Oracle Open World 2012 and First US Trip

I went to KLIA around 7am in the morning of 29 Sep 2012 (Malaysian Time) to board a plane by Cathay Pacific airline to San Francisco in order to attend the Oracle Open World 2012.

I have been lucky to be selected by Oracle to participate in this year's Open World as blogger.

The flight was divided into two parts. First from KLIA to Hong Kong, approximately 3.5 hours and the second from Hong Kong to San Francisco, approximately 11.5 hours. The second flight was delayed as a result of waiting for people like myself, who had stop-over in order to change to a bigger plane amidst a larger crowd – bigger plane is able to travel faster.

The flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco was pretty rough in which it suffered some aggressive turbulences that I have ever experienced. My last long haul flight was from Singapore to Auckland which was about 10 hours long.

And I don’t actually fancy the seat of the plane in which it cannot be slanted backwards, making it hard to sleep. Nonetheless, the flight was also filled with much spiritual development of my own. The first thing was about my perception on people moving up and down the aisles and who had made much noises which in my opinion, that it was perfectly a great harmony for flight experience than it was for annoyances.

I reckon that for long haul flights, the merrier the better because seated with restricted movement in a plane full of dead-serious neighbors is definitely scarier than having neighbors who may occasionally laugh about something. And one thing I’ve learned about airplane neighbors is that they just want to say hello quickly and then get on to do their own business which is fine - it feels like having buddies for the next 11.5 hours who won’t bother to ask you for difficult favors. One way to do it (to get to know them) is to borrow them writing pen or to offer them peanuts – try not to ask too much questions about themselves or even their names. Just some casual talk – talk about San Francisco or Oracle, then quickly turn on movies.

Therefore, I am appreciative that people were actually making some noises around me because the noises of the jet engines were even more damaging.

The greatness of a mother

Another aspect which enlightened me during this flight was the realization to the next level about the greatness of a mother.

Most of us will end up hooked up to the infortainment system for the rest of the flight or to pretend to sleep. During the flight, there was a kid who seated around my perimeters. She had attempted to cry every now and then for unknown reasons. The common perception is that it will be annoying but I actually felt grateful for the same reason that it actually created a much merrier environment for us to release stress of flying long-haul.

While I was pretending to sleep, I withheld great respect for the mother who had to put up with the cries of her child especially during the events of turbulences – she couldn’t pretend to sleep. And I thanked her and her child for their presence during the flight.

San Francisco

As we were about to land, for the first time in my life I witnessed the jungle of California. It was quite surreal.

The landing was smooth and great - time was approximately 12:00 pm (San Francisco time).

The first thing I noticed about the airport was that it didn’t look that big and busy. Thereafter, I was quickly cleared for immigration and custom checking and that was it, for the first time in my life, I had set foot on San Francisco and USA – what a moment to cherish.

Me and traveling companion went on the grab a taxi to Hilton Union Square and I thoroughly enjoyed my first ride on San Francisco’s highway. The trip cost me about US $ 50 (including tips).

Jet Lag

I finally experienced jet lag - it means getting hungry at the wrong time of the day and the inability to sleep more than 1 hour per attempt. It actually slows down your ability to think creatively as well.

But the good weather and water quality of San Francisco have kept me going strong and I really feel like I don’t need much sleep at the moment.

Hilton Union Square

Oracle has been so generous in providing me with such a great accommodation for my 5 days stay. The room is much bigger than my room at home and I had difficulty finding the switches for lightings in the room initially. And after comparing with team mates, it looks like I have the biggest room which feels like SoHo – very comfortable working inside the room.

Oracle Open World 2012

Oracle is famous for its database and Larry Ellison. Back then in college, we used to quarrel about whose idol was better. Naturally, some people will go for Larry, some Bill Gates, some Steve Jobs, some Jerry Yang and some maybe Jeff Bezos. Most people would agree that Larry was the best looking, Bill the nerdiest and Steve the hottest temper.

That was in 1999 when Wikipedia wasn’t around yet and Google was just in its infancy. We didn’t have a lot of information about how Oracle was started and what effort Larry had invested into to make Oracle a success.

