Predictions and info for Oracle Fusion Middleware launch, July 1

I saw some interesting tweets and have been hearing other rumors and facts regarding Oracle Fusion Middleware and Applications, and Oracle's upcoming announcement on July 1. Here is what I was able to glean and infer based on this information.

First, my predictions:

• Oracle will explicitly or implicitly reveal its plans (and post-merger org structure) for Java in the post-Sun-acquisition period for Fusion Middleware at the Fusion Middleware (FMW) launch on July 1.
• Oracle will deprecate Eclipse (which they don't control) quickly, trying to move Java developers to JDeveloper (which they control). JDeveloper will have tight links to FMW components as well as generic Java, which Oracle will tout as benefits. My $0.02: this is a futile and silly effort, as Eclipse is so much more than just a Java development environment, with an ecosystem that creates enormous value around it. Oracle should come to some "understanding" with IBM and just adopt Eclipse.
• Oracle will show a lot about how Fusion Apps will adopt FMW on July 1 (especially the Java Platform and WebCenter). This is likely to be a real game-changer. I am not certain that other ERP vendors will be able to deliver anything like the compelling user experience, social capabilities, and productivity which will be available with Oracle's new Fusion Applications. Of course, many application customers will stick with their legacy apps, but new implementations (and license purchases) will likely lean heavily towards Oracle Fusion Applications when they are available for financials/HR, which I predict will be around the end of this year. Incidentally, I heard that something like 1000 applications staff from the "legacy" apps at Oracle had been moved several (6 to 9) months ago to Thomas Kurian's group to work on beefing up the functionality in the Fusion Applications.
• There will be no major pricing changes with the new middleware (as compared to today's pricing). However, customers probably will have to buy new licenses as this will be viewed as new products rather than upgrades.
• There will be a new advanced rules engine included in FMW.
• WebCenter and Portal will be upgraded significantly and well-integrated.
  

Conceptual architecture diagram of Oracle's product offerings (click on it for a larger version):



Presenters at this event:

• Hasan Rizvi: Senior Vice President, Fusion Middleware
• Dave Shaffer: Vice President, Oracle Integration
  
• Duncan Mills: Senior Director, Product Management, Tools
  
• Margaret Lee: Director, Product Management, Tools and Middleware (?)
  
• Ted Farrell: Chief Architect & SVP, Tools & Middleware
• Sue Harper: Senior Principal Product Manager, SQL Developer
• Christina Kolotouros: Director, Product Management, WebCenter and Portal
  
• Forest Yin: Director, Product Management, Identity Management products
• Mike Lehman: Senior Director, Product Management, Java Platform

If you have any additional information or rumors or inferences to share, please twitter me or leave a comment on this blog.

What can we learn from software development job posts?

What can we learn from software development job posts? A lot!

• No one is building apps for the Palm Pre, and not too much for Android
  
• More Blackberry development than iPhone
  
• No more Web 2.0 jobs (AJAX, widgets, etc.)
• Still plenty of demand for legacy/niche products (e.g. mainframe, assembly language programming, PowerBuilder, COBOL, Informix, Peoplesoft, Siebel)
• Unix is still a force, but not much demand for Mac development
  
• Dynamics is falling further behind
• Skills in popular platforms like Oracle, SAP, Java, C++/C#, and Unix/Linux are still in high demand, even in this weak economy
  

I'll post every once in a while on this topic, so please let me know if there are other skills I should track. Obviously, this is not likely to be a statistically valid sampling with a confidence level of +/-5%, and this should be a leading indicator (hiring) rather than a trailing or current indicator (number currently employed or employed in the past), but it is still illuminating data.

Here are some skills/terms, and the number of occurences of those terms (including alternative spellings) in job posts to Dice.com.

DATABASE
SQL	1159
Oracle	1774
SQL Server	415
DB2	127
MySQL	128
Sybase	79
Informix	15
PL/SQL	153
PowerBuilder	34
Applications
SAP	1942
Peoplesoft	575
Siebel	210
Salesforce.com	63
Dynamics	57
BASIS	140
ABAP	77
Languages
Java	2192
C#	829
C++	728
Perl	109
PHP	295
Python	65
Ruby	134
COBOL	91
FORTRAN	7
Assembler	20
Platforms
Windows	487
Linux	531
Unix	686
VMWare	95
Mac	32
Blackberry	45
iPhone	31
Palm	3
Android	25
Facebook	1
AJAX	59
Google	7
Yahoo	0
Widget	2
IBM	84
Mainframe	157
Embedded	240
Azure	0

Venture Capital trends

Fascinating new study out from Fenwick & West on venture financing. According to the study (bear in mind that financing wasn't great a year ago):

• Q1 financings skewed heavily towards late, down rounds, with 42% of financings being series D or later (as compared to about 32% a year ago), and with about 75% of financings down or flat rounds (as compared to about 32% a year ago).
• Financings were much more likely to have >1x liquidation preferences than a year ago.
• Uncapped participation was slightly up compared to a year ago.
• Cumulative dividends provisions were about double compared to a year ago.

Lots more details in the report. Worth a read if you're in the business ...

Download the report here: http://www.fenwick.com/publications/6.12.1.asp?vid=9.