look at the IOUG’s Plugged-In to Vegas. You can sign up and “attend” over 40 hours of live sessions and be part of the event by posing your own questions in the room via your Plugged-In login. Take a look, I know I will be there and look forward to seeing everyone at this one-of-a-kind event.

My hockey season is finally coming to a close and it turned out to be a great overall success. My Monday night team played a solid and emotional season, where one of our friends Kevin battled back to play after being diagnosed with Cancer less than a year earlier. You next met a greater bunch of guys. On Thursdays we are still in the playoffs and looking like we might have a chance. Too early to make the call, but will keep you updated. And on Friday game ended in a dramatic final game, where I made the stops I had to but the team dominated to take us to a big win and the Rusty Nail Cup.

And of course Spring brings out the golfer in me. I played my first round on the weekend, April 3rd to be exact. I know I can attribute it to Global Warming, but I have to admit I really had a great time being back out on the course. Shot a 93, which included my first birdie, 3 pars and too many double bogies. And to my amazement the course (not my course) was in great shape. Its funny but April 3rd, 2010 may have been a better day in Toronto than any day last summer.

Looking forward to the next few weeks.

With COLLABORATE10, the Oracle User Group conference starting April 18th in Las Vegas it started me thinking how do people learn? Or should I say what is the best way to learn a new skill or improve an existing skill.

There is classroom, online, book and other methods. So what is the most effect form to learn this new capability? Well there are many studies out there that state that you will remember lessons better if you are able to apply the skill right away and that you can continue to develop it as you work on this as well. In the classroom or virtual classroom you have the opportunity to do this and ask the trainer for advice and methods. It also makes us think about visual learners versus audio learners. The best way is really only the best for each individual.

I look at COLLABORATE10 and look as the total package of learning and this is why I feel that conferences can have unparalleled learning options. Consider you can spend a full day in an in-depth session learning from a world renowned expert or listen to topics during shorter more concentrated sessions. The real value comes from the teacher of these sessions that can bring you the value. By adding this person to your network and building a relationship with these experts can be the way that you can take these learnings to the next level.

So for me it is about getting involved in my learning and taking it in actively. Learning the subject, but also learning who the experts are so that we can really absorb all of it and understand how best to apply it. Learning is about you, so maybe there is no one answer, but I can tell you that by getting involved by asking the questions will get you closer to your goal.

Today I am at Oracle HQ in Redwood Shores in California. This is ground-zero for the latest on what is the next evolution of the acquisition of Sun by Oracle.

Today is a big day in San Francisco; Steve Jobs from Apple will be showing off their new palette computer. So how will Oracle counter this news? This is what we are here in California find out. The announcement of a final Sun/Oracle deal looks to be on the horizon.

The new theme for Oracle with the completed deal is now: Software, Hardware; Complete. I like this new message and in its simplicity it truly shows want to expect. They will be providing complete, engineered and integrated systems. The focus will be on open standards, which is no surprise and to improve customer service.

More updates coming as the day progresses.

The story of the day has to be the information that the Oracle Sun deal may finally be coming to a close.

So what are the sign? The first was this morning when ComputerWorld that the European Union has cleared the deal that will allow Oracle and Sun to complete the deal and get on with business. The other was an invitation to be at Oracle HQ in Redwood Shores next week when we will get an update on the “progress” of the deal.

I feel that I have a vested interest in this deal finally being completed as it was envisioned as I had the great privilege to speak on the Oracle user’s behalf at the EU Competition Commission as part of the Oracle team. Being in the room on that day, I had been convinced that this was right decision and that the vision was nearly unanimous that this a good deal to go ahead with. It is an industry that loves to go their own way and competition will continue and open source will continue to be open.

I am so happy for Safra Catz who lead the Oracle team through this journey. I have the chance to see her leadership and now have a better appreciation for the tough job she has and how successfully she does it. I have to thank Oracle for allowing me to strike off one more thing on my list of “1000 Things To Do Before You Die”. I still have some Belgium Chocolate left….maybe I should bring it next week. Might be good for the celebration.

So it looks like everything is finally a go. You should expect to see more about it next week as I will be blogging from Oracle HQ. As well COLLABORATE 10 will have sessions on MySQL. It’s a good time to be part of the Oracle community.

