openworld

Is Oracle losing its touch? Or has it already conquered the enterprise software world and now lacks a compelling story to tell?

That's the feeling some reported coming out of Oracle's OpenWorld conference last week. Yes, bloggers and others dutifully reported on Oracle's Beehive (new collaboration product) and its new hardware device (data warehousing tool that will now play catch-up with Greenplum), but Oracle didn't break much new ground...for once.

CIO.com's Thomas Wallgum captures the void of breaking news succinctly:

But when your biggest and most exciting announcement revolves around a data-warehousing deal … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on Wednesday unveiled its first ever hardware product--a storage server with embedded software designed to work with the company's databases and be used in a grid. The Exadata programmable storage server aims to put database intelligence next to each drive.

The hardware roll-out, which was cooked up in a partnership with Hewlett-Packard, is aimed at the emerging problem of moving data from hard drives to database servers. The storage server took three years of development with HP and has been tested for about a year with key customers such as Google.

Ellison, speaking at … Read more

The enterprise computing industry seems like it's turning into one big utility company.

It's a good thing the accountants didn't have to sit through the keynote speeches during the first two days of Oracle OpenWorld, because no one would be allowed to attend next year. Hector Ruiz of Advanced Micro Devices showed video clips of Star Wars and the World Series. Mark Hurd of Hewlett-Packard discussed whether or not he thought Oracle's Larry Ellison could beat him at tennis. At least Intel's Paul Otellini tailored his Tuesday morning address to the actual attendees of the … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--For the record, Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd would not let Oracle grand poobah Larry Ellison beat him at tennis.

These and other important questions were answered in a more conversational approach to the afternoon keynote slot at this year's Oracle OpenWorld here. In lieu of a traditional speech, Hurd, chairman and chief of the world's largest PC company, answered previously videotaped questions--most of which seemed canned--about a variety of topics.

The questions, posed by ostensibly random conference attendees, ranged from the obvious ("Should I buy an HP or a Dell?"), to the unnecessary ("Would … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--AMD CEO Hector Ruiz devoted his opening keynote spot Monday morning to educating thousands of corporate technology types on the technology challenges facing the gaming, sports, and movie-making industries.

The 42,000 attendees at the Oracle OpenWorld show probably weren't expecting to hear about how Electronic Arts needs more technology to support online gaming. Or how Major League Baseball is buying servers to support the growth of MLB.com. But that's what they got in a presentation from Ruiz that only mentioned Oracle a handful of times, but spent plenty of time with AMD partners EA, MLB, … Read more