Oracle Industry Analyst World: 5 Themes From Redwood Shores

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is hosting key industry analysts this week at the company’s Redwood Shores, Calif., headquarters. The VAR Guy scored a sneak peek at the Oracle Industry Analyst World agenda — which includes plenty of cloud computing, big data, mobile computing and channel strategy updates. So what do Oracle President Mark Hurd (pictured) and several other Oracle executives have planned for the gathering? Here are five themes that will emerge at the conference.

First, a little background: Oracle Industry Analyst World arrives during a rather intriguing week. A few miles north of Oracle, server rivals like Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM will be busy at an OpenStack cloud conference in San Francisco. And further south, Cisco Partner Summit 2012 is striving to rally partners around the Cisco unified compute system (UCS).

Oracle, meanwhile, is countering those rivals with engineered systems — hardware, software… everything. Some of the information at Oracle Industry Analyst World 2012 is under non-disclosure, a standard practice at many IT-oriented gatherings. But nothing below is confidential. Among the five themes or developments worth tracking…

1. Emulating Apple?: Sure, Apple is more of a consumer company. But Oracle, too, believes it can simplify the IT experience — though engineered systems like Exadata and Exalogic. It’s clear the Exa brand is becoming pretty darn strategy to Oracle. How strategic? More thoughts later this week…

2. Oracle and the Cloud: The VAR Guy can’t say much about this because the conference is yet to start. But keep tabs on Thomas Kurian, executive VP of product development.

3. Big Data: Is it possible to discuss databases and enterprise applications without mentioning Big Data these days? Certainly not. Last week, Oracle Senior VP Andrew Mendelsohn offered Wall Street watchers an update on Oracle’s Big Data strategy. The Big Data discussion will continue this week at Oracle Industry Analyst World.

4. Oracle ADF Mobile: What is Oracle’s strategy in the mobile world? Oracle ADF (Application Development Framework) for mobile users is the answer. And Oracle will describe the strategy at the conference.

5. Here Comes the Channel: At last year’s Oracle Industry Analyst World, the entire event was under non-disclosure and channel discussions were minimal. This year’s event is vastly different. Most of the briefings are for public consumption and analyis. And Lydia Smyers, group VP for worldwide alliances and channels, is set to address the conference on April 18. Stay tuned for updated perspectives on the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized partner program.

Bonus: Oracle President Mark Hurd will also address the crowd.

Oracle delivered an upside earnings surprise when the company announced quarterly results in March. But this conference isn’t designed for earnings forecasts or sales projections. Rather, Oracle is striving to reinforce its engineered systems strategy to technology analysts.

Will Oracle impress the crowd? The VAR Guy will be checking in for perceptions and reactions.