Oracle OpenWorld 2010: 10 Buzzwords to Know, Love and Hate
There's no escaping it: Optimization, stacks and the cloud are all in the air at Oracle's annual mega-conference.
Go to any tech conference, and you're sure to get your fill of vendor marketing rhetoric—the constant sharing of synergy-this and platform-that which can fill up a "Buzzword Bingo" card very quickly. 
Print
Here are 10 of the most popular tech terms making the rounds at Oracle OpenWorld 2010:
1. Cloud. Larry Ellison kicked off the conference by setting the rest of us straight on Oracle's "definition" of The Cloud: His definition. (For the record: Sorta like Amazon.com's cloud offering but definitely not like Salesforce.com's.) Everything's been a bit foggy since.
2. Optimize. Good Lord, if I have to hear one more "optimize" utterance, I might take a run at that America's Cup trophy and let those two serious-looking security dudes beat the crap out of me.
3. The Red Stack. "Software. Hardware. Complete." "Learn It. Know It. Live It."
4. Mark Hurd. The biggest event—Hurd's debut and keynote at the conference—has been a huge non-event.
5. Co-Existence. The "roadmap/strategy" for migrating enterprise apps customers from legacy PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and E-Business Suite to Fusion Apps will purportedly involve a harmonious co-existence between the old and rigid and the new and flexible during the next five years. Sounds to me like "The Odd Couple."6. Fusion. It's all Fusion, all the time: Middleware and Applications. This is the clear future for Oracle and its customers, though I'm thinking many customers aren't quite ready for that kind of future just yet.
7. #keynotetorture. Yikes! Whatever HP paid for one of the top presentation spots was way too much money. The two Sunday night HP keynotes produced this Twitter hashtag and trending topic #keynotetorture. And that's not a good thing.
8. Exalogic Elastic Cloud. It looks like a gym locker but it's worth a heck of a lot more money: Think multimillions. (Smelly sneakers not included.)
9. Ironman. I have to admit: Those getups from the Ironman movies are pretty darn cool. But I feel for the "booth bros" working the Ironman/Exalogic/Exadata area because the same clip and music have been playing for three straight days.
10. Blah, Blah, Blah. Was I just a bit bored and lost in my own thoughts, or did I actually hear Oracle CEO Larry Ellison say "Blah, Blah, Blah," when describing some Fusion Apps functionalities? Nahhhhhh, couldn't have been.
Thomas Wailgum covers Enterprise Software, Data Management and Personal Productivity Apps for CIO.com. Follow him on Twitter @twailgum. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline. E-mail Thomas at twailgum@cio.com.
Previous Post: Oracle Fusion Apps: Mixed Messages on Much-Hyped SuiteNext Post: The Cloud Crusades of Ellison and Benioff
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
