I finally feel rested from an intense week of networking, learning, walking and attending cocktail parties at this years Oracle Open World. The massive event was a whirlwind of activity and I am just now taking some time to let it all sink in. To begin, I am always impressed at the numbers that are thrown around at the event.
I tweeted a few statistics live about the event itself:
Here are a few more interesting stats:
- Oracle spends $4.3 Billion a year on R&D
- Has 340,000 customers
- Oracle Partner Network sells $3 billion in software licenses
- 4,300 transactions equaling $1 Billion of software licenses are co-sold in North America in the Oracle Partner Network
But clearly if your like me, we didn’t attend the Open World event because of the big numbers and the party. We attend the conference because it’s one of the most important conferences in the business tech world. Open World lay’s out the roadmap for the future and is a place where the big Silicon Valley players can have a debate on things that matter to the tech sector. This years debate was exceptionally fun, riveting and highly entertaining. I’m re-publishing a segment published by IDG which articulates Ellison’s view of the cloud. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a clip where Larry promotes Marc Benioff’s book “behind the cloud” which he retitles “Way behind the cloud” (if you find a short clip on Youtube – let me know, I’d love to share it)
Here is Marc Benioff of salesforce.com counter opinion on cloud computing
The cloud debate will continue to go on. My belief is that there is no one size fits all, which makes me partially side with Larry Ellison. A platform is more flexible than an application and allows for much more customization and functionality that meets my business needs. And no matter how you look at it, salesforce.com still needs to be hosted on big server’s somewhere.
