Oracle on solid footing as OpenWorld wraps up

For Oracle, the news coming out of the company's annual congregation at the Moscone Center wasn't as dramatic as the epic come-from-behind victory by the Oracle-sponsored America's Cup yacht team on San Francisco Bay.

For the average consumer, "it has so little impact directly on the things that we do every day because we never see Oracle," said Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group, a research and advisory firm in San Mateo.

CEO Larry Ellison - when he wasn't out on the bay cheering his Oracle Team USA in the America's Cup - and other top Oracle executives used the convention to announce new products such as a database storage system that promises faster data analytics and processing speeds, a bigger, faster computer server and a host of cloud computing services.

Clients reassuredGartner research Vice President Charles Eschinger said the announcements were part of Oracle's previously disclosed road map, but it was still important for the company to show it is "staying the course" and making progress.

For OpenWorld exhibitors such as Ken Comée, president and CEO of Redwood City startup Badgeville, the event isn't just to see whether Oracle has new or better products, but to learn how to make Oracle products work better with systems offered by competitors.

[...] that's because customers of Badgeville, which makes "gamefication" systems for businesses to induce more customer loyalty or worker productivity, also use a variety of enterprise software and hardware.

Ray Pang, director of marketing for Skyera, a San Jose maker of solid-state storage systems for businesses, noted that Oracle was making progress with its cloud computing offerings.