April 17, 2019

April 17, 2019 | Michelle Wilkinson | Senior Director, Marketing

We look forward to COLLABORATE each year, and this year was no exception. Run by the Quest Oracle Community, OATUG, and IOUG, COLLABORATE 19 is the largest user-led, user-focused event for Oracle users of all levels. The event is a casual way to connect with our loyal customers, network with attendees and other vendors, and introduce users to third-party support if they aren’t already familiar.

After five years in Las Vegas, the event had a new home this year in San Antonio, TX. For those who missed Vegas, we offered a giant dice game (see below), which proved popular with hundreds of attendees.

Gaming aside, COLLABORATE helps us to take the direct pulse of the Oracle user community. We take a “divide and conquer” approach, where some team members attend sessions to keep up with trends and learn new skills, others network with long-time attendees who have become friends, and several staff the booth, ready to meet with those investigating the solution providers.

Here are a few insights from our team.

Brett Trigg, Manager of Technical Support Services, Oracle Support

“As this was my first year attending, I enjoyed the program and energy. From the Oracle side, the big topic was Cloud. Whether it was database or analytics, cloud was the thing. I even attended one session presented by an Amazon engineer about their Relational Database Service and how to manage your Oracle databases there.

“As for Oracle Database, security was also a hot topic.  I attended several security-focused sessions, with the best one being presented by Integrigy, where the presenter hacked Oracle databases in real time. I did learn that the Center for Internet Security does not have security benchmarks for WebLogic Server (my area of expertise) and found out that they will be creating this community, in case anyone else is interested in joining.”

Chris Polston, Manager of Technical Support Services, JD Edwards Support

“From the JDE side, the hot topic this year was clearly Orchestrator. Oracle is dedicating a hefty amount of resources into building out and marketing the feature. This was followed closely by interest in the Cloud (of course). Everyone is waiting for someone else to go cloud first, or not considering it at all. Finally, users I heard from felt that 64-bit JDE was a bit of a fizzle. The effort to switch rewards you with ~5% positive performance gain, unless you are on an iSeries. Then you take a 1% penalty.”

Karen Blazek, Director of Customer Success

“Much of my time was spent meeting customers at our booth, and based on those conversations, I agree with both Brett and Chris. I spent more time around the JDE client base, where there is a high level of uncertainty about what is or is not coming out. World customers are now asking if they move to E1, will they be in the same boat five years from now with E1 no longer supported or developed. My takeaway is that the JDE loyalty to Oracle seems to be decreasing and more open to the idea of third-party support.”

Some final thoughts

It was my 7th COLLABORATE, and I found the new venue refreshing! Everyone I spoke with had positive comments regarding the presentations. I thought there was good energy on the exhibit floor, especially during the two extended receptions. Our booth was adjacent to the newly named OATUG. I was impressed with all they do to keep attendees engaged – from education to community service, to just plain fun with the 360-photo booth.

We look forward to COLLABORATE 2020 back at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, and then to 2021, where it will be hosted in our hometown of Denver!