Having seen previous Oracle OpenWorld Keynotes I’ll admit to being a bit anxious when I heard that for the first time since 2004 EMC had a keynote slot.
To paraphrase from Twitter, I was afraid we’d go to OpenWorld on our hands & knees like many other people who’ve trod that stage. We can all think of a partner of two who’s gotten up on their hind legs, phoned in why you should use Oracle with their offerings and then watched as they were whipped in public by the host in subsequent sessions.
Since strength, who has it and who lacks it, is a critical part of any Oracle relationship dynamic you don’t want to be the one in the room to lack for it or the Shark from Redwood Shores will rip you to pieces.
What I saw today was a display of strength and it was commented on in the Twitter feedback during the keynote.
There was a bit of a disappointed sigh when Joe finished up the business portion and passed over to product. A different audience from the speeds, feeds and tech fanatics who hang out at EMC World, VMworld and the other industry shoes we’re used to. The room wanted more on strategy, opportunity and the changes happening in IT. That’s not my area of interest personally but it’s obvious it is an area of interest for a number of OpenWorld attendees.
While there was little new in the keynote for anyone who’s been at EMC World, Lightning is now in widely deployed Beta and moves forward towards availability to the EMC Direct Sales force (And I assume the Channel) Joe & Pat pushed the value of doing business with EMC in front of an audience many of whom don’t today or may never have done any business with EMC.
The message was clear, EMC & Oracle agree on some things but differ on others. Here’s what we differ on and we’re going to show how and why we differ right now.
We will cooperate but we will compete. Hard.
The ability to pitch to that audience is worth the effort and there was no playing safe or redacting parts of the message as to not to tread on the host’s toes.
With the on stage triumvirate of Joe, Pat and Chad mentioning and showing VMware products, SpringSource Frameworks, Greenplum Analytics, EMC Storage with Compute capability (I didn’t say EMC Servers) all of which compete with Oracle offerings, will EMC be invited back?
I’d say the company stands a better chance for a repeat performance than those who’ve toadied to the host in previous years and then found themselves in Oracle’s gun sights when they’ve been tagged as vulnerable and weak.
