UKOUG Conference 23 Day 2

Posted on by Standard 1

UKOUG Conference ’23

If you missed my day 1, you can view it here.

Last night was the UKOUG Evening Celebration ’23, and although it finished at approximately 11:30pm, it took the team and board a couple of hours to pack up, debrief and have the traditional late night takeaway as some of us get too busy with the event, we don’t get a moment to eat properly or at all 🙁

Due to the late night, I skipped the first session and arrived for second session, however decided I’d use the hour to go over my presentation as I was presenting later in the day.

I had then planned to attend Kerry Osborne session, however one problem, Kerry wasn’t there! I checked with the team and they said he was delayed getting to the venue. So I looked who was around and saw Nigel Bayliss was around, and asked if he could fill the slot with any material he had already presented recently, as we had 50-100 people in the Ozone waiting for a presentation 🙄. He suggested Dom Giles, who kindly agreed to present minutes before the start time.

It was greatly appreciated, and Dom Giles presented “Oracle Database: What’s New, What’s Coming” which is what he presented at the recent Oracle DatabaseWorld at CloudWorld:

He talked about many new features in 23c and also what was coming. One of these new features that coming, was True Cache, which is similar to Redis which you put cache in front of the application to improve performance for data that doesn’t need to be most current data:

He also spoke about performance enhancements in 23c:

Finally concluded on database release and support timeline, the key being that 19c waived extended support increased by a year and 23c projected release in early 2024:

Whilst Dom was presenting, the UKOUG team had informed me that Kerry had arrived. So I went and spoke to him, luckily the next hour slot in Ozone was free as it was lunch, so I advised the audience that once Dom was finished, that Kerry would delivery his presentation in that free slot and they were free to stay and listen.

Next I attended “How to Improve Your Ability to Solve Complex Performance Problems” by Kerry Osborne, Google:

Has he had issues with his laptop, he decided to abandon his slides but still go through the process of how to solve complex performance problem, broken down into 3 parts:

  • Explain the basic process we must go through to solve a complex performance problem
  • Discuss some of the main factors that can inhibit our efforts
  • Discuss some of the techniques we can apply to improve our chances

It was interesting to hear from his 20 years of experiences, tips and tricks as well as experiences of working with of the best performance troubleshooters in the world.

Next, I went to have a light lunch and head to my next session which is unusual for me to attend, but as I’ve heard so much about CX lately, I thought it was worthwhile attending “Innovation with Oracle Intelligent Advisor” by Leona Chauhan:

Very interesting session, where I came to understand that Oracle Intelligent Advisor is a rules engine technology that is purpose built for automating complex policies and creating tailored personalised applications. For example, a company may have a complex maternity policy, that have large ruleset, that could be converted to rules and an application created off the back of these rules that will be used to question/interview the users and provide tailored response on their entitlement. The impressive part, was the tooling can take policy document and parse them into rules, which then can be refined into the final set of rules which the application is built off.

One of the key features is it automates decision-making, carrying out complex calculations, yet has a low code interface for development. This can save thousand of hours reducing errors in applications by intelligent online interviews, which can respond automatically, giving instant decision in a downloadable letter or form, which mirrors policy or process documents.

It can be embedded within a public webpage or private intranet site and can be integrated into ERP system, which can be on-premises or cloud. It is very flexible and is instrumental in giving the best customer experience.

Next what my own session “Harnessing the power of Oracle Exadata Database Machine“:

Where I talked about the “Oracle Secret Sauce”, well more it’s just simply Brawn Hardware with Smart Software. And it’s the integration of hardware and software that sets apart Exadata from the rest, as Oracle says: “Hardware and Software: Engineered to Work Together”.

I also went through:

  • Why move to Exadata
  • The benefits
  • What’s new in X10M (see blog post here for more info)
  • Migration Challenges
  • Tips and Tricks/Best Practices
  • How to tackle database consolidation
  • Different types of Exadata offerings/Responsibility Model
  • And of course, harnessing the power of Oracle Exadata Database Machine

Once my presentation was done, I was able to relax and attended “A Practical example of implementing TDE and TLS1.2 in an Oracle 19c Data Guard Environment” by Clive Archibald, Virgin Media O2:

This was delivered by one of my clients, Clive, who I have worked for nearly 10 years on their Exadata estate supporting their Smart Metering:

He went through a comprehensive example of how Virgin Media O2 had setup TLS 1.2, using certificates Azure Key Vault to manage them. Also went through example of how TDE was implemented.

