On behalf of the South African Oracle User Group (SAOUG) and its directors, I would like to welcome you all to the 2009 user conference being hosted in Durban, South Africa during June of this year.

We hope that the conference will provide you with the necessary business benefit for your investment of time and money and we hope it will be a fun experience.

We have endeavoured to provide a high quality international standard event that is not only a technology focused event, but also focuses on application and strategic level product insights.

The goal of the SAOUG conference is to assist you in optimising your investment in Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications, solutions and technology.

Once acclaimed by former South African President Nelson Mandela as “a national treasure”, Michael has an uncanny ability to connect with his audiences and is often referred to as a passionate champion of the cause.

Tom Peters , bestselling author of ‘In Search of Excellence’ said of working with him, that “After Michael Jackson, I’m only the second most enthusiastic person in the room”.

Performance comes from Venus, Management from Mars

Called "an organizational blueprint", "an unconventional approach", "readable, witty and entertaining" and "an incredibly useful guide to improving your organization's performance", Buytendijk's book "Performance Leadership" is a must-read for every management professional. Challenging best practices, Oracle's VP and Fellow Frank Buytendijk comes with straight talk about what makes information systems fail, and what to do about it. If your business case initiatives failed, if you are looking for ‘what’s next’ with your information systems or if you want to create a jumpstart with a new large project, the Performance Leadership framework shares practical lessons. Attend this presentation and learn what jogging, sandbagging, people's behavior's and trying to not go insane have in common.

Martyn Lowry is Vice President Middleware Solution Specialists for Oracle Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA). He is responsible for developing market share through business solutions for Oracle’s middleware business in the region.

In this role he develops business strategies and supports competence in Middleware across the region. In addition, he manages a team of business development managers and technical specialists whose role it is to assist customers make best use of their investments in Oracle’s technologies.

Martyn has over 20 years’ experience in emerging technologies and their application to business problems. In particular, he has experience of leading the EMEA sales go to market strategies for the numerous acquisitions that Oracle has executed over the last few years, and developing enablement and training programs for the sales force to articulate business value through the use of software strategies.

He is the holder of a MA (Hons) from Cambridge University.

Peter Kestner was a former hacker and looks back to over 15 years of security expertise. His focus areas are databases, OS, HW and network security as well as cryptography and steganography. Now working more than 8 years for Oracle he invented an Oracle security patent in the US. Beside this,

Peter is a guest lecturer for database security at the University of Munich, teaching IT students in the "martial art" of defending their database environment. His attendance reaches out to BlackHat, Defcon HackInTheBox and ChaosComputerClub.

Mark Townsend has been with Oracle since 1989, and has worked with customers and partners in three major geographies.

He currently works with Oracle's Server Technology Division, as the Vice President of Product Management, reporting to the head of Database Development, and is directly responsible for the ongoing R&D planning of future releases and the co-ordination of the product release process for the database across Oracle.

He also manages a global database evangelist program, with a team of database experts that are available for customer presentations, technical insights, and proof-of-concepts and benchmarks.

He regularly talks to partners, customers and analysts, to better understand new technology and how it can be successfully applied to existing and emerging data processing requirements.

Kevin is currently employed as the chief economist at SANLIB Asset Management having joined Liberty Asset Management in September 2001. At STANLIB he focuses on macro economic research. He also provides input into the Asset Allocation process, Fixed Income, Property and various Equity Franchises. Kevin also manages a Unit Trust Fund.

Prior to that Kevin was employed by JPMorgan Chase as a member of their macroeconomic research team providing economic research and analysis to the broader asset-management industry in South Africa.

In the past ten years Kevin worked as a senior economist within the Nedcor group concentrating on sectoral research, assessing the non-financial risks associated with local industries, as well as interest rate and currency risk.
Kevin has worked as a part-time lecturer at the Wits Business School for more than seven years, having lectured on a range of academic and executive programmes, including MAP, and MBA programmes.

Mario Fazekas is a director of Exactech Fraud Prevention Solutions, based in Johannesburg, South Africa and he is a Certified Fraud Examiner.

