After more than a 18 months of storm and passion between Oracle Corp. and the Oracle Application Users Group (OAUG), the relationship is now on the mend, declared OAUG president Jeremy Young.
To cement that relationship, Young also told the audience here at the OAUG’s Fall 2001 Conference Tuesday that Oracle will send its vice-president of applications technology, Cliff Godwin, to the conference this week.
“[Godwin] will be here [Wednesday] in this room to provide insight into Release 11i. We appreciate this gesture from Oracle and hope that it represents a sign of a new partnership between our organizations,” Young said.
Version 11i of Oracle’s applications suite and early “desupport” for the previous version, 10.7, has been a bone of contention between the two groups. Another major sticking point between the groups has been Oracle’s decision not to send technical support personnel to OAUG conferences and to start its own user conferences.
“Initially, [Oracle] asked the OAUG to fold our conferences into the Oracle-managed conference, a suggestion that with the input of our members through a survey we declined,” Young said.
Young stressed the importance of the OAUG staying independent so that it has the ability to “call Oracle on the issues” when it believes the company is headed in the wrong direction, and to insure its membership of the “objectiveness of the information” they receive.
Members of the audience expressed relief at the seeming end of hostilities between the two companies.
“I was disappointed that Oracle was playing hard ball. They wanted to control the conference and the information so I [will be] pleased if they get back together. We need Oracle,” said Marty Schloss, an executive with Prot
