5 Minute Briefing: Data Integration had a chance to visit the COLLABORATE 09 conference for Oracle users in Orlando during the week of May 4. We conducted interviews with both Ian Abramson, the president of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), and later with Raymond Payne, president of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG).
Despite the tight economic conditions, COLLABORATE was an intensive educational event and was well-attended. IOUG, which announced a companion virtual event offering COLLABORATE sessions to remote attendees, also established groups on the social networking sites LinkedIn and Facebook. The use of both virtual events and social networking sites by user organizations marks the beginning of a new era in providing information to the IT market. While it's clear that there simply is no substitute for in-person interaction at events like COLLABORATE, the provision of information via the web opens up the conference content to a much wider group of users, and does so economically.
At the OAUG interview, 5 Minute Briefing engaged in a lively discussion on IT automation. President Payne, who in his professional life is principal architect, Oracle Infrastructure at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, discussed the issue of increasing IT complexity and the demands this trend puts on "people time." In Payne's view, the guiding principle to effective IT management is: Maximize your department's ability to leverage people through automation. He plans to deliver a session at Oracle OpenWorld this fall focused on the topic of "Grid Control." In it, he will outline the procedures put in place at Johns Hopkins to reduce the time invested in quarterly patch updates by 85%.
5 Minute Briefing, through its Unisphere Research arm, is a partner of both the IOUG, through IOUG ResearchWire, and the OAUG, through OAUG ResearchLine, in providing research services as a member benefit. In this era of "doing more with less," and our take-away from COLLABORATE was that, clearly, the need for information has never been greater, and that user groups will continue to lead the way in providing relevant and compelling information in new and innovative ways. Notes From COLLABORATE 09 in Orlando
Despite the tight economic conditions, COLLABORATE was an intensive educational event and was well-attended. IOUG, which announced a companion virtual event offering COLLABORATE sessions to remote attendees, also established groups on the social networking sites LinkedIn and Facebook. The use of both virtual events and social networking sites by user organizations marks the beginning of a new era in providing information to the IT market. While it's clear that there simply is no substitute for in-person interaction at events like COLLABORATE, the provision of information via the web opens up the conference content to a much wider group of users, and does so economically.
At the OAUG interview, 5 Minute Briefing engaged in a lively discussion on IT automation. President Payne, who in his professional life is principal architect, Oracle Infrastructure at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, discussed the issue of increasing IT complexity and the demands this trend puts on "people time." In Payne's view, the guiding principle to effective IT management is: Maximize your department's ability to leverage people through automation. He plans to deliver a session at Oracle OpenWorld this fall focused on the topic of "Grid Control." In it, he will outline the procedures put in place at Johns Hopkins to reduce the time invested in quarterly patch updates by 85%.
5 Minute Briefing, through its Unisphere Research arm, is a partner of both the IOUG, through IOUG ResearchWire, and the OAUG, through OAUG ResearchLine, in providing research services as a member benefit. In this era of "doing more with less," and our take-away from COLLABORATE was that, clearly, the need for information has never been greater, and that user groups will continue to lead the way in providing relevant and compelling information in new and innovative ways.