Oracle OpenWorld 2010: 10 Buzzwords to Know, Love and Hate

Go to any tech conference, and you’re sure to get your fill of vendor marketing rhetoric—the constant sharing of synergy-this and platform-that which can fill up a “Buzzword Bingo” card very quickly.

Here are 10 of the most popular tech terms making the rounds at Oracle OpenWorld 2010:

1. Cloud. Larry Ellison kicked off the conference by setting the rest of us straight on Oracle’s “definition” of The Cloud: His definition. (For the record: Sorta like Amazon.com’s cloud offering but definitely not like Salesforce.com’s.) Everything’s been a bit foggy since.

2. Optimize. Good Lord, if I have to hear one more “optimize” utterance, I might take a run at that America’s Cup trophy and let those two serious-looking security dudes beat the crap out of me.

3. The Red Stack. “Software. Hardware. Complete.” “Learn It. Know It. Live It.”

4. Mark Hurd. The biggest event—Hurd’s debut and keynote at the conference—has been a huge non-event.

5. Co-Existence. The “roadmap/strategy” for migrating enterprise apps customers from legacy PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and E-Business Suite to Fusion Apps will purportedly involve a harmonious co-existence between the old and rigid and the new and flexible during the next five years. Sounds to me like “The Odd Couple.”

6. Fusion. It’s all Fusion, all the time: Middleware and Applications. This is the clear future for Oracle and its customers, though I’m thinking many customers aren’t quite ready for that kind of future just yet.

7. #keynotetorture. Yikes! Whatever HP paid for one of the top presentation spots was way too much money. The two Sunday night HP keynotes produced this Twitter hashtag and trending topic #keynotetorture. And that’s not a good thing.

8. Exalogic Elastic Cloud. It looks like a gym locker but it’s worth a heck of a lot more money: Think multimillions. (Smelly sneakers not included.)

9. Ironman. I have to admit: Those getups from the Ironman movies are pretty darn cool. But I feel for the “booth bros” working the Ironman/Exalogic/Exadata area because the same clip and music have been playing for three straight days.

10. Blah, Blah, Blah. Was I just a bit bored and lost in my own thoughts, or did I actually hear Oracle CEO Larry Ellison say “Blah, Blah, Blah,” when describing some Fusion Apps functionalities? Nahhhhhh, couldn’t have been.

Thomas Wailgum covers Enterprise Software, Data Management and Personal Productivity Apps for CIO.com. Follow him on Twitter @twailgum. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline. E-mail Thomas at twailgum@cio.com.