Then came the final session of the conference (the best for last 😉), which I attended “Exadata: Strategy and Roadmap for New Technologies, Cloud, and On-Premises” by Alex Blyth, Oracle:

He first spoke about what Exadata is and the vision:

He then went onto discussing Oracle Exadata Exascale:

An exciting new feature, that uses Exadata platform to cater for broad spectrum of requirements, from small configurations to large deployment:

This is similar to how Autonomous database (shared infrastructure) can be consumed from a core and 1TB storage up to thousands of cores and petabytes of storage. It’s great for hyperscale, which Alex said selfishly Oracle needed for Oracle Cloud, but is also great for customer to use in the Oracle Cloud or on-premises, to allow for flexible elastic architecture.

Also, what great is state of the art storage efficient database cloning, meaning no more Exadata Sparse Clones with test master! Actual space efficient redirect on write technology:

Exadata Exascale, will facilitate a new OCI Exadata Database Service namely ExaDB-XS:

This will provide to be very flexible, elastic and cost efficient! It’s a really interesting space, which I look forward to:

So in summary, next gen software architecture, simple, flexible, efficient, foundation for multi-tenant Exadata Database Service:

Once the presentation was over, it was a case of wrapping up the conference, working with the team removing all the branding, pack up and leaving with the conference blues 😕:

Till next time! Hope to see you all soon!

If you found this blog post useful, please like as well as follow me through my various Social Media avenues available on the sidebar and/or subscribe to this oracle blog via WordPress/e-mail.

Thanks

Zed DBA (Zahid Anwar)

UKOUG Conference 23 Day 1

Posted on by Standard 2

UKOUG Conference ’23

If you missed my day 0, you can view it here.

Up bright and early, so I could get to the venue before the delegates. On arrival, I could see the UKOUG team had been busy getting all the branding up ready for the event 😎👏🏽:

The foyer to the main keynote area Ozone was ready for all the delegates to congregate:

Come 8am and the registration was open; it didn’t take too long for the area to fill up with lots of delegates, eager and ready to enjoy the conference (I hope):

Without our sponsors (reminder in case you don’t know, I am a UKOUG Board Member), we couldn’t put the conference on. It’s with their support we are able to continue, so it’s a big shout out to them, to thank them for their support:

UKOUG has had a hard time following Covid and we’re not out of the water, hence why I unashamedly continue to ask our sponsors to continue to support us, as well as organisations to send people to our conference. Without delegates, speakers and sponsors, we will no longer exist! I hope we are able to continue for many more years to come!

Richard Pepper, the president of the UKOUG opened up the conference with the welcome keynote, talking about how we are an independant non-for-profit organisation who’s been around for 40 years!

He also introduced how we’ll be working with Princes Trust, then introduced James Herbert, who is the Apps Member Advocate (my counterpart, where I am the Tech Member Advocate):

James explained our very new DISC model, that encapsulates what the UKOUG is: Discover, Influence, Share and Connect. We hope this will make it easier for our customers to understand the value of UKOUG, which we are going to add more to. We also want this to be a vessel for sponsorship as we envision larger sponsorship for each of the quadrants, providing the sponsors coverage throughout the year. Watch this space!

Next Richard spoke with Nick Wallace Oracle VP Technology Sales, Siobhan Wilson Oracle UK Country Leader and Kelly Pierce MBE Oracle:

They gave updates from Oracle CloudWorld which mainly were around Customer Success and CX.

Next I attended “23c – The Developer’s Release” by Connor McDonald, Oracle:

He spoke about many new features, to name a few:

  • Not requiring “from dual”
  • Drop “if exist”
  • Privileges on all schema objects
  • True boolean data type

Next I attended “The Future is Multicloud – Harnessing the power of Oracle Multicloud” by Sai Penumuru, Accenture:

Sai spoke about OCI and how Oracle are making it interconnected with other Clouds, and how this was going to be the future.

