Oracle Mute About 10G

Tenth major release shrouded in secrecy

With the annual Oracle World San Francisco conference just around the corner, the hype over Oracle's soon-to-be-announced 10G database has reached a crescendo — or so you would expect. But unlike past releases, this one has so far remained a closely guarded secret thanks to Oracle representatives' extreme vigilance.

Indeed, as of late July, none of the analysts or consulting firms that Intelligent Enterprise spoke with had yet been briefed about Oracle 10G, nor did they expect to have been by the time the conference rolled around. Some even admitted that they didn't know that the company's flagship product would be renamed to 10G — a moniker that apparently refers to the grid computing features that will be added to the database.

"It's like they [Oracle] wants to control all the spin on this one," says one industry analyst about Oracle's vicelike grip on information. Oracle representatives declined to comment.

The strategy of silence may not be working in the company's favor, however, as few customers and analysts seem to be excited about the upcoming announcement, which is expected during CEO Larry Ellison's keynote at the conference.

Many consulting firm executives, such as Roger Schrag of San Francisco-based Database Specialists, noted that they were still grappling with Oracle 9i, released in June 2001. "From what I've seen with my customers and users at the Northern California Oracle Users Group, adoption of Oracle 9i has been slow and is just starting to pick up," says Schrag.

Mike Schiff, vice president of data warehousing and BI at Current Analysis Inc., questioned rumors that Oracle 10G would feature increased capacity. "What does increased capacity really mean?" he asks. "Does it mean that you can address it? Can you manage it? And how many customers really need petabyte capacity?"

However, Schiff is optimistic that 10G will include helpful features for data warehousing. "We'll see an increased focus on robust data mining," says Schiff. "Probably, we'll get more analysis and transformation services bundled with the database."

"Oracle is starting to see that what customers want is something more than just a place to store their data," he adds. "And they don't want to pay a premium for it."

Whether Oracle can provide that "something more" is still up in the air. But one thing's for certain: The company will have a lot of questions to answer this month when it finally does break the seal on the details of 10G.

— Amit Asaravala

Amit Asaravala is an independent journalist based in San Francisco. Formerly, he was founding editor of New Architect magazine and editor-in-chief of Web Techniques.

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