Oracle Computers

Tuesday, August 15th, 1995

Brisbane Convention Centre

SECOND DRAFT

written by STEVE DAVIS for Homer Papantonio

INTRODUCTION:

Our guest speaker this evening is the Business Development Manager from Digital's "Oracle Competency Centre" in Velbond Switzerland. He is in Australia to assess the viability of new breakthrough technology in the area of interactive database applications. Yiannis will be based as Digital's R & D centre and Bond University, here on the Gold Coast and will be introducing this breakthrough technology to a diverse range of organisations throughout Australia. Ladies and Gentlemen, please a warm and enthusiastic welcome for Mr Yiannis Carriganis.

======================================================================

Thank you for the kindness of your introduction and I am very welcome to be here. I must say that your Golden Coast is a very beautiful place and compares much to my home of Greece, although I must admit that we have history on our side. I am most pleased to be here in Australia to be introducing to you the best of technologies that we now have for selling in Europe. Although this product is not yet available for the public I am now available to be telling you the details for your information in Australia. You must all be aware of the beauty and power of Oracle as a DBMS or I am guessing that you would be at another conference this week if it was taking place in Australia.

The Oracle groups is very strong and I am please to be partaking in it. I have had many opportunities to work for many different companies, but it is the ease of use of Oracle and the friendliness of people associated with it that makes me so happy to be here. Also I have been seeing that Oracle made revenues of three billion US dollars in the last year and that makes me very happy because I am hoping to be working on a performance bonus. My only regret is that while I am here I am being paid in Australian dollars, I would much prefer to be getting dollars from New Zealand right now.

But now I must turn to the topic of my discussion, some new technologies that will take Oracle to the next level of usefulness. Oracle is one of the worlds largest software companies for the manufacture of databases and software tools. As you all know it is extremely powerful and widely accepted on a wide range of platforms. Concepts like this make Oracle very attractive to a wide range of industries in applications as varied as billing systems, process control, mapping and medical facilities. To be finding a product that can serve so many purposes without having to compromise the integrity of the global data overview is an important consideration for many organisations where such integrity is of the most vital importance.

This is why it is being used by many Australian companies like the Ampol Refinery, Allgas and the Brisbane City Council. Perhaps if it was being used by your premier, Mr Goose, he might have had a better showing in his recent election. But what is it that make Oracle so special? In Velbond we have been working hard to make Oracle more than just the industry leader. We have been making lots of efforts to make it a household name amongst all levels of users of information technology. For that reason Oracle has been leading the way in corporate sponsorship of European Scientific exhibitions and public displays. People in the general community have the opportunity of participating in hands-on activities that are designed to subtly educate them about the product, its capabilities and effective ways of utilising it in either their lives or their businesses.

We use the Ronald MacDonald formula of brain-washing them while they are young to ensure product loyalty for life. Unlike Mcdonalds, we don't need to use a clown to make our merchandise look good. By offering corporate sponsorship to projects we see as vital to establishing a young following, we have established a very effective way of communicating the Oracle name and its uses to people who are interested in the so-called Information Superhighway. It is very frustrating for a manufacturer to have their items included by OEMs and then for them to receive little or no recognition for the incredible service they have provided.

If you take a car for example. When I buy my Porche, I am buying only the car brand name, however many of the vital components are made by others and then assembled by Porche. These manufacturers go largely unnoticed. So it often is with products like Oracle. For this reason, Oracle corporation is beginning a new phase of its existence by taking the name to the public and doing massive marketing programs to ensure that computer users become brand- aware of the Oracle name. Of course it is one thing to let the users of the Internet know that they are using Oracle, but these users generally aren't all that interested in what technology lies behind the application they have linked to. Users are after interesting graphics, humorous pages, information, files or, more often, they are just interested in surfing the Internet and discovering things that interest them. Despite all the alarmist talk in the newspapers, it is very difficult to find out how to make a bomb or LSD on the Internet.

However, if you are interested pornography, I know the URL of several pages that have very erotic pictures of Greek women in the olive groves. In Greece we had to learn a bit about surfing the Internet, unlike in Australia, we have very little surf on the Mediterranean. However while I am her in the down-under, I am looking forward to as you say "hitting the waves" both electronically and on the beach. But this is all part of another story I will be coming to late in my speech. For now, I want to discuss the fundamental problems in selling software to Internet users. Firstly, let's say they use Netscape, version one point one, the most recent release. Do they go out and buy it? No, all they have to do is FTP it from one of the many mirror sites and they are ready to use it, without payment or any so-called licensing agreements. Netscape is not even shareware, which amazes me.