I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year. 2010 is one that arrives with much anticipation and with hope that we will recover from the tough year that was. The coming year is one that we can expect to build on much of the work we did last year, but start to more fully leverage technology to help us achieve our goals. So what are the themes for 2010? Let’s take a look:

The first theme will be the more effective use of resources. In the past few years we have experienced downsizing and staff freezes, but somehow our workloads increased. This year we will look to ways to improve and optimize productivity. I expect that we will see a higher degree of automation in the area of data management. System and data administrators will need to better leverage the manageability components of their software. I expect to see more people move to proactive monitoring and use the capabilities that are provided in a Web 2.0 world. Now we are not looking for issues, we are preparing to avoid them.

Next, I expect a greater use of off-the-shelf solutions that will allow business to perform 95% of the tasks needed. I expect that the time of large customized solutions is limited. As you may see from Oracle’s Fusion direction we see that software solutions will provide significant process support and will require few customizations. The affect on the business intelligence world is one where most of the “standard” reporting that is needed will be provided and tightly linked to your applications and that the only customizations will be extending these capabilities to provide competitive advantage and reduce complexity and maintenance.  The age of custom applications is nearing a close.

The final theme for me today is one that is more a wish. I hope that 2010 will be the year where that Art of Networking is embraced. The new decade will be one where social networking will continue to evolve. I expect we will see greater use for personal and professional reasons of Facebook and LinkedIn. I am still not convinced that Tweets are the wave of the future, but it has been a game-changer. I am just not convinced that most things that are said in 140 characters is useful or important. Sometimes it seems like too much chatter. So my hope is that 2010 will be the year when Gen Y decides that in-person networking is like no other and of course the best place to see it and understand this is by attending COLLABORATE 10 in Las Vegas.

The year has just begun, but few have started with such great promise and need for change.

Today is the day that I have had little time to really mentally prepare for as my trip to the European Commission. I still find it amazing that I have this opportunity to speak as part of the government process to complete this multi-billion dollar deal. Somehow I am now in the middle of it and today is the day that I finally fly to Brussels.

The entire trip to Brussels is a first for me, I have been many places and seen many great things. I find that breathing in a great city from its architecture so important when I go to places with great history and Brussels seems to have held onto its ancient roots. As for my presentation. Another first, I have spoken in front of many audiences in my day but for most of those talks it has generally alright to open with a joke. I expect that after the team gets through reviewing my content they may decide to pull the joke and go with the more serious stuff.

I am actually very exciting to present some preliminary information about the types of databases that people are running. The IOUG along with Unisphere Research we have been conducting a survey on virtualization and we have some results already that are interesting. Turns out that of the people who took the survey close to 90% run Oracle as their enterprise database and of that almost 90% of those companies also run MS SQL Server and then 44% use MySQL. The results are interesting and deeper than this but some of it will form the basis of some of are existing arguments. I together with Ronin Miles, the Chairman of the UKOUG, will present the position of the user communities and it all begins in just a couple of days.

On the lighter side I was thinking about some of the great adventures and places that I have been part of my life already. And in no particular order:

1. Discovering Israel (wow….that’s history)
2. Exploring Rome
3. Living in London for 6 months
4. Exploring the ruins of Pompeii
5. St Petersburg
6. Dubrovnik, Croatia
7. Attending the 1976 Olympic in Montreal
8. Meeting Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
9. Being at the 1994 NY Rangers Game 7 win in the conference finals
10. Nos Expos (enough said)
11. Attending 3 Stanley Cup parades
12. Being there as my home province of Quebec was considering separation; I heard one of the greatest speeches in Quebec history as Rene Levesque called on Quebecers to rally after the loss for the separatists
13. Seeing the kids grow up….that’s the greatest adventure
14. And now on to: Speaking at the EC

I am sure there are many others……it’s amazing to look back and see where we have been and how much we have already done. Of course there is still so much to go.

Friday and another day closer to me going to Brussels to speak at the EU. In a way it seems a little surreal at this point in time.I continue to work on my presentation to get ready for next week and still have to do my day job to do and boy are things getting busy these days at Thoughtcorp as we build momentum in the Enterprise Data Group during this time of a BI explosion. Always good to be busy.

My logistics are done and I am looking forward to seeing Brussels if only for a short time. I’ve been to Belgium before. I plan to see what I can in the evenings, this is a country with long history and we are going to be in the core of Brussels close to the old city. There are a number of UN Heritage Sites in the city which I look forward to seeing during the holiday period. I always loved the way London comes alive during the holidays. I seem to always time my European trips during the Fall and Winter, not sure how it works out, but one day. A few years back I had the chance to attend the UKOUG conference in Birmingham and if I am not mistaken it rained 8 out 9 days. A perfect week in the UK in December, so hopefully it will be better next week in Brussels.

