Event: Oracle OpenWorld 2006
Date: October 22-26, 2006, Moscone Center, San Francisco

What: A conference put on by software giant Oracle that brings together Oracle customers, partners and the occasional competitor. Given Oracle’s fierce rivalry with SAP and smaller niche vendors in human resources software, as well as questions about Oracle’s upcoming Fusion applications, the event promised to be of interest to HR and HR technology executives.

Conference info: For more information, go to www.oracle.com/openworld/index.html.

Conference notes: Day 2— Thursday, October 26, 2006

Applications on the horizon: Much of Oracle's focus at the conference has been on upcoming releases of both its PeopleSoft Enterprise and Oracle E-Business Suite product lines. Those versions, Oracle says, are proof of its Applications Unlimited program, the commitment Oracle made earlier this year to continue improving various product lines even as it works to meld the best features of its products into a single application line dubbed Fusion.

E-Business Suite Release 12, which is scheduled to be available to customers within the next 12 months, is all about globalization, as Oracle tells it.

"Designed to support businesses in today's global economy, Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 enables customers to think globally to make better decisions, work globally to be more competitive and manage globally to lower costs and increase performance," the company said in a statement.

The software covers a variety of areas, including financials and HR. Among the improvements, Oracle says, are new capabilities planned in the Oracle Compensation Workbench tool that "show all forms of compensation for employees in a single place regardless of the employee's geographic location or organizational boundary."

Oracle declined to provide details about when PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0 will be available. But the company portrayed the coming product to be chock-full of improvements based on customer requests.

Among the changes is greater ease in handling different sorts of benefits that companies give employees these days. Another is the ability for employees getting electronic pay slips to print them out using the common PDF format. Currently, employees using PeopleSoft print those slips from Web pages that don’t necessarily match up well to standard printer paper.

As a sign of how much customers want that change, applause broke out in a session when Oracle's Aaron Green described the check-printing fix.

"I love it. Thank you," said Green, director of product strategy for Oracle’s human capital management team.

Most charismatic speaker—Aaron Green: Green, while not a senior Oracle official, was a crowd-pleasing speaker with a comedic edge. He drew chuckles during a discussion of how PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0 will handle employee benefits better. He admitted that he himself had gotten a notice recently from his employer about benefit costs.

"As it turns out, my costs are increasing," he said.

Bugs crawling, but conference helping: A Q&A discussion on Oracle’s PeopleSoft HR products revealed that PeopleSoft users have their share of glitches and hoped-for improvements.

Eleanor Roberts, HR application support manager at the California State University, said that PeopleSoft Enterprise 8.9 isn't ideal for handling cases where people have more than one job. She said each time a job is added, the person's hire date changes. Are there changes, Roberts asked, related to this issue in version 9.0?

"No," Green said simply, eliciting laughter.

The hire-date glitch wasn't a problem in an earlier version of the software, Roberts said after the panel concluded. Even so, Roberts described the 8.9 product as excellent. And she gave high marks to the conference, citing the wide variety of sessions.

—Ed Frauenheim

Conference notes: Wednesday, October 25

Conference theme: Oracle is very big: OpenWorld reveals how large Oracle’s world is. Having swallowed major software companies like PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems in recent years, Oracle’s showcase user conference is now massive. More than 41,000 attendees are here, the equivalent of a small city.

This is the biggest OpenWorld Oracle has ever put on, with more than 1,400 sessions planned, and more than 450 partners displaying products. The event could not be fully contained by San Francisco’s Moscone Center conference facility, so Oracle persuaded the city to close off a block of a major thoroughfare for added space.

Oracle says the impact on San Francisco is estimated at $60 million, including $10 million to $15 million in taxes paid directly to the city.

In your face yet on the periphery with Fusion: The show has a certain aggressive tone. Gigantic posters that are probably 30 feet tall tout Oracle’s No. 1-ness in various categories. (The claim to be No. 1 in human capital management is a bit questionable. AMR Research says Oracle leads, but Gartner Dataquest gives the crown to SAP.) And the pounding, high-adrenaline music that accompanies keynote speakers is at an ear-splitting level.

The noise hit a crescendo Wednesday morning, when two Ducati motorcycles roared through audience aisles and onto the stage as part of a guest appearance by the CEO of Ducati Consulting.

But a presentation about Oracle’s much anticipated Fusion applications had a decidedly different feel.

John Wookey, Oracle’s senior vice president for applications development, devoted part of his keynote speech Wednesday to Fusion application products, which are expected to start hitting the market next year. Judging by the presentation, Fusion applications will be unassuming critters.

A demonstration of an application that would be used by a sales representative to create a quote for a customer showed that Fusion takes up just a slice of the rep’s desktop screen. According to the demo, the sales rep could easily move between the Fusion application and other applications such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets. And after e-mailing a quote to the customer, that customer would see a panel on his or her computer allowing them to begin an instant-messaging session with the sales rep.

For nearly the entire demo, the Fusion application remained a small window on the computer screen.

"We’re part of the desktop; we’re not the desktop," Wookey said.

This approach, Wookey said, is a deliberate move by Oracle to adapt to people’s work habits. Oracle research into user experience found that people like to use tools they are familiar with, such as word processing programs and Microsoft Outlook.

Applications invisible with Ellison: Not surprisingly, Larry Ellison’s keynote speech Wednesday afternoon attracted hordes of conference-goers. But many began to trickle out midway through the iconic CEO’s speech. That may have had something to do with the fact that his talk was of interest almost exclusively to the database crowd. Ellison introduced a new support service for the Linux operating system as part of a push to expand the use of that technology with database software.

One of the digs on Oracle is that it doesn’t give enough love to its applications business. That business is growing much faster than the company’s database and middleware revenue. Still, Oracle’s database and middleware revenue is nearly three times as large as its applications business.

So perhaps some of those departing early from Ellison’s speech were frustrated that he focused so tightly on the database world. In any event, they missed a lighthearted moment from the man sometimes portrayed as a cold-hearted egomaniac. Dressed in his trademark black turtleneck and a gray sport coat, Ellison at one point welcomed onto the stage several penguins. (Penguins are the mascot of the Linux operating system.) "This is the crew I’m sailing with today," Ellison joked, a reference to the massive BMW Oracle yacht parked outside the auditorium. "Just kidding, guys," he said.

Then he laughed goofily and added: "They’re so cute."

—Ed Frauenheim