Clarity In The Avalanche

So I've spent the days since Oracle OpenWorld 14 decompressing...puttering in the garden, BBQing for family, running errands.  The idea was to give my mind time to process all the things I saw and heard at OOW this year.  Big year - it was like trying to take a sip from a firehose.  Developing any clarity around the avalanche of news has been tough.

If you average out all of Oracle's new product development, it comes to a rate of one new product release every working day of the year.  And I think they saved up bunches for OOW. It was difficult to keep up.

It was also difficult to physically keep up with things at OOW, as Oracle utilized the concept of product centers and spread things out over even more of downtown San Francisco this year. For example, Cloud ERP products were centered in the Westin on Market Street.  Cloud HCM was located at the Palace Hotel.  Sales Cloud took over the 2nd floor of Moscone West.  Higher Education focused around the Marriott Marquis. Anything UX, as well as many other hands-on labs, happened at the InterContinental Hotel.  And, of course, JavaOne took place at the Hilton on Union Square along with the surrounding area.  The geographical separation required even more in the way of making tough choices about where to be and when to be there.

With all that, I think I've figured out a way to organize my own take on the highlights from OOW - with a tip o' the hat to Oracle's Thomas Kurian.  Thomas sees Oracle as based around five product lines:  engineered systems, database, middleware, packaged applications, and cloud services. The more I consider this framework, the more it makes sense to me.  So my plan is to organize the news from OOW around these five product lines over the next few posts here.  We'll see if we can't find some clarity in the avalanche.