In April the largest conference for Oracle users, outside of Oracle OpenWorld, occurred in Denver. With 6000 attendees “Collaborate”, the annual Oracle user conference sponsored by IOUG (Independent Oracle User Group), OAUG (Oracle Application User Group) and Quest International, is one of the best events For Oracle users, whether it is Oracle Database or any of the other Oracle software products, to learn, network, share and teach. Oh, and have some fun too.
But for companies like Cisco who exhibit and sponsor Collaborate, it is also a great chance to informally “take the pulse” of the Oracle user community. The questions they ask and the sessions they attend provide a clear indicator of where Oracle users are headed, what the trends are and and where they are putting their efforts in the future. Here is what I discovered at this year’s Collaborate.
So unlike past conferences, the Oracle community is actively looking at
a) Virtualization for their Oracle infrastructure, including Databases and
b) Preconfigured/prevalidated hardware solutions (sometimes called converged infrastructure solutions) instead of just the old DIY custom system approach for hardware.
To me these are both major changes in the mindset of those using Oracle Database and applications. And the implications are significant. As virtualization permeates the large Oracle install-base (largest business software vendor), the hypervisor vendors will see significant growth and many operational aspects of Oracle infrastructures will change and improve. That virtualization push includes Oracle who is making inroads with their dramatically updated Oracle VM (virtual machine) product.
The move towards pretested hardware solutions is also a major directional shift which should drive an increased focus on reducing software and database upgrade/version cycle times and downplay the need to do extensive hardware testing. In today’s environment of “do more with less”, pretested hardware solutions may be a great way to help the Oracle IT team address that conundrum.
Can Cisco help with these trends towards more Oracle virtualization and pretested hardware configurations? The answer is a resounding YES! With our storage partners EMC and NetApp, and our software partners Oracle and VMware, we have developed an extensive array of pretested/prevalidated solutions with hypervisors (Oracle VM and vSphere), storage (EMC and NetApp) and software (Oracle Database and applications) all running on Cisco UCS servers and Cisco networking. For more information on Cisco’s Oracle solutions and to see the available Cisco Validated Designs (CVD) for Oracle, go to Cisco.com/go/oracle
Coming up in my next blog, more on the move to virtualize Oracle database and applications.
Cisco Partner Summit kicks off in two short weeks! This is my first Partner Summit as senior vice president of the Worldwide Partner Organization (WWPO), and I couldn’t be more excited for the discussion, the engagement, and most importantly, the opportunities that await us.
Partner Summit is one of the most important Cisco events of the year. Whether you’ll be joining us live in Boston or you’ll be one of the thousands of Cisco partners attending our Virtual Partner Summit, remember that this event is all about you. It’s your chance to interact with us, it’s our chance to listen to you, and most of all it’s everybody’s chance to have fun together.
Tony De La Rosa shared with us a teaser last week about the riveting webinar we have coming up this week on how Wi-Fi technology can be used in K-12 schools. If you missed it, here’s the original blog--it’s not too late to register for the webinar!
Cisco is proud to announce that five of its employees, with a penchant for cycling, took part in a gruelling 200 km timed relay race this weekend to raise money forThe Benevolent Society.
The Benevolent Society (TBS) aims to help people, families and communities achieve positive change. This year the charity turns 200, and to celebrate its birthday the charity arranged for 200 cyclists to race 200 kms in its first ever cycling challenge –Race for Change.
The group of brave cyclists from Cisco’s Sydney office trained hard over a 6-week period. The team, or Cisco Tumblers, as they’ve named themselves, put in around 400 kms of cycling between them each week – that’s a total of over 2,000 kms of cycling over the 6 weeks! The Cisco Tumblers didn’t just bond as a team on the streets and parks of Sydney but virtually as well, by using Webex meetings to keep everyone up-to-date on training plans, the event and individuals’ progress; all to make sure they were race-ready for the big event.
As more devices, people and things become connected to the Internet, an unprecedented amount of data will be generated: data which can become a powerful tool for solving some of the greatest challenges facing our planet.
Carlos Dominguez and photojournalist Rick Smolan
I spoke with well-known photojournalist Rick Smolan about how we can turn data into wisdom, and the importance of capturing data in real time. Rick has worked at Time, Life and National Geographic and is the creator of the popular Day in the Life book series. In his most ambitious project to date, he tackled the subject of big data in the Human Face of Big Data project.
I talked with Rick about what his project is discovering, and the first part of our conversation was published in the blog Is there a human face behind big data?
Cisco co-sponsored the project because we believe we’re entering an era of the “Internet of Everything” which will bring data as well as people, processes and things together to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before.
In today’s blog, we continue the conversation by focusing on how big data can improve our communities and the world.
Q: Rick, your project’s premise is that real-time visualization of data streaming in from satellites, billions of sensors, RFID tags, GPS-enabled cameras and smart phones, is beginning to enable us to sense, measure and understand aspects of our existence in ways never possible. Your recently published book The Human Face of Big Data has some wonderful examples on harnessing data to improve the world – do you have a favorite? Read More »