One thing that has been interesting to see the reaction of people when you let them know that you are going away next week. This must be important as I have to miss hockey next week and I don’t like to miss hockey. Being the goalie you need to be there. So I told the team last night, and this is a team where I am on the older side of the Bell curve and most of the guys are in their 20’s. When I tell the story of how I was going to speak at the EU, the reactions ranged from disbelief to amazement. I play hockey with these guys but they don’t really understand what I do in my job let alone the IOUG. I am still trying to figure out how I am going to be part of this process but one thing is that I am going to soak up the experience.

Right now my wife is planning her days while I will be sequestered at the EU. Belgium and Brussels of course is known for its chocolate. I think she plans a tour and tasting of each in the city. And Belgium has a connection to Canada via the poem that in Canada symbolizes the sacrifice of our soldiers have made for us and I can remember hearing it every Remembrance Day growing up. We even have a part of the poem on our $5 bill. Finally they tell me that I need to eat waffles, French fries and beer……so I look forward to a fun gastronomic experience.

So the wheels are in motion and the experience of a lifetime is getting closer. At least I have two hockey games between now and when I leave to keep my mind clear. The weekend pack and plan before I know it I will be looking in the souvenir shops looking to add to my travel snow globe collection.

As the President of the IOUG, I am about to embark on an experience which I would never have imagined would have been on my path in life. Next week I will be going to the European Union’s Competition Committee to present the position of the IOUG on the pending acquisition of Sun by Oracle. As you may have already read previously in my blog; the IOUG’s leadership is of the opinion that the purchase will not affect competition in the database market. We feel that the technology community are innovators and they will respond to the needs and desires of the marketplace.

So I have been asked by Oracle, on behalf of the IOUG, to go to Brussels and be a part of their presentation to the EU. This has all evolved very quickly. I have to thank everyone at my company, Thoughtcorp, for their support during a hectic time. To me it illustrates the leadership that companies like ours can show in today’s diverse technology landscape.

So believe it or not I am flying to Brussels (Home of the EU) next Tuesday (arriving Wednesday morning) and then on to lunch and meetings…..wonder if they will be serving waffles?

This entire process is one that illustrates to me how you need to be prepared for anything when you make a statement. You need to be confident in yourself and the great team around you to make such a curveball into one of the great experiences of ones life. My segment before the commission will be around 15 minutes and basically present the position the IOUG published in our recent press release. I have to thank the Board and staff at the IOUG who all took part in building our position on the subject. I am ready to tell the EU why the IOUG made the statement that we did and why we support the deal, sometimes you need to stand up for what you feel is right and this is about as big a political stage they could find.

So here I go; I get to be part of something that for me may be a once in a lifetime experience. I am excited and anxious about how it will all come together, but I am confident in my knowledge and abilities to represent the IOUG community in a responsible manner. After all this is done, it would be nice to say that the Oracle database user community stood up and made a stand and helped to influence the direction of tomorrow’s technology landscape.

I look forward to sharing as much of my experience with you as I can; as Ian’s Excellent Adventure begins.

The past few days have been an exciting and interesting series of events. Recently the European Competition issued objections to the purchase of Sun by Oracle. Remember that this deal has already been approved by the US Competition Commission. So what’s the hold-up?

It appears that the EU feels that Oracle acquiring Sun will limit competition in the database marketplace. On the surface this seems like an valid observation based on market share alone. Consider that Oracle is the #1 database in enterprise environments and that MySQL is leading in smaller database environments. So that means that Oracle will be the #1 database vendor. Does it limit competition when you dominate the marketplace? Does it stop companies like IBM, Microsoft and others to develop and innovate in their own product stacks. The IOUG Board discussed our response and it was a consensus opinion that the acquisition of Sun and MySQL will not limit competition. Considering that we are the user group who focuses solely on Oracle database and middleware technology that we were well suited to respond in a meaningful way.

We feel that the delay is causing even more damage by adding a level of uncertainty to the company’s future and will impact profits and dollars. Considering that Oracle has purchased other databases in the past illustrates how well Oracle continues to support and innovate in these various DBs. Oracle purchased RDB years ago, and more recently TimesTen, Berkeley DB and Essbase, and each have been supported and extended. Oracle purchases products that help them in being leaders in both proprietary databases as well as open ones.

