Earlier this month saw the second incarnation of the Ascend user conference — a collaboration between Oracle Applications & Technology Users Group (OATUG) and Oracle HCM Users Group (OHUG). Ascend is the replacement for the popular and long running OATUG Collaborate and OHUG Global conferences, and it was good to see a return to form with attendance back up to pre-pandemic levels.

Ascend is unashamedly an event for Oracle users, and the education tracks and sessions are geared toward addressing practical challenges rather than strategy and tomorrow's technology. It also prides itself on being the place for education on Oracle E-Business Suite, which is still in heavy use by the Fortune 500 and continues to have its Premier Support extended — most recently until at least 2033.

Educating the Community

So what were the most common topics under discussion? We heard a lot about EBS to ERP Cloud migrations; reporting, BI, and analytics; and ERP Cloud automated testing. And, of course, extending the functionality of both on-premise and cloud ERP through the use of applications such as Virtual Trader.

A Spirit of Collaboration

These events are always good opportunities to meet up with colleagues, partners, and industry collaborators — and for some that meant almost 3 years since meeting in person. As well as the dedicated community meet-ups and special interest groups (SIGs), there was plenty of talk on the exhibition floor of new projects and initiatives to streamline processes and support business growth.

The format is a natural platform to enable customer-to-customer conversations where organizations can learn from their peers about best practice and ways they have solved challenges. In this regard, it's also heartening to see the relationship between OATUG and OHUG starting to flourish and bringing ERP, SCM, and HCM users and experts together in one place.

Ascend continues the OATUG and OHUG spirit of collaboration, with attendees and educators pulling together and learning from each other. More of the same, please!

What's Next?

Looking further ahead in the year sees the inaugural Oracle CloudWorld event in Las Vegas. CloudWorld effectively replaces OpenWorld — the hugely popular annual event held in Oracle's hometown of San Francisco.

Oracle is forecasting 20,000 attendees, and we expect this event to bring together Oracle's cloud and SaaS offerings across infrastructure, database, and applications.

It'll be interesting to see how this new format works out — with CloudWorld also building on the theme of bringing the community together at a time when many people are looking for exactly that.