Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is just around the corner, and now is a good opportunity to look back on last year’s event and reflect on the direction Larry Ellison’s company has taken since.

One of the big highlights from 2011 was Oracle’s Exa line-up: the pre-packaged appliances that investors are now counting on to drive sales in the coming quarters. Back then Chris Hanchin, the head of the database firm’s enterprise partner program, talked about this shift’s impact on the channel rather than the bottom line: while resellers are no longer able to offer configuration services, Exa provides “more of an opportunity to solve business problems for the customer,” rather than technical difficulties.

David Nicholson, the exec in charge of EMC’s relations with Intel, also made a point of Exa in an interview, although from a very different angle. The way he saw it at the time, these pre-configured appliances represent an approach that is anything but open – a huge downside for Oracle customers that want to run something other than Oracle software on top.

Constellation Research founder Ray Wang is another insider who stopped by theCube at OracleWorld 2011. The analyst talked about the vendor’s social and cloud strategies, both of which were lackluster at the time, and expanded on the head start SAP had gained in this area.

Things now are very different. In 2012 Oracle acquired a number of companies including Taleo, Collective Intellect and most recently SelectMinds – primarily as a response to recent buys from SAP, which is doing its best to best to maintain momentum.  In 2012 the focus is on social enterprise: the two rivals are expanding in all the key sub-segments that fall under this category, including HR and analytics, while stepping on the turf of Salesforce and Thismoment in the process.