For me this is really a question about innovation and not competition. As we often say…”If you build a better mousetrap…”, and it is not different in this case. MySQL was created as an inexpensive alternative to the big databases. It was built by a private group named MySQL AB who felt that a small cheap and sometimes free database would be able to grab market in the competitive database field. Somehow they did capture marketshare from companies that felt they were untouchable. To go on and become the leader in many verticals especially on the web. So where is the next MySQL and how will step up and compete and how does this purchase stop it. Competition is driven by innovation, differentiation and market needs, and the IOUG feels that the EU objection is ungrounded.

A week has passed since I was last in San Francisco and I felt that now that I was over jetlag it would be a good time to look back at how the week went from mine and the user perspective.

The week for me has always been about networking and sharing and this week was no different. Although it looked like attendance was down, it was great to see the people who could make it plus the lines tended to be shorter. Which when you want to get to the corn dog at the Big Bash it was a good thing. The other advantage is that this was one year when I did not hear about people being unable to attend sessions due to room capacities. The people really do make this event. Below is a picture of me and a couple of IOUG Board members, Michelle Malcher and Todd Sheetz, at the IOUG booth at Open World. They along with the rest of the Board really did such a great job with the IOUG led programming that I am sure it helped everyone who attended one of out sessions.

The week as with most OpenWorld was about product direction and product understanding. I think as always Oracle presented their direction clearly for what they know and can talk about. The question of the finalization of the Sun acquisition was  handing like a big lead balloon over the entire event. I expect that when the EU finally allows this deal to go through, Oracle will have a strategy that will quickly integrate both businesses and communities together. The IOUG had some meeting with some folks from the various Sun communities and I feel that we have a number of synergies that will help both groups to benefit from the additional topics that become part of technology education.

I also met with a number of senior Oracle technology and Business Intelligence executives to see how they planned to focus their products in the next year and how the IOUG can help our users get ready for this technology. The focus for 2010 includes BI and Analytics and we are focused on providing the best Oracle BI event in conjunction with COLLABORATE10 event coming in April 2010 in Las Vegas. BTW, if you want to submit an abstract for COLLABORATE10, today is you last day….so click here to submit and abstract. The focus on driving down costs was clearly stated by all of the Oracle folks. The key is that through better more effective use of shared and open technology you can drive down costs. From a DW perspective the Exadata and Database Machine seems like the flavour of the day. I realize that this is some great technology and can provide some customers with some real performance, so don’t get me wrong about this, the other DW appliance manufacturers must be concerned. The latest version of the machine from Oracle and Sun show us where this company is going and how technology will make a difference. The speed of the basic machine along with Flash Memory provides the power not only for data warehousing but now for OLTP as well. Ray Roccaforte talked about how he expected this flash memory improvement to help DWing in the future, but for now it provides OLTP with the additional power of The Database Machine. I have to admit when I first discussed this machine with the VP in charge of this, I said I was surprised that Oracle had not gone after the OLTP market with this approach and now a year later here it is.

Lots of discussion around OBIEE and ODI/OWB, since this was my focus for the week and it was great to see how people are truly exploiting this technology. Considering how late Oracle arrived into the BI and DW tool game, they are making some solid moves into this domain and their tools can really provide the performance and results that companies are looking for.

Also met with some users involved with Z/Series Linux, a group that runs Oracle on Linux on IBM mainframes. This is a small but passionate group that was looking to the IOUG to support their networking and educational goals, and I expect that we will see many of these folks in Las Vages at COLLABORATE10 as we develop a conference-within-conference for the community.

The last evening was Aerosmith, Roger Daltrey, The Wailer and 3 Dog Night. I made it to 3 of 4, only missing the Dogs. Aerosmith was its usual polished self, with Steven Tyler being award and IOUG Lifetime achievement award. Daltrey was the biggest surprise as he delivered a great set of well known and lesser known Who material. He was in fine form and he voice in its 60th year was able to keep up. The Wailers were awesome. I grew up in Montreal with the music of Bob Marley and The Wailers and I had seen them perform before, so it was great to hear the wonderfully energizing music fill the San Fran nights.

The show wrapped and by the end of it many of us were happy to return back to share the word. I expect that 2010 will be an exciting year whether you are a Oracle or Sun customer, as we learn how the next evolution for Oracle and the user communities.