As you would know, one technique to gain a financial return on a programming investment is the shareware concept, however this is fraught with traps for the unsuspecting computer user. And given the numbers of inexperienced users of computers that have unlimited access to massive amounts of software that is, in effect, free for the taking, I feel that we have only recently begun to see the trickle down of these problems. Often software developers release their product as shareware with incredible success. For example, the Apogee company makes excellent games such as Commander Keen, Duke Nukem and Cosmo. They have had a substantial financial return from people who are impressed enough or feel some guilt so that they register the program. Also 4DOS, a remarkable DOS replacement for Pcs has made a significant impact forcing Microsoft to copy, steal and even license many of the previously external utilities. Further, I wish I was the person banking the cheques that come in for the game DOOM, a game that has taken the world by storm with its incredible graphics and addictive game play.

To try to guarantee some kind of financial return, sometimes shareware is released with many important features are disabled until registration is paid for, this is commonly known as cripple-ware. However, with Netscape, there are no significant restrictions placed on its use or the availability of any features. This is a dangerous precedent facing a company like Oracle, where an adequate return is required to keep the share holders happy. How are we to compete in a market place where fully functional, exceptionally well- written software is virtually given way? Obviously the market niche we need to explore is that of the developer who is creating new applications that service users of the Internet.

As you may know, Oracle has made a decisive move and decided to scrap its character based environment in favour of a graphical interface. Code-named Smart-Client, this new line of software will give users Internet access, work flow management and application partitioning. Oracle has made a brave decision to rebuild the client/server software from the ground up by redesigning the Co-operative Applications Suite. The thirty modules have been written in Oracle 4.5, this will give users the ability to splice their applications and run them across an array of database and application servers and their client machines. As you may have realised, this is more than just an upgrade. Some of the new features will enable business users to keep track of processes that are thought to add value to goods and services. There will also be hooks to applications that will enable a much simpler method of conducting electronic commerce.

Thanks to reconfigured architecture of the suite, these modules can be partitioned and their codes run across multiple machines. As if these developments are not enough for one speech, I am also proud to elaborate on a new application known as Oracle Media Objects. OMO helps developers write multi-media applications that run on the World Wide Web, interactive television or CD-ROM. This product is currently being tested in-house and we are planning a simultaneous release in Australia and the USA. Hopefully this will eliminate a constant source of dissatisfaction, where developers have to wait an unreasonable time for the local release of product. One of the incredible features is that OMO is a cross-platform tool for both Macintosh and Windows environments. This allows a program written on one platform to run on the other with virtually no modifications. Primarily it will be marketed to companies and departments that build marketing, training and sales presentations. In a radical departure from Oracle's previous distribution channels, Media Objects for the Macintosh is already available at the Oracle Web site for a free 90-day evaluation.

Does everyone here have the URL of the Oracle page? If not, it is, obviously http - colon - forward slash, forward slash - www.oracle.com Not very hard when you think about it. So this will give the developer tools for actively creating meaningful information for business or for the web. And as we all know, there is a desperate need for some meaningful pages on the web. I have been looking at some of the pages created locally on the Golden Coast at a host called On the Net. If you have a pen, you might like to write these down, I will assume the http://. Based at Bond University, but not really part of the educational establishment is an organisation called On the net, providing local Internet access to residents of the Gold Coast. We have been trialing several new products there with spectacular and remarkable results. But while there I have had the opportunity to look at some of the web pages as produced by local Australians.

There is one page at that has a link described as a link to a "blank page" Out of curiosity I had a look and it was indeed a blank page. Now, I ask you, is this a valuable used of bandwidth? What inspired this person to place a page on the World Wide Web with absolutely nothing on it? Perhaps if he had access to Oracle Media Objects it could be enhanced to show absolutely nothing, but with style! But I am drifting from my track a little. Let's look at another of the new applications, the Warehouse family of products, services and partnerships that will provide access to data at any level of detail or summary. Warehouse will support version 7.3 of the Oracle database which is now in beta testing and is expected to ship at the end of this year. Is anyone interested in a bet about which comes out first - version 7.3 or Windows-95?

Warehouse is a very complex product, promising three-fold indexing, five-fold complex query, 20 fold drill-down performance and zero fold increase in salary for programmers. You may know that Discovery/2000 is a member of the Warehouse family, they are decision support tools for OLTP databases and data warehouses. Also, Oracle has included IRI express OLAP tools in the warehouse technology strategy, or WTI. So, in summary of warehouse, we have OLTP, combined with OLAP from IRI creating a DBMS with WTI on a PC with CD. This sounds like a lot of BULL. However, I am assuring you that it is not. All of this drives Oracle to greater and greater heights. Believe it or not, Oracle is hopeful of even further growth after recording its first one billion dollar quarter. This is a 52% increase in sales, but do think I am seeing a 52% increase in wages? Certainly not ladies and gentlemens. In the fourth quarte, the server business had its best growth at 70%, this is according to Lawrence Ellison, the president and CEO of Oracle corporation. The company has many innovative lines, second generation client/server development tools, Developer/2000, Designer/2000 and Oracle 7 Multi Dimension that is capable of supporting spatial data. But do you think I am getting some of these benefits personally? No, I am not. I am coming from a small island of Santorini...

Dear reader, please keep in mind that this was written for someone else and suits his character more than mine.