Next I attended “Oracle ACE Program & Community Programs” by Jennifer Nicholson, Oracle:

This was mainly to support her as an existing Oracle ACE. There were a few potential candidates that attended and wanted to learn more about the Oracle ACE Program.

Next I attended “Oracle ACE Product Update for ACE members” hosted by Jennifer Nicholson, Oracle. We had 3 Oracle guest speakers, of which firstly was Nadia Bendjedou:

Who talked about Oracle Apps Unlimited, how Oracle was still behind the product for at least 10 years which is on a rolling carousel. But reassured us it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon despite the existence of Oracle Fusion Cloud Apps, due to the large user base out there.

Next Tirthankar Lahiri, spoke about the new AI Vector Search that will be introduced in 23c:

Finally, Ewan Slater talked about Oracle GraalVM:

Next I attended “Finding Widlake is a bit like Finding Wally” by Brendan Tierney, Oralytics:

Interesting presentation talking about how using AI Vision models can be used to identify where Martin Widlake was in a photo.

Next I attended “All you need to know about Oracle” by Debra Lilley, Inoapps:

This isn’t the traditional presentation I would attend, but Debra sold the idea of the presentation the day before when I attended the Oracle ACE dinner, so I thought I’d give it a shot. It was interesting as it went into the history of Oracle, of which certain aspects mentioned, I didn’t know about.

The final presentation of the day that I attended was “Oracle Zero Downtime Migration: Get To The Cloud!” by Roisin Tapley, Capgemini UK:

She went through her experience of migrating hundreds of databases for a client using Zero Downtime Migration. What was more impressive is that she a recent graduate with no experience of Oracle databases but was able to use Zero Downtime Migration with little effort 😎.

UKOUG Evening Celebration ’23

Once I was done with the conference, it was a quick dash to the Hilton hotel in Reading where our 40th celebration party was held. I arrived just in time before the first coach arrived, and was able to welcome all the guests of the coach. I then proceeded to the hall where the party was, only the exhibitors were allowed into the hall at this point, whilst final preparations were underway.

I used this time to take photos of each of the exhibitors, so I could thank them on X:

And eAppSys, but unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of their stand before everyone came in as no one was at their stand.

Come 5:30pm and the doors opened; Aidan and myself welcomed everyone into the party, where everyone got welcome drinks sponsored by Veran.

Next Richard along with Scott Hay, Vice President UK Software Sales Oracle welcomed everyone to the party:

Next, Chris Gilbert from Bespoke Comedy gave a really cracking parody of Oracle Tech and Apps:

He had the audience laughing at Oracle’s expense:

I loved how he depicted Oracle Database World:

And brought in the Tux Oracle Linux penguin which I believe most people didn’t get:

Next on was the famous Milton Jones, who is known for his one-liners:

He was good, but I preferred the tailored jokes Chris made as they resonated better.

Finally to close of the party, The Original Party Band performed live:

It was great to catch up with so many people and have a 40th year celebration. I hope we get to celebrate many more years and hopefully be at the 50th anniversary of the UKOUG! 🤞🏽

You can view my day 2 here.

If you found this blog post useful, please like as well as follow me through my various Social Media avenues available on the sidebar and/or subscribe to this oracle blog via WordPress/e-mail.

Thanks

Zed DBA (Zahid Anwar)

UKOUG Conference 23 Day 0 ACE Adventure

Posted on by Standard 1

Introduction

Since 2007 without fail, I have attended the UKOUG Conference in some capacity. Initially only as a delegate, then speaker as well as volunteer, and more recently as board member in the position of the Tech Member Advocate.

Also as an Oracle Ace Pro, I have the benefit of being invited to the Oracle ACE Adventures, which are trips before or after conference courtesy of the Oracle ACE programme, to reward Oracle ACEs for their contribution to the Oracle community.

So today was about travelling to UKOUG Conference ’23, which this year is at Oracle’s headquarters in the UK at Reading Thames Valley Park, attending the Oracle ACE Adventures, welcome speakers and volunteers at the UKOUG Speakers drinks and finally attend the Oracle ACE dinner (another benefit of being an Oracle ACE).

