For the EMEA Partners that were able to attend the event in Istanbul Turkey, thank you for your attendance and feedback at the event. As you can see, the weather kept most of inside during the event and at times there was even some snow. 

And while it may have been chilly outside, there was a warm reception from Partners who traveled from all over EMEA to hear from other Oracle Specialized Partners and subject matter experts about the opportunities and benefits of Oracle Enterprise Manager and Exadata Specialization. Here you can see David Robo, Oracle Technology Director for Manageability kicking off the event followed later by Patrick Rood, Oracle Indirect Manageability Business. A special thank you to all the Partner speakers including Ron Tolido, VP and CTO of Application Services Continental Europe Capgemini, who delivered a very innovative keynote where many in attendance learned that Black Swans do exist.

And while at break, interactivity among partners continued and it was great to see such innovative partners who had listed their achieved specializations on their business cards. Here we can see Oracle Enterprise Manager customer, Turkish Oracle User Group board member and Blogger Gokhan Atil sharing his product experiences with others attending. Additionally, Christian Trieb of Paragon Data, also shared with other Partners what the German Oracle User Group (DOAG) was doing around manageability and invitation to submit papers for their next event.

Here we can see at one of the breaks, one of the event organizers Javier Puerta (left), Oracle Director of Partner Programs, joined by Sebastiaan Vingerhoed (middle), Oracle EE & CIS Manager Manageability and speaker on Managing the Application Lifecycle, Julian Dontcheff (right), Global Head of Database Management at Accenture.

Below is Julian Dontcheff's delivering his partner presentation on Exadata and Lifecycle Management. Just after his plane landed and 1 hour Turkish taxi experience to the event location, Julian still took the time to sit down with me and provide some extra insights on his experiences of managing the enterprise infrastructure with Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Below is one of the Oracle Enterprise Management Product Management Team,  Mark McGill, Oracle Principal Product Manager, presenting to Partners on how you can perform Chargeback and Metering with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control.

Overall, it was a great event and an extra thank you to those OPN Specialized Partners who presented, to the Partners that attended, and to those Oracle team members who organized the event and presented.