Larry Ellison walks on stage for his opening keynote at the 2016 Oracle OpenWorld.  Photo by Marcus Siu

Article and photos by Marcus Siu

SAN FRANCISCO, SEPTEMBER 18, 2016 – Oracle kicked off its annual four-day OpenWorld conference event with its Executive Chairman of the Board and CTO (Chief Technology Officer), Larry Ellison at the command, where he was featured in the Opening Keynote lineup at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on Sunday evening.  He also has a second keynote this Tuesday.  The rest of the team Oracle lineup includes Mark Hurd, CEO, Thomas Kurian, President of Product Development, Dr. Vishal Sikka, CEO at Infosys, and David Donatelli, Executive Vice President.

Ellison shared his vision for Oracle Cloud and customer success in the cloud.

“Our major competitors today are Amazon for infrastructure and Workday for applications on a daily basis; these are the two companies we see as opposed to IBM for infrastructure and SAP for applications.  This is a breath taking change.  This year you’ll see us moving aggressively into infrastructure as a service (IaaS).”

Oracle Cloud no match compared to the Amazon Cloud.  Photo by Marcus Siu.

“New second generation data centers offer twice as many cores as Amazon, twice as much memory as Amazon, four times as much storage as Amazon, and more than ten times the I/O capacity of Amazon…but you have to be willing to pay less.”

Ellison announced that Oracle are offering a new set of computer hardware and identical software that are used in their cloud that can be installed behind a customers data center and firewall attached to any high speed local area network.

In addition, Ellison also announced Oracle’s acquisition of Palerra, the leading cloud access security broker, which Ellison believes is an important addition to Oracle’s cloud security portfolio.

Diane Bryant discusses how the cloud is closing the gaps between business and its customers.  Photo by Marcus Siu.

Ellison was preceded by Diane Bryant, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Data Center Group at Intel who stressed the that the cloud is closing the gaps between business and its customers.

With the proliferation of information and communication technology around the world, it allows new opportunities for grown for enterprises.  It means new services and all-new business models.  With cloud computing and the increasing availability of connected devices, more and more data are generated daily.  Artificial Intelligence will be the recipient of this data, transforming how business will operate.

The evening continued just outside the Moscone Center at the Oracle Cloud Plaza for the Oracle Welcome Reception party with New York-based pop-rock band, The American Authors performing after the Opening Keynote.  Their encore of their infectious catchy multi-platinum hit and anthem commercial hit single, “Best Day of My Life”has played just about everywhere, including TV shows, trailers and sporting events.

Despite the global success of this song, lead singer Zac Barnett of the American Authors asserts, “the best days of their lives is still yet to come.”

The American Authors play the Oracle Welcome Reception Party at OpenWorld.  Photo by Marcus Siu.

With the future of the continuation of surpassing their competition in the cloud, it looks like the best days of Oracle are still yet to come, as well.