Oracle ACE Adventures

Tuesday 14th November and the journey begins with a taxi to train station to catch a train at approximately 7:30am from Manchester to Oxford for the first Oracle ACE Adventure of Bodleian tour in Oxford:

We initially got to learn all about the early history of the Bodleian Library:

We were privileged to enter the oldest Bodleian Library built in 1488:

You could smell the musky smell of old books that are nearly 500 years old. These books can only be access by “readers” that are doing academic work and have to apply for reader permit and then swear an oath.

Here a scene from Harry Potter was filmed, as I’m not familiar with Harry Potter, I couldn’t tell you the exact point in the film:

Here we got to see where the “readers” would read the books:

Next we went into the Divinity School which is directly below the Bodleian Library:

Here more parts of Harry Potter and others films were filmed as detailed above.

The roof of the Divinity School was amazing, with a lot of sculptures of the donators that help fund the completion of the school as funds had ran out:

Finally a photo of the Oracle ACEs on this ACE Adventures:

Next was lunch at The Ivy, where we met the mascot of the white polar bear at the entrance:

I had traditional fish and chips, which was very nice:

As well as The Ivy warm chocolate bomb:

Finally all of us enjoying our desserts:

The second part of the ACE Adventure was to attend the Reading Museum to see the replicate of The Bayeux Tapestry:

Our guide took us around the 70 metres of The Bayeux Tapestry, explaining in detail each section:

Finally a photo of those who attend this ACE Adventure:

UKOUG Speakers Drinks

Next I had to switch hats from Oracle ACE to UKOUG board member and attend the UKOUG speakers drinks, where I was welcoming speakers and volunteers for drinks and food. We at UKOUG greatly appreciate our speakers and volunteers, as without them, we couldn’t put the conference on.

Here was Richard Pepper, the UKOUG president, talking to some of our speakers:

Speaker mingling with other speakers:

Sai and myself for a traditional selfie:

Speakers having some food:

Speakers enjoying some drinks 😊:

Oracle ACE Dinner

After switching hats from Oracle ACE to UKOUG board member, it was time to switch back for the final part of the day which was the Oracle ACE dinner at the Narrow Boat in Reading:

This was hosted by Jennifer (who leads the Oracle ACE Programme) and well attended by almost all the Oracle ACE speakers that had by then all arrived at reading.

It was a very long day! So after the ACE dinner, it was back to the hotel to quickly write this blog post up, so I could get some decent sleep! As tomorrow is day 1 of the UKOUG conference and as a board member I needed to be there before registration opens. And also tomorrow is a very long day with the conference in the day and in the evening, the 40th anniversary of UKOUG celebration in a party for all delegates and extra guests!

You can view my day 1 here.

If you found this blog post useful, please like as well as follow me through my various Social Media avenues available on the sidebar and/or subscribe to this oracle blog via WordPress/e-mail.

Thanks

Zed DBA (Zahid Anwar)

Oracle CloudWorld 2023 Day 2

Posted on by Standard 1

If you missed my day 1, you can view it here.

I know it’s been 3 weeks since my last blog post 🤦🏽‍♂️, just been extremely busy, but with many people asking me when am I going to finish the series, “the suspense is killing me”, it gave me motivation to just get it completed! 😎

Oracle CloudWorld Registration

Oracle CloudWorld actually starts on the Tuesday but you can register from Monday, so after spending the morning on bid work, I headed over to The Venetian Convention Centre, where the conference was held.

I would use the Las Vegas Monorail daily, and on route I would see The Sphere, it would light up in many different way, but inside was a concert hall. Pretty cool, below is how it looked as I passed:

Once arrived, it was surprisingly starting to get busy:

I heard over to registration, which thankfully wasn’t that busy:

Many people working on the registration desk, getting through the queue:

Right that was me registered 😎:

Oracle Partner Success Summit

I attended this event last year, it was pretty good and Safra made a flying visit. So I got there early to get front seats:

As expected Doug Smith opened up the Oracle Partner Success Summit:

And then welcome Safra Catz, the CEO of Oracle to the stage 😁:

Safra started with thanking the Oracle Partners:

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, every single one of you, we’ve had the most incredible year, because you have been a huge part of it, and you made our customers incredibly successful!”

