On November 11, a new edition of SPOUG, Oracle’s annual user conference, will open its doors, where attendees can learn first-hand about the latest developments from the North American multinational. We interviewed Óscar García, manager of SPOUG to find out what this year’s edition will be like.
Interview with Óscar García, manager of SPOUG
- You have been successful for several years with the SPOUG conference, why do you think this is due?
I consider that success is not only because we reap what we have sown in previous editions of our conference, but also thanks to the activities we carry out on a daily basis throughout the year, such as SOPUG Academy, the mastermids of Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle EBS or NetSuite and the sub-communities of OCI, APEX and BBDD.
To this cocktail of initiatives we must add that year after year the speed of technological innovation accelerates more, making it essential to attend events or conferences such as SPOUG25.
I recently read an MIT study in which they listed the stakeholders through which organizations are acquiring knowledge about GenAI solutions and they listed: the partners with whom the organizations already worked, the new integrators, their network of contacts, publications or webinars, their board, or the internal team. Well, all of them occur at our conference: you will be able to meet partners highly specialized in Oracle solutions and technology, you will see the best specialists doing demos, presentations and training, or you will be able to interact and meet people from other organizations who can be the inspiration for your projects.
Where do I want to go with this? Well, it is worth highlighting and highlighting that conferences like SPOUG25 are increasingly necessary and essential and provide enormous value to both organizations and our society as a whole.
- When is this year’s edition taking place and what will attendees expect?
This year’s edition of SPOUG25 will be held on November 11 in the sales space located at 182 Alcalá Street in Madrid.
We will welcome attendees with a coffee, so that at 9:30 a.m. we can start the day with the KeyNotes. We greatly appreciate once again the support of Albert Triola (Country Leader of Oracle Spain) who will show us in one of the KeyNotes how AI changes everything.
The rest of the day will take place in the 6 parallel/thematic rooms from which the technical sessions related to: Oracle Cloud Technology, Oracle APEX, Oracle Cloud ERP, Oracle NetSuite, Oracle JD Edwards and Oracle E-Business Suite will be held.
We will end the day around 5:00 p.m. with the SPOUG Awards ceremony with the following categories: Project of the Year in Applications, Project of the Year in Technology, Ambassador of the Year and Content Creator.
This is why we recommend that all those who attend SPOPUG25 come with their batteries charged, the motivation to approach innovative topics and the desire to meet new people.
- Oracle is experiencing one of the best moments in its history, how does this affect an organization like SPOUG?
The main impact that I would highlight is greater interest in our initiatives, we perceive greater interest from both organizations and people in the activities we carry out within the association.
On the one hand we have the momentum of multi-cloud. For example, the interest that Google and Microsoft have shown in participating in SPOUG25. Both the customers of these companies and those of Oracle seek information and ask questions, demanding greater collaboration between manufacturers. This alliance between Oracle and hyperscalers is going to make life much easier by simplifying integration between clouds.
On the other hand we have the momentum of AI. Months ago we talked a lot about RAG, LLMs, now we are incorporating conversations about the MCP protocol, Agents and the Agent Studio that is incorporated into Oracle Cloud ERP, NetSuite Next AI or how AI is incorporated into the JD Edwards and Oracle EBS on-premise systems. This means that conversations about AI have more and more dimensions, so their complexity increases exponentially. That is why the efforts we have to carry out to incorporate all these initiatives are increasing, either through SPOUG Academy or in the other initiatives that we carry out throughout the year.
- One of the pillars of the conference is the high level of speakers. What are the topics that will be discussed and what are the most outstanding speakers?
Indeed, a relevant fact, for example, is that last year we had more than 60 speakers from 11 countries. We make a titanic effort year after year to ensure that the best specialists, communicators or evangelists of Oracle technologies and solutions come to our conference.
Regarding the topics that we are going to discuss, we highlight a large number of sessions dedicated to artificial intelligence: we will learn how to carry out process automation using artificial intelligence, we will learn to build artificial intelligence agents, we will see the artificial intelligence capabilities that we already have within the Oracle database itself or you will learn first-hand how the University of Ávilan is integrating AI into business applications or in its day to day.
