The signs were there all week at Oracle OpenWorld. Just before Larry Ellison
delivered his keynote, Bob Wynne of Oracle PR told me "Don't expect any
big announcements". The day before ,Chuck Rozwot, EVP, danced around a question from the media about details about
Fusion applications. Something about "we have briefed analysts under
NDA". (BTW - No self-respecting analyst firm signs an NDA for more than a couple
of days). He then invoked conservative "revenue recognition"
practices as reason Oracle could not disclose more details. On Monday, in his
meeting with the Enterprise Irregulars, President Charles Phillips said
"don't expect thousands of Fusion applications" any time soon.
Thousands? In the end Larry Ellison showcased 3
"applications" aimed at sales forces. Oh, they reflect glimpses of business
process innovation as they facilitate more collaboration across sales teams and
leverage social networking to build prospect lists. And, of course they reflect
technology currency - as Larry said multiple times, they use SOA principles
and leverage industry standard middleware. But after 3 years of Fusion
announcements, just 3 applications? He then proceeded to dance around questions
about financial, hr, other applications likely to be released. And there were
repeated references to being conservative and glances at his CFO, Safra Catz
with a questioning “am I in trouble?” look.
Cute, but over 30 years Larry has made so many product announcements
at his events - some way ahead of their time, some outrageous. Suddenly now, he
feels the need to be conservative?
Oracle had an opportunity to showcase applications which
leverage its growing middleware market share. What better proof point to show its
prospects for the middleware? What better way to get its database customers to
also push for its applications? In a conference with innovation as a central
theme, it could have shown off so much more innovation with home cooking.
It was a 30 year birthday celebration for Oracle and there were
plenty of thank yous all the way around during the conference. But if I was an
Oracle, PeopleSoft, JDE or Siebel application customer I would feel underwhelmed, even
slighted. In the 3 years since Fusion has been announced they have paid Oracle
over $ 10 billion in maintenance. Surely, 5 to 10% of that should have gone
towards Fusion applications. Where are the results?
During the Q&A, someone from the audience tried to ask
Larry about Oracle’s charitable initiatives. He made the mistake of invoking
Microsoft and the Gates foundation. Larry cut him off and honed in on what the
Gates foundation does or does not do. Never got around to discussing Oracle’s
own charities.
I felt the same thing about Larry’s keynote. Oracle, so
eager to jump on its competitors sometimes neglects to showcase all the good
stuff it is capable of. When it comes to Fusion applications, it blew a major
opportunity at this conference.
