It was hard to decide where to look first in Las Vegas this year at
IBM's flagship information management event. Coming as it did on the
heels of a massive, sprawling Oracle Open World, it was also
overwhelming, but distinguished itself immediately by its focus. Whereas
Oracle has smashed together hardware systems, apps, middleware, java
and development, systems management and database into a bewildering
multi-site show, IBM continues to run separate events for Websphere,
Rational, Tivoli, and Lotus. No single IBM event trumpets "we're the
biggest," and they don't take over the towns they're in; the content
seems a bit more manageable. And as an attendee who hopes to get a broad
view, I'm happy with that. However, as I'll discuss below, Oracle is
winning the messaging war nonetheless.

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