Profit Magazine - November 2007

EDITOR’S NOTE

OLD VERSUS NEW

Although we have an editorial plan for each issue of Profit, there are always new stories, new customers, and new topics that we didn’t anticipate when we put the schedule together. I’m working now on a calendar that includes the November 2008 issue, for instance, and my crystal ball says that SOA and Fusion will be top of mind, but I’m sure many potential story ideas will crop up in the meantime.

But for each issue, during the final week when we’re pushing content to the printer, some aspect of something we’ve done always stands out just a half step from the rest. This time it’s John Matelski’s column, in which he offers his take on the release of Oracle Database 11g, contrasted with our interview with Paul

Pedrazzi, founder of Oracle AppsLab, the company’s testing ground for Web 2.0 functionality in the workplace.

So it’s the old versus the new; the technology that Oracle was built on, 30 years ago, versus the technologies that are becoming requirements for any company expecting to get mind share in today’s environment—where the boundaries between business and personal life, workplace and home, your job and your hobby, are blurred or nonexistent. But the fact is, much of the time that people are able to dedicate to new modes of working, new methods of communicating, and new social/work dynamics, would not be possible if people weren’t saving time and gaining efficiencies from the work done by our database development team. The developers who are dedicated to the basic building blocks of business, like our database, are just as forward thinking and innovative as the people working on the applications and the coolest new tools.

So kudos to the database developers, who have produced a version of Oracle Database that is winning plaudits from beta testers, as well as to our application developers, who are bringing next-generation technology more commonly associated with 10-person startups to our business applications environment. If you’re reading this at Oracle Open World—or if you’re planning to attend the online version of the show on our Web site, at oracle.com/openworld—I hope you’ll take the time to learn about both sides of Oracle, and explore the benefits that the evolution of our database is bringing to you as well as the revolutionary aspects of our newest technologies.