Oracle OpenWorld 2014 - The Story so Far

As day 2 of Oracle's annual fest begins to unfold, let us attempt to summarize what big announcements and not so big news were reported so far by Oracle itself, the media and hundreds of determined tweeps and bloggers.

Quote from Larry Ellison's Sunday keynote

1. Cloud

Unsurprisingly, the dominating topic is cloud. As Larry Ellison announced in his Sunday keynote (which you can watch here), Oracle is not only aiming at becoming a PaaS, IaaS or SaaS vendor but providing all three layers of cloud computing at once. This included announcements to make six new cloud services available in the near future.

You can educate yourself on the current status of the Oracle Cloud on the ever-changing and ever-growing landing page here.

Oracle definitely sees itself as a full-stack vendor, and rightfully so. From "silicon" to applications, we have it. The only thing that Oracle does not (yet) have is our own browser ;-). So Oracle is indeed in a good position to become a major player in the enterprise cloud arena.

In this regard, let me "borrow" a nice diagram I spotted on Floyd Teter's ORCLville blog:

The diagram should prove helpful if you get lost in the stack. Thanks to Floyd for this and the comprehensive articles.

2. Silicon

Yes, "silicon" - or semiconductors - or just bare metal: Since the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle is a hardware shop. And of course there is a lot of innovation in this sector. Here are a few example from the announcements made so far:

• Oracle FS1 Series Flash Storage System
• Exalytics In-Memory Machine X4-4
• Zero Data Loss Recovery Applicance

3. What about Siebel?

OOW isn't over yet, but we are still waiting for some buzz following the (hopefully) exciting announcements and sessions from the Siebel CRM team about the imminent Innovation Pack 2014.

So far it has been a bit quiet in terms of Siebel but fellow blogger and friend Richard Napier is on the premises (pun intended) and shares his findings with us on his blog.

have a nice day

@lex

Oracle Launches Customer 2 Cloud Program

In his Siebel Observer publication, Bruce Daley informs us that Oracle changes its policies to allow Siebel support fees to be applied to Cloud products.

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Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL)  has announced new licensing policies that make it easier to exchange Siebel shelf ware for other CX products. Called the Customer 2 Cloud program, the new policies hope to overcome some of the common financial and technical problems Oracle customers experience in transitioning from Oracle on-premise software to Oracle software-as-a-service Cloud products. The Customer 2 Cloud program allows Oracle HCM and CRM customers to exchange some of their on-premise support budget for new Oracle Cloud products.

"The Customer 2 Cloud program helps organizations get their hands on the latest technology," says Rod Johnson, group vice president, Oracle Applications and Industries Solutions Group. "This program aims to remove the financial and integration challenges that can impact a company's adoption."

Oracle Customer 2 Cloud program is open to Oracle CRM and Oracle HCM customers that are running Oracle's Siebel, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle's PeopleSoft and Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solutions on-premise. Oracle customers also have the flexibility to shift to a hybrid model with both on-premise and cloud applications.

Customers can convert their existing on-premise support budget to subscribe to Oracle Customer Experience Cloud and Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud services within the same product family. For example, a customer with on-premise seats for Oracle Siebel eService can transfer those seats to Oracle Marketing Cloud.

For more information about the details of the program see http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/customer2cloud/index.html

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This article was originally published on the Siebel Observer web site.

have a nice day

@lex

Get Ready for Oracle Applications Cloud Release 8 (Updated)

As Oracle expands its Cloud business through both acquisitions and new releases of its own Fusion Applications (which are the backbone of Sales, HCM and ERP cloud), a new product line is emerging, nameley Oracle Cloud Applications. This is a combined offer of:

• Sales (formerly Fusion CRM)
• Human Capital Management
• Financials
• Value Chain Execution
• Product Value Chain
• Procurement
• Project Portfolio Management

These applications are based on Oracle Fusion Applications and are hosted in the Oracle Cloud together with other Oracle products such as Marketing Cloud or Service Cloud.

Still from an Oracle video on Sales Cloud.

With Release 8 of Oracle Cloud Applications (and Fusion Applications), Oracle explores new ways in informing customers about enhancements and new features in the form of a release 8 readiness page on cloud.oracle.com.

In addition to checking out the content on that page, the seasoned Fusion Cloud observer may want to peruse the really awesome Oracle Product Features application. After logging in with your oracle.com account, accept the disclaimer and select Oracle Cloud Applications. Then you can review the new features and produce reports.

Update: Richard Bingham at the Fusion Applications Developer Relations blog published a series of articles on the new features that come with Release 8.

have a nice day

@lex