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MIA: Oracle Executives a No-Show at OpenWorld Press Meetings
October 25, 2006
Reporter's Notebook: With not a single executive available for press
interviews, what's Oracle got to hide?
I arrived at the press registration desk and asked for a copy of
my meeting schedule—standard procedure for any of the two-dozen or so
conferences I attend every year. The response: There is no schedule. Why?
Because there are no executive meetings scheduled for press members at OpenWorld
2006.
Huh? No executive meetings? Isn't this what these conferences
are all about? Getting together, in person, with a company's executives to
discuss the news of the day, product road maps, the company's vision for the
future?
Never, in all the conferences I have ever attended, has there
been an instance where I have not met with at least one executive. Most of the
time, its back-to-back meetings with executives—and customers—to
the point of exhaustion.
At a recent SAP conference I met with Shai Agassi, the executive
board member in charge of application development. At previous SAP events this
year, I've interviewed Henning Kagermann, the CEO; Hasso Plattner, co-founder;
and Bill McDermott, president and CEO of SAP
The list of examples is endless. The reason journalists go to
these shows is to get the scoop that isn't in the press release—not
necessarily more news, but the underlying meaning to the news sound bite. Don't
get me wrong, we also go to talk to customers and partners, to get the story
behind the vendorspeak. But the executive meetings bring clarity and vision in
a best-case scenario.
Sure, there is an executive Q&A scheduled for the media
Wednesday afternoon, but I think those all-inclusive events rarely elicit the
type of responses one can get in a one-on-one interview.
So that leaves me (happily, I might add) to suss out the news
that isn't the news at this event. In other words, what's really going on that
Oracle can't make a single executive available for an interview? Are they too
busy building out Fusion applications to set aside a few minutes to talk about
the details? Are there too many customer meetings packed into this five-day
event to manage a few media questions? If so, what does that say about Oracle's
commitment to the customer the rest of the year—is this the only time the
two parties actually meet face to face?
Maybe there were questions Oracle didn't want to answer, like
what's the real end date for Applications Unlimited, when the payment for extended
services outweighs the cost of upgrading to Fusion applications? Or what's
going on with all those acquisitions outside PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel?
Moscone Center
turns into Oracle Island for OpenWorld. Click
here to read John Pallatto's blog.
Or maybe Oracle doesn't really want to drill down on where it's
at with Fusion development. Is it really past the halfway mark, where the
company said it was last year around this time? Is it perhaps harder than the
company anticipated tying together the "best of"' functionality from
three major ERP (enterprise resource planning) suites and a CRM (customer
relationship manager) suite? Or maybe Oracle executives don't want to drill down
on how they're going to link all the functionality from the applications
they've acquired—G-Log (Global Logistics Technology), Demantra,
Retek—into PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards applications.
For that matter, is anyone really buying any more PeopleSoft,
Siebel and JD Edwards applications? I suppose there are one or two companies
out there upgrading before they decide what to do about Fusion applications. I
should know, I met with them today. Oracle did set those meetings up for me.
Maybe there is something to this customer angle—the reason
a PR person told me executives aren't available, because there's so many
customers to meet with.
"I am very confident that Oracle has made a lot of very
good progress [with Fusion], and [IOUG] is going to be using Oracle OpenWorld
to hear feedback in terms of technology and support," said Kaplan.
"What Oracle wants to avoid happening is customer attrition during times
of transition."
Oracle has two years, give or take, before it completes Fusion
applications. In that time, it is adding Fusion Middleware components and
functionality to PeopleSoft 9, the next major release of PeopleSoft, and likely
to JD Edwards and Siebel as well. Given that added functionality and the
unlimited support Oracle has proposed with Applications Unlimited—in
addition to all the capability in the Fusion Middleware suite as a
whole—one has to wonder what will push users forward to Fusion
applications?
The thing is, Oracle likely does have a pretty good story to
tell around Fusion applications.
It has decided on an underlying model—the E-Business
Suite—and is clearly tying in elements of Fusion Middleware to the next
editions of its stand-alone ERP suites, likely to create an easier upgrade
(versus migration) path for users. Oracle has clearly established its database
business, and Fusion Middleware seems to be doing a pretty good business as
well (more than $1 billion in sales this year, Oracle officials said). So what
gives on the nonexistent executive access?
Whatever the case, I will say this about OpenWorld 2006: It's
downright sleepy compared with last year. The 2005 event brought together for
the first time Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards
users—about 30,000 people—after Oracle's very acrimonious takeover
of PeopleSoft and JD Edwards by default, since JD Edwards had been acquired by
PeopleSoft.
Last year was delightful, sheer pandemonium. People were
everywhere, teeming in every hall of Moscone Center. No one knew really where
to go or what to do. That year, Oracle's public relations teams set up plenty
of press meetings with executives. Problem was, many of them didn't show up.
But the executives—John Wookey, head of application development, is one
that I recall—made every effort, one way or the other, to sit down with
the press, one-on-one, to pound out the details of Fusion.
This year, there's a rather staid feel to everything. No big
pronouncements, at least not yet—Larry Ellison, Oracle's bombastic CEO,
is scheduled to take the stage later today (Oct. 26), so anything can happen
there. And this year, the Siebel customer base has been added to the mix, bringing
the attendee count up to about 41,000 people, but attendees seem much, well,
calmer. The event itself is much better organized.
I suppose that's a good thing, but it takes some of the
excitement out of the air. Which is likely not such a bad thing from Oracle's
perspective.
"Boring and staid and steady as it goes is actually the
right message for Oracle's customers," said Joshua Greenbaum, principal of
Enterprise Applications Consulting, in
But here's a little secret: Not talking about something openly
breeds more suspicion than any kind of discussion, canned or not, ever did.
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