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http://www.dbta.com/5_minute_briefing/archives/5-2-06.html
COLLABORATE 06 Joint Users Groups Confab is a Major
Success
May 2, 2006
With more than 5,000 people
attending and a bustling exhibition floor, the energy was palpable at
COLLABORATE 06, the first joint conference of the Independent Oracle Users
Group (IOUG), the Oracle Applications Users Groups (OAUG), and Quest, the JD
Edwards and Peoplesoft users group, held last week in
Oracle had urged its major
user groups to hold the joint conference and had provided additional support
for the effort, the leaders of all the user groups noted. And the payoff has
been great. Oracle itself organized 80 sessions, and around a dozen Oracle
executives at the rank of vice president or higher were in attendance.
Moreover, the exhibition floor was filled with senior executives from major
companies serving the Oracle marketplace.
Oracle took advantage of
the venue to release significant news. "There have been five or six major
announcements," said Stephen Hughes, the executive director of the OAUG.
The challenge for OAUG, he added, was to keep up with changes brought about by
Oracle's aggressive acquisitions. The organization plans to pursue a policy of
what he calls "glocalization," organizing
at the local and regional levels, as well as around specific interests such as
retailing, human resources and manufacturing.
"There is a lot of
synergy," added John Matelski, president of
Quest. For many companies, the combined conference allows for greater
efficiency. For example, IT Convergence, an Oracle consulting and application
hosting company typically exhibited at both the IOUG and the OAUG conferences.
"We get to see everyone in one place. The traffic is good," said Dan
Norris, strategic consulting manager.
Most observers agreed that
Oracle's product roadmaps made it more likely that each user group will
maintain their own independent identities but continue to work collaboratively.
Plans are already underway for COLLABORATE 07, which will be held in
For more information about
the IOUG, click here. For more
information about the OAUG, go here.
More information about Quest is available here.
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