I recently had the privilege of attending the Oracle Open World convention at the Muscone Center in San Francisco, and though the lines were long, they moved with the precision of JD Edwards software, so I wasn't terribly surprised. I was shocked, however, to see so many attendees in suits. I've had the pleasure of attending a lot of great conferences, and, to borrow a JDE phrase for a pun, these guys were really dressed to the 9s.
I've written many articles on B2B business operations and processes, including an entire series on B2B eCommerce challenges for MultiChannelMerchant.com, and I recognize that change can be a difficult, daunting process (but completely necessary if your organization is going to thrive!) The implications, however, of OOW not placing enough emphasis on social interaction are twofold. The first of these items being that we, as B2B and B2C organizations ourselves, need to provide our customers and clients ways in which they can reach their fullest potentials. Oracle needs to be demonstrating the value of social interaction to its own customers, so that their customers, in turn, are interacting with their own more completely. Twitter provides a wonderful communication channel through which problems can be directly addressed, drastically reducing the number of calls to a customer care center. Twitter also greatly improves an organization's SEO, and if a user searches something a company has tweeted about, that company will appear in relevant search returns. The second concern I have about Oracle's social media plan is its ability, or lack thereof, to reach its own customers. Specifically referring to JD Edwards World and EnterpriseOne users, though historically traditional in their approach to marketing and sales techniques, there are many who have adopted the practices of Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Pinterest (such as killer tweeters @LyleEkdahl, @KemButler, @JohnASchiff and yours truly @BillOnion). If our clients running Oracle and JDE view their software providers as behind the times, I would be inclined to think that we would be at a greater risk of losing these clients; adapt or die, as it were.
Arguably, the most impressive portion of Oracle Open World was the demonstration area; anything and everything could be experienced first-hand. There were so many booths dedicated to hardware, operating systems, and so much software. There were software compliments, modules and add-ons, there was software that at a glance appeared to be a competitor of the Oracle sphere of products but ::surprise:: wasn't. I think it's safe to assume that if an organization has any need for any software, Oracle has a solution.
Image courtesy of Rick Whiting, Senior Editor at UBM Channel and Oracle Open World attendee.
Here, a visitor gets a glimpse of Oracle's SPARC SuperCluster server, based on the T4-4 microprocessor. A highly anticipated updated release of the SPARC chip, the T5, is slated to be released sometime next year along with countless other improved hardware and software components. There was a really great vibe among the presenters, and I really enjoyed the fact that there were Oracle employees presenting the products, rather than hired demonstrators. It's refreshing to know that a company as large as Oracle places so much emphasis on interpersonal relationships.
Pearl Jam performs to close Oracle Open World 2012.
Oh, and to cap it all off, the mother of all grunge bands PEARL JAM performed. Not to sound like a giddy teenager but it was TOTALLY AWESOME! If you attended, what did you enjoy the most? If you're simply another Oracle/JDEr, shoot me your questions/comments, I'd love to share!
No Comments Yet
Let us know what you think