SAN FRANCISCO: Two events in particular dominated San Francisco this weekend.

While the oil spill on the Bay and the subsequent efforts to control the damage and rescue the fauna was understandably the top news, close on its heels was Oracle’s annual OpenWorld conference and exhibition organized at Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco.

While SFO has been the permanent venue for Oracle OpenWorld for a few years now, this year’s event has assumed special status for a host of reasons.

For one, 2007 marks the 30th anniversary of Oracle (founded by Bob Miner, Larry Ellison and Ed Oates as Software Development Labs in 1977) it also, as Ellison reminisced on a 30-year flashback tour on a Sunday evening, it marks the 10th death anniversary of Miner (widely regarded as the heart of Oracle).

More importantly, even by the gargantuan standards of the world’s second largest software company, this year’s OpenWorld with nearly 43,000 attendees is massive. It probably is the world’s largest event targeted at enterprises and how they can harness the powers of IT to facilitate their business performances.

Significant impact
Quite understandably, OpenWorld has had a significant impact on the entire lifestyle of the city.

Coupled with this, there was a power outage for a few hours in this area owing to some breakdown in the systems of Pacific Gas & Electric. Coincidentally, Pacific Gas is being touted as one of Oracle’s marquee customers through hoardings across the city.

Though the initial trends, therefore, were not so auspicious, the sheer scale of OpenWorld, kicked off in earnest on Sunday evening with Ellison’s remembrances, has dispelled all Doubting Thomases.

Apart from smoothly managing the logistical nightmare of this magnitude, the Oracle jamboree ultimately seems to be having a positive impact on the city and its inhabitants, notwithstanding traffic snarls. Most of the cabbies this correspondent met over the weekend were happy over the influx of people due to OpenWorld; even the officials at San Francisco’s famous tourist spot Fisherman’s Wharf were loudly wondering about the additional tourism revenue to be generated through the event.


iFlex acquisition and strong Indian presence
The acquisition of iflex has contributed here leading to the formation of the Financial Services Global Business Unit (FSGBU) with Rajesh Hukku as its helm. It is in this space where Oracle, SAP and now increasingly Microsoft and maybe Google in the future would be the main combatants.

OpenWorld seems to have a strong Indian presence. While a large portion of them would be the Indian employees of Oracle and its sponsor partners in the US, a number of Indian partners and customers of Oracle are present here too. So while we have large exhibition stalls of Infosys, Zensar, TCS, Satyam, Cognizant and the likes large customers like HPCL, GENPACT, Hindalco, and L&T among others have joined in too.

Oracle has pronounced its commitment to Greener IT also through OpenWorld. To reduce carbon emission, it has taken small but significant measures like not providing plastic water bottles to every attendee. Instead, every participant has been provided an empty bottle of recyclable material and sufficient numbers of water containers put up at the venue.

Paper press releases and conference agendas have been reduced. From next OpenWorld, it would be completely transferred online. One of the participants, Deloitte Consulting, has been specifically lauded for putting up a paperless show.