Collaborate 11 Wednesday - Big Bash Event

Wednesday evening is the night of the big bash event.  The Collaborate conference had Universal Studios reserved for conference attendees.  It was a fantastic evening with long time friends and new friends.

Collaborate 11 Wednesday - Applications becoming Cloud Appliances

All week I've heard customers say they are virtualizing their applications as fast as they can.  From Oracle EBS, Siebel, JD Edwards and Oracle Fusion Applications.  I asked a customer who said, "we have deployed 95% of our applications on VMware.  Virtualization just makes sense."  The full range of an organization's applications are being deployed in the cloud using VMware.

• Exchange servers
• Domain Controllers
• Application Servers
• Collaboration Tools
• Business applications
• Custom applications

Collaborate 11 Tuesday - VMware the common platform

I was walking around the different vendor booths at the Collaborate conference and seen there is one common platform across the databases, middle-tier technology, business applications, hardware solutions and application development.  That common platform is VMware.  It seemed no matter what type of vendor booth I went to, they are leveraging VMware's virtualization.

VMware's virtualization solution abstracts out the hardware layer.   The operating system runs in in a machine that happens to be a virtual machine not a physical machine.  So the VM platform is consistent running on supported hardware such as Dell, HP, and IBM.  This consistent foundation provides numerous advantages:

• A complete platform for public and private clouds.
• Ability to run legacy applications and software as well as the latest cloud applications in a common environment.
• Full support for an open environment where different solutions such as Microsoft, Oracle MySQL, SAP, Veritas, EMC, Netapps and NAS can run in the infrastructure provided by VMware.
• Less administration on the hardware and plumbing surrounding the hardware.
• Reduced errors and downtime.
• Easier to maintain.
• Less time required to troubleshoot.

Collaborate 11 Monday - Hot Topics of the Day

There were a lot of interesting topics of the day.  Some of the highlights include:

• Lots of Oracle Fusion activity.  Lots of customers talking about the high ROI of Oracle Fusion.
• Lots of great success stories of VMware.
• Oracle's licensing of VMware stinks.  Lots of Oracle customers complaining loudly and often of Oracle's approach to licensing on VMware.  If only I could have recorded customers comments and put them on Youtube.  
• Internet at the Peabody lobby is really good. Lots of positive comments on the new additions and changes to the Peabody.  Definitely the hotel to stay at for the conference.
• Some people said this was one of the best keynote ever.  Everyone seemed to really enjoy the keynote this morning.

More to say, but being pulled away from keyboard. Literally. :)

Collaborate 11 - Three Types of Oracle DBAs

I always love hearing all the great quotes and perspectives at the Collaborate conference.  Best quote of the first day (Sunday) is from a good friend and one of the most recognized DBA experts:
There are three types of DBAs:

• Google DBAs.
• GUI DBAs.
• The DBAs who do all the work.

Oracle Open World 2010

This week at Oracle Open World looks to be a great week to get caught up on Cloud technology directions.  VMworld just finished so attending the VMware booth will have a lot of updates on the latest information on Cloud technology and VMware virtualization products.   There are also a number of Cloud and virtualization presentations scheduled for the week.