Openworld showcases cloud and virtualisation advances

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As Oracle OpenWorld draws to a close for 2012, the announcements filtering out from the event included headline-catching advancements from the world of business software.

However, the attendees’ attention was divided by the inevitable comparison with last years’ conference. That event unfortunately coincided with the death of Steve Jobs, the news spread during the closing speech by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a close friend of Jobs’, who was comparing the similarities between Oracle and Apple.

Many reports continued after the 2012 OpenWorld to compare the difficulties both companies have faced throughout the year and the way each of the tech giants are led. Both companies combine hardware and software but Apple are viewed as innovators whereas Oracle is only just catching up with the crowd, particularly in areas previously dismissed by Ellison.

OpenWorld 2012 was generally considered a success by the IT sector even if a number of observers thought that it lacked innovation. The technologies announced highlighted a number of ways the roles within oracle jobs will be evolving as the firm advances with virtualisation and cloud computing.

One of the announcements during the conference focused on the new Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine. The role of this product is to compete against SAP and permit consumers to move their IT jobs to the internet from data centres.

Oracle - Manage many as one“You can access all of these services across the network,” Ellison said. “It took a long time to build a complete suite of cloud applications and the all-important platform, which we call Fusion middleware… We have a huge advantage in platform solutions in the cloud because we are the number one platform company in the world.”

Ellison’s own desires may have overshadowed the outcome of the conference.  In an interview with CNBC, a financial news channel, taken just before Oracle OpenWorld launched for this year, Ellison covered a number of topics ranging from Oracle to his Hawaiian island Lanai.

If the success of Oracle was ever in doubt, a browse through Ellison’s ambitions may clear the issue up.  With a current fortune of $41 billion, he recently bought 98% of Lanai, and also hopes to one day own his favourite NBA team; the Los Angeles Lakers. Previously Ellison bid for the Golden State Warriors and mentions liking the Chicago Bulls too.

Oracle Openworld 2012 proved to be a successful conference for consumers and businesses alike. The countdown begins for what Oracle can come up with for Openworld 2013.

SEO: certainly not DIY

While many of us fancy ourselves as DIY experts; sawing, hammering and nailing bits together to create a new set of shelves, or putting a picture on the wall, SEO is not something you can ‘blag’ your way through. There are just too many complicated and frequently changing factors involved that require expertise as opposed to an instruction book.

A lot of people in the IT industry, or working “in IT” for large businesses feel as though their limited knowledge of SEO is enough that the firm doesn’t have to bring in experts in the field, and that they can do it themselves. However, history and case studies show us that this is the start of a slippery slope. A lot of businesses who opt to do their own SEO soon find that they’re being penalized by Google for over-optimisation of their site, essentially ‘spamming’ the site with the terms that they want to be seen ranking highly for, and Google subsequently prevents them from doing so, knocking them down the rankings or not including them at all.

One of the main reasons that firms opt against bringing in so-called SEO experts is that they believe all of the best firms are based in the United States and that they charge overwhelming amounts. However, there are plenty of British and Irish SEO agencies who are gaining reputations for being among the very best in the industry, and, what’s more, they don’t charge the substantial American fees and – for those based in the UK and Ireland – they’re working at the same times as you, there’s no time zone changes, meaning that if you have any issues or need to contact them for an update, they should be on-hand whenever you need them.

An upwards arrowFor those still not convinced on the advantages of bringing in an SEO firm, you have to question how you want to get to the “next level” in your industry. You might be doing very well, but you always want to be doing better – ambition is only natural with any business. But sometimes, no matter how good your existing in-house IT team may be, they don’t have the expertise in SEO to find the strategies to take you from the top 20 search results for your key term to the first page, top 5, number one, wherever it is you want to be.

With so many strategies in an ever-evolving industry, there’s no way this is a DIY job. Reaching the next level is serious stuff and therefore needs the best in the business, not the amateurs.

Data centers – where would we be without them?

It is hardly a controversial opinion to suggest that data centers are an indispensable part of modern life – it really is impossible to envisage a world without the vast capacity and power that data centers grant the business and information technology sectors – where would we all be without Google, eBay and Facebook? But what exactly are the advantages of a data center that their absence would remove? Let’s take a look…

Firstly, the cost to enterprises of running an in-house own data center is increasingly prohibitive, given the growing size requirements of such facilities. As more and more information is transmitted online and more transactions take place online – just as computing power continues to grow – then a data center needs exponentially more power and more hard disk space. Server racks just keep on getting longer and even keeping them cool enough becomes uneconomically costly for most small, medium or even large-sized enterprises.

Server RoomSecurity is the second big issue – in a world where cyber-crime and espionage is constantly growing, there needs to be a very robust response to security. Most enterprises just don’t have the time and resources to police their IT operations to the level required, and a good data center can give them the reassurances they need. Technicians can be on hand throughout the 24-hour cycle, not just to ensure that the server racks keep on functioning perfectly and that any problems are swiftly dealt with, but also to ensure that information is kept safe and secure and that hacking or phishing attempts are roundly thwarted.

So, where would we be without data centers? The answer is that we would have a vastly more limited cyber-world, with businesses forced to keep their computer operations artificially scaled back due to cost considerations, with the knock-on effect of a hobbled e-commerce sector. Social networks would be slow, unsafe and prone to disastrous infiltration, while search engines would also be grindingly slow and frustrating to use – welcome back to the late 1990s.

It’s safe to say that data centers are not only here to stay, but will keep getting bigger and better so long as the computer world leads the way.