He has over 18 year’s fraud prevention experience, including managing a fraud hotline that averaged over 500 calls per year, creating fraud awareness programs, evaluating ethics policies, reviewing cheque payment systems and training directors, managers and staff to fight fraud effectively.

Jay joined Dimension Data’s subsidiary, DNS Networking (DNS) in KwaZulu-Natal in April 1999 as a Director, focusing on expanding the company’s server, desktop and Managed Services business in the region. With the consolidation of the DNS and Dimension Data businesses in 2000, Jay assumed the role of Services Director for Dimension Data in KwaZulu-Natal, and he later became the Services and Sales Director for this region in 2003.

Jay was appointed as Managing Director of Dimension Data in KwaZulu-Natal in January 2005, and was shortly thereafter appointed to the South African Board in July 2006.

Jay began his tertiary education in Civil Engineering. He has over 20 years of experience in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector with the majority of his career spent in the reseller environment, focusing on the ‘client experience’ and creating ‘operational excellence’. Jay is married and has three children. In his spare time, Jay rides quad bikes, plays golf and enjoys off-road adventures.

Andrew Gilboy is Vice President for Enterprise E2.0 for Oracle. With ultimate responsibility for the success of Oracle Enterprise2.0 Solutions, (which include Portals, Search, Enterprise Content Management and Collaboration tools) in Europe, Middle East and Africa, Andrew leads Oracle EMEA’s Enterprise 2.0 sales, marketing, development and technical teams. Andrew is also a global spokesperson for Enterprise 2.0 for Oracle’s Analyst Relations.

Andrew joined Oracle following Oracle’s acquisition of Stellent where he held the position of Vice President of EMEA. After graduating from Manchester University, Andrew originally started as a Database Specialist at IBM in the UK and Australia over 20 years ago and more recently has specialised in bringing early stage software solutions to the EMEA Marketplace.

Otto Pretorius qualified as a psychologist at Buffalo State University, USA in 1995 after obtaining a BCom degree in accounting and a master’s degree in Information Sciences at the University of Pretoria.

After a few years in a clinical practice, business called. With such a diverse background he became involved with the impact of technology on business processes and people. This led his career to numerous positions in business, focused on the appropriate enablement of technology.

Over the last eight years he has focused on the Human Capital environment and its potential to become a strategic business partner as facilitated through technology. This has led him to a number of interim executive management positions in South Africa and the East. He holds three international trademarks for his work in this field and has presented papers at a number of local and international conferences in the USA, Middle East and Europe.

He is currently the Managing Director of Qbit Group (Pty) Ltd.

Gillian joined Dimension Data in Cape Town in November 2001as a Contract Manager, focusing on local clients who had long-term Application Managed Services business in the region. Gillian was asked to start managing the application development team for various clients and did this for 3 years prior to moving to Gauteng.

Gillian was appointed as General Manager of Application Solutions in Gauteng in September 2007.

Gillian began her tertiary education in Application Development in the Eastern Cape. She has over 20 years of experience in the Application Development and Managed Services Sector of the IT industry, with the majority of her career spent in the client-facing roles, focusing on the ‘client experience’ and creating ‘an optimized managed services environment for their application roadmap’. Gillian is married and has two children. In her spare time, Gillian enjoys reading and some outdoor activities.

Marius Wentworth has 16 years experience in the IT industry and holds a National Diploma in Information Technology from the Pretoria Technicon. Marius joined Douglas Clarke and Rodney Naidoo in November 1999 and has been part of the same delivery team for IOCORE and New Dawn Technologies on a number of Oracle related IT projects of various magnitudes. He has done many implementations as a technical and Principal Oracle Consultant, team leader and is currently the DBA Manager: Oracle at Nedbank and part of the management team for Infrastructure Services Management. His career spans across various organisations including Infoplan, Multichoice, Finsource, Metropolitan, Investec Bank and Nedbank.


Marius started his career as a LAN Administrator in the South African Air Force for a year, doing workstation installations and support. He joined Infoplan (currently SITA) as a Network Administrator on Novell immediately thereafter. He was a Network Administrator for three years where he then moved to the Unix and Oracle DBA team for the implementation and support of a logistical system for the SAAF and SANDF. He then joined IOCORE and New Dawn Technologies as a Senior Oracle.