As many of you know from my past blog entries, I wasn't a huge fan of Oracle OpenWorld in 2007, and shockingly, I was even less of a fan in 2008. The simple reason is that in 2007, there seemed to be at least an attempt to have some decent Hyperion content. There were even designated Hyperion rooms over at the Marriott to separate the Hyperion attendees from the teeming masses. While the 2007 content wasn't as good as Hyperion Solutions (more to come on that one in one of the following "Top 10" stories), it definitely was more than in 2008.
This doesn't make a lot of sense, really. You'd think that they'd take 2007 and try to build on it. While the Hyperion content from Oracle certainly decreased in quantity (and in some cases, quality), there were a few bright spots for Hyperion customers. ODTUG and OAUG both sponsored significant Hyperion user group symposiums on the opening day of OpenWorld. OAUG and Oracle co-hosted a great reception for Hyperion customers. (The next sentence is not a shameless book plug.) Look Smarter Than You Are with Essbase System 9 was the 4th best selling book at the conference (out of over 500 titles on all Oracle products). The last one, more than anything, tells me that people are dying for more Hyperion content (at least about Essbase), not less.
While Oracle didn't announce official numbers for Hyperion attendees for 2008 - since Hyperion officially is now an Oracle brand and not a company, how could they? - my personal experience was that attendance was down from the estimated 1,000 Hyperion-driven attendees of OpenWorld 2007. My advice to Oracle: realize that EPM is one of the few growing areas of technology right now. The more you talk about it, the more people will listen (and the more they'll come to your conference). The worst thing that can happen to your product is that people forget about it, like, say, Express. Now whatever happened to that product once Oracle bought them? I can't seem to recall...
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