All we understood was Oracle’s database was the best and most expensive in the industry. We seldom had the chance to experiment with it – only during specially organized classes.

Not long thereafter, it was announced that Oracle’s database was unbreakable.

And here I am today, I stand here at San Francisco for the first time in my life and I am proud to say that I am part of Oracle.

Oracle's current strategy is to provide the red-stack which is referring to the complete stack of enterprise solution consisting of the best hardware and software which are made to work in perfect harmony and fine-tuned to the greatest precision.

Oracle's products stacking up perfectly and engineered to work together

To elaborate this further, the red-stack simply promises the following 5 qualities for deployment:
  • Best-of-breed – every component consists of industrial highest standard
  • Open – implemented open standards for third party integration
  • Vertical integration – suitable for implementing industrial vertical application which are mission-critical
  • Extreme performance – super fast
  • Engineered system – hardware and software are pre-installed and pre-tuned to the best performance – engineered to work together up to the finest level

In other words, with engineered system, Oracle aspires to provide every industry in the planet with the best hardware, database, middleware, common horizontal application like CRM, ERP, SCM a platform to deliver their customized solution.

The following illustration explains it all.

A perfect solution for deployment of mission-critical applications for industry

Oracle provides the most complete industry solutions

Enterprise IT trends to take note:

Trends show that market potential is huge for Oracle

Finally, check out this year’s keynotes addresses:

  • Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together: Why It’s A Different Approach - Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle (Sunday, Sep 30 2012, 5:00pm to 7:00pm), Moscone North, Hall D)
  • Fujitsu Technology: Redefining IT’s Potential - Noriyuki Toyoki, Fujitsu Limited Corporate Senior Vice President (Sunday, Sep 30 2012 (5:00pm to 7:00pm), Moscone North, Hall D)
  • Shift Complexity – Mark Hurd, President, Oracle, Andrew Mendelsohn, Senior Vice President, Database Server Technologies, Oracle, Juan R. Loaiza, Senior Vice President, Systems Technology, Oracle (Monday, October 1 2012, 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m., Moscone North, Hall D)
  • The Oracle Cloud: Oracle’s Cloud Platform and Applications Strategy - Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President, Product Development, Oracle (Tuesday, October 2, 8:00 a.m.–9:45 a.m., Moscone North, Hall D)
  • Transform IT + Business + Yourself - Joseph M. Tucci, Chairman, and CEO, EMC (Tuesday, October 2, 8:00 a.m.–9:45 a.m., Moscone North, Hall D)
  • The Oracle Cloud: Where Social Is Built In - Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle (Tuesday, October 2, 2:45 p.m.–4:30 p.m., Moscone North, Hall D)
  • Radical Progress - S. D. Shibulal, CEO and Managing Director, Infosys ((Tuesday, October 2, 2:45 p.m.–4:30 p.m., Moscone North, Hall D)
  • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Engineered Systems: Fast, Reliable, Virtualized - John Fowler, Executive Vice President, Systems, Oracle, Edward Screven, Chief Corporate Architect, Oracle, Juan R. Loaiza, Senior Vice President, Systems Technology, Oracle (Wednesday, October 3, 8:00 a.m. – 9:45 a.m., Moscone North, Hall D)
  • Data Center Imperatives in the New Era - Diane M. Bryant, Vice President and General Manager, Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, Intel (Wednesday, October 3, 8:00 a.m. – 9:45 a.m., Moscone North, Hall D) See More, Act Faster: Oracle Business Analytics - Mark Hurd, President, Oracle (Thursday, October 4, 9:00 a.m.–10:45 a.m., Moscone North, Hall D)
  • Applying Analytics to Real World Scenarios: A Conversation with Michael Lewis, Author of Moneyball, Liar's Poker, and The Blind Side - Michael Lewis, Author of Moneyball, Liar's Poker, and The Blind Side, Hosted by Bob Weiler, Executive Vice President, Oracle (Thursday, October 4, 9:00 a.m.–10:45 a.m., Moscone North, Hall D)

Check out details.

Comments

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Fregard Mosform said…
The good thing that came out of that conference was the fact that oracle started the trend of breaking down digital scanning services into levels that stack up, depending the priority of the data to store.
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