Then Doug and Safra went on to discuss:

  • Innovation is key to success
  • Doing things fast, costs less
  • Benefit from economies of scale
  • Growing 45% year on year in OCI
  • Minimising labour, maximising efficiency
  • AI, data everywhere, the cool startups coming to OCI
  • All about customer success, change is hard, it’s the sociology, partners working with our joint customers for their success
  • Enterprises harnessing the AI for their customers/end users
  • Speed and security is important for our joint customers where their data is their Crown Jewels
  • Microsoft announcement, Azure with OCI, allows customers to bring Oracle workloads to the Azure Cloud. Openness is key, allow customers to choose what is best and not be locked in. Customer free choice, opens up for more and more business and success.

Next Jae Evans and Mike Sicilia came to the stage:

The topic was “Innovation: Building Solution Together”.

They talked about:

  • Integrating applications together is the most costly element. Oracle has end to end applications along with industry expertise.
  • Better, faster, cheaper Cloud. Differentiate by the ability to right size different option of Clouds. Sovereign Cloud, Cloud@Customer and Alloy.
  • Openness, integrate not only for Oracle apps, but others, the data fabric, the public APIs, presenting the best solution for the customer.

Next Jason Maynard, Mark Hura, Garret Llg and Cormac Watters came to the stage:

The topic was “Business Impact: Achieving Go-To-Market Success Together”.

They talked about:

  • Partners bringing industry expertise to enable customer success. Oracle helping partners navigate Oracle, so partners can help our customer to gain success.
  • Partners to do 70% of implementation.
  • Engaging early with Oracle, single account exec model. Industry focused, technology platform, utilising innovative.
  • Have to commit, and follow through together! To gain better outcome.
  • Partners as trusted advisors, advising customers to better gain success.
  • Start-ups, ISVs, Enterprises and Government, 4 types of customers. What is the architecture and transformation. Migrate, manage, and transformation.
  • 80% of go-lives via partners for Oracle Apps. Partners then bring innovation to the customers.

Key takeaways:

  • OCI differentiates from a technical and commercial perspective
  • Engage early, partners are more closer to customer
  • Mutually commit, and see it through together

Next Dan Haller and Ross Brown (I sat next to Ross last year at the Oracle Partner Success Summit 😉) came to the stage:

The topic was “Business Impact: Winning Together”.

They discussed:

  • Building differentiated solutions together
  • Leaning in, look at the whole of OCI to bring value to customer
  • See the economic benefits
  • Looking at workloads, moving them and then looking at the rest
  • Understand the distributed services
  • Clouds are built not bought
  • Build more together
  • One Oracle with you the partners

The final segment was Doug and Gary Miller:

The topic was “Customer Success: Delivery Together”.

They discussed:

  • Driving customer success together
  • Getting the value from Oracle technology
  • Working together, getting it right first time
  • More demand than capacity by two fold, so if more partners are up to speed and trained, can do more business
  • Don’t engage reactively, but proactively

Next Doug mentioned the Oracle CloudWorld Tour, so if you missed Oracle CloudWorld in Las Vegas, you could attend one more closer to home:

Doug closed the Oracle Partner Success Summit by announcing the Global Winners of the 2023 Partner Awards:

Version 1 had won the EMEA “2023 Oracle Partner Award Apps/ SaaS” for “Innovation” (more info on day 1), so we were entered into the global tier for judging but unfortunately we didn’t win. Well done to the Partners that won, detailed below:

After the Oracle Partner Success Summit, was the reception in the foyer, where hundreds of people from partners got the opportunity to network:

I met a few familiar faces, had a few soft drinks before heading to my next installment 😊.

Oracle Database Premiere Customer Appreciation Event

I’ve really enjoyed the Oracle Database Premiere Customer Appreciation Event in the past, as I get to met the majority of the Database and Exadata Product Management team, discuss challenges, customers, what would be good, etc. So was looking forward to this one! Especially as it was at the Madame Tussauds Las Vegas:

In association with AMD, no surprise seem as chipset in Exadata switched from Intel to AMD, more details here:

I took photos of every wax model, too many to share, but I will share a few below.

No idea who this is, drop me a comment if you know who she is:

This neither:

This I know is Vin Diesel 😎:

This is Whoopi Goldberg:

Johnny Depp:

The one and only “The Rock”:

Brad Pitt:

Evander Holyfield:

A favourite, Snoop Dogg:

The legend, Michael Jackson:

My all time favourite Tupac:

Pretty surreal, as his murderer was found in Las Vegas only days after Oracle CloudWorld 😲:

A good friend of Tupac but later rival The Notorious B.I.G.:

The American Boxing promoter Don King:

The legend Mike Tyson!:

On the way out, a wax model of Spider Man!:

I big one of The Hulk:

After playing a 4D game with Sai on the exit of Madame Tussauds, it was a trip back to the hotel on the Las Vegas Monorail and capturing some more Sphere photos:

Tomorrow will day 1 of the actual Oracle OpenWorld conference 👍🏽

If you found this blog post useful, please like as well as follow me through my various Social Media avenues available on the sidebar and/or subscribe to this Oracle blog via WordPress/e-mail.

Thanks

Zed DBA (Zahid Anwar)

Oracle CloudWorld 2023 Day 1

Posted on by Standard 2

If you missed my day 0, you can view it here.

Due to bid work, the day was consumed with that, with the evening attending the Oracle EMEA Partner Reception Event at the Commonwealth.

Oracle EMEA Partner Reception Event

The Oracle EMEA Partner Reception Event was for all Oracle Partners across EMEA, which I believe approximately 150-200 people attended.

We were hosted by Stefan Diedericks from Oracle.

I attended this event last year, however this year was different as Stefan was hosting the “Oracle Europe Middle East and Africa Partner Award“. We were proud to be finalist in the “2023 Oracle Partner Award Apps/ SaaS” for “Innovation” against Fujitsu for UK & Ireland. Our submission was based on our Cloudbridge Suite, which is our comprehensive set of tools designed to accelerate Integration, Data Migration, and Automated Testing for Oracle Cloud SaaS services, thereby helping our customers meet their business objectives with ease.

My colleagues Colm Gillard, Tim German, and Joel Acha hadn’t arrived in time, so I had the pleasure of representing Version 1 with Graham Smith should we win any awards.

Version 1 won the UK & Ireland “2023 Oracle Partner Award Apps/ SaaS” for “Innovation” 😁, along with Innoapps for “Business Impact” and Infosys for “Customer Success”:

We were all finalist for the respective EMEA Award, and it with great pleasure that we won the EMEA “2023 Oracle Partner Award Apps/ SaaS” for “Innovation” 🏆👏🏽😎:

It was great to be recognised for our innovation at an EMEA level, it’s a great milestone and I’m proud to be a part of it. You can read more info here.

After the awards, I met various people including but not limited to:

Friends from Vertice, Tony Cassidy, David Heraty and Abigail Giles-Haigh (now at Oracle).

Leona Chauhan the CEO of Magia Consulting and Philippa Clifford-Davies Oracle Channel Strategy Leader for Applications MidMarket.

Philippa had introduced Leona to Tony, David and myself as part of Unity programme to get partners that can compliment each other, to work together.

They say it’s a small world, but in conversation with Leona, not only did I realise she went to the same university I attended, but at the same time and was on the same course! 🤯 To add to that, we were born only 6 days apart (I’ll let you work out who’s older 😂), and lived very close to each other at the time but we hadn’t really crossed paths properly till now! 🤷🏽‍♂️

Other people I met:

Philip Wilson

Chris Mason

Finally I swung by the entrance to Oracle CloudWorld, where they were still preparing for the next day for registration.

Tomorrow will be registration, attending the Oracle Partner Success Summit and the Oracle Database Premiere Customer Appreciation Event.

You can view my day 2 here.

If you found this blog post useful, please like as well as follow me through my various Social Media avenues available on the sidebar and/or subscribe to this Oracle blog via WordPress/e-mail.

Thanks

Zed DBA (Zahid Anwar)