To achieve artificial intelligence, in many cases your solutions or platforms must be in the cloud. For example, we will learn about the cases of Intermundial, a company of the Atlantigo Group, García-Munté Energía, the University of Ávila or Laboratorios Heell España.
Other areas of interest that we could also highlight is multi cloud. We will talk about architectures that may well be hybrids between on-premise and cloud platforms, but also those architectures that are deployed between cloud providers. In this section I highlight and highlight in capital letters the participation of Google and Microsoft. Both organizations will have a space in which they will land technical aspects of that great agreement that Oracle has reached with the hyperscalers. And now we can deploy a database within Google or Microsoft but tomorrow there will be many more services. At this point I want to express my utmost gratitude to both Google and Microsoft.
SPOUG25 will have two training laboratories lasting several hours, therefore, where you go in depth and which are of great interest to our community, the first of them from Oracle APEX. Oracle APEX is the free Low-Code platform that incorporates Oracle into its database. Well, Móncia Godoy, Oracle APEX Product Manager, will carry out this training aimed at new Oracle APEX developers. The other laboratory that I would like to highlight is the Enterprise Command Centers (ECCs) for Oracle E-Business Suite. Lukasz Kapielewski, also Oracle’s Product Manager, will teach us how to deploy and customize these command centers that greatly facilitate control and decision-making in companies that use Oracle EBS.
As for the speakers, I would first highlight the large number of Oracle Product Managers who will accompany us. These types of specialists not only have in-depth knowledge of their areas of specialization, but also know first-hand their strategy and roadmap. So it’s lucky to have them. We also have a large number of Oracle ACEs, the Oracle gurus. From this community I would highlight: Sean Scott, an outstanding person who knows everything about Oracle database architecture, or Francisco Munoz, Oracle Product Manager and internationally recognized Evangelist who comes from Austalila to talk to us about distributed databases. But we also have great Spanish speakers, like Rubén Rodríguez, Oracle ACE Director who travels the world sharing his experience in the world of developing Oracle solutions.
- The role of sponsors is essential in an event of this type. Who are the sponsors this year and what do they contribute to the conference?
Without a doubt, the role of sponsors is essential for the development of our annual conference. They provide us, of course, with the necessary financing to carry out the conference. But they also bring us their success stories, SPOUG25 is becoming year after year that space in which they share with everyone that great project, that great feat that they have achieved in the last year with some of their clients. And the sponsors, together with their clients, also carry out sessions in which they share the most relevant aspects and all the details of some of their success stories.
This year’s sponsors are: PLATINUM – Accenture and Oracle; GOLD – Acevedo, DBVisit, Golive, ITG, RSM, SplashBi, TGV, Timestamp, Unikal; SILVER – CGI, Payhawk and PLEO.
- AI and cloud will be two topics that will be discussed at the conference. What value do both technologies have for Oracle users?
Well, I would tell you that for each client or for each Oracle user, AI and the cloud have a different value. There are companies that, due to business culture, regulatory or other aspects, that journey to the cloud is slower. The same thing happens with AI, there are innovative organizations that are tackling major transformations through AI, others have ongoing hyper-automation projects and others are waiting for the Hype we are experiencing to consolidate.
We see that Oracle respects the moment in which each organization is and this is clearly reflected in the topics we discuss at SPOUG25. We will have sessions on on-premise platforms such as Oracle EBS, JD Edwards or Oracle’s own database, through cloud platforms (AI, security, integrations, low-code, etc.), business management solutions in the cloud such as NetSuite and Oracle Cloud ERP or those from Oracle’s own Cloud infrastructure.
I would tell you that today 100% of companies see the cloud as a “must have”, whether in systems architecture, security, business applications, workplace, etc. While AI is a “nice to have” in many of them. Of course, we are all alert because in a very short time AI is going to become a “must have” if not in our entire organization, in a large part of it.
- What numbers of attendees do you have?
This year we expect a number of attendees of around 400 people. I would like to highlight that the capacity of the space is limited, so I would recommend that the people who are reading us and want to attend reserve your seat as soon as possible.
