Kscope - Oracle Business Analytics Strategy & New Features

"Business Analytics is a key strategic priority for Oracle."
                 - Paul Rodwick

I'm sitting in the Kscope13 BI Symposium listening to keynote speaker Paul Rodwick, VP of Oracle BI Product Management. Paul was rather interesting despite his flight having landed in New Orleans at 4AM.  On 3-4 hours sleep, Paul reviewed Oracle's Business Analytics strategy.  It's surprising to me how little Oracle's EPM/BI architecture has changed over the last 5 years (other than the renaming to "Oracle Business Analytics."  This is a good thing.

Why?  Because over the last 5 years, the architecture has gone from a products-integrating-is-a-theoretically-good-idea-so-let's-put-it-on-a-slide-cross-our-fingers-and-see-what-happens to an actual integrated solution that uses the various products in the Oracle Business Analytics line together with each product doing a key part.  Instead of "Essbase or OBIEE or an application?" it's "Essbase as the cube platform, OBIEE as the front-end, applications for needs that are often common across multiple companies."

So now that Oracle has gotten the basics out of the way, they're looking to expand their Business Analytics offerings.  Their key focuses for the immediate future are big data, mobile, in-memory computing, and cloud-based analytics.  The last two really speak to technology of deployment (in-memory and cloud), big data seems to be one of those things that everyone is talking about and no one's quite sure what to do with for the moment, but mobile is on everyone's minds and people are actually doing something about it.  To further that immediate mobile need, Oracle is releasing new functionality in every release or patch of the Oracle mobile analytics products.  For instance, Oracle 11.1.1.7 now has a full mobile security toolkit (available on OTN) for companies that want greater security than native Apple iOS provides.

Paul discussed some of the key features in the 11.1.1.7 release (including Smart View as the primary Office front-end for BI going forward).  He mentioned that the bundled patch for OBIEE 11.1.1.7 will be out on a few weeks, so prep yourself for 11.1.1.7.1.  He also talked about some recent improvements to Endeca in version 3.0 of that product.  While I love Endeca's extremely powerful ability to discover information in unstructured data, right now, most companies are still focused on analyzing their structured information.  Unstructured analysis is definitely coming: it's just only being deployed by a handful of leading-edge companies at the moment.

Where Are They Going?

The key releases we should see in the next 9-12 months will revolve around these themes:

• Visual analysis.  They're trying to make the analysis more intuitive because the majority of users don't spend their day being analysts: they want the system to help them find issues quickly so they can make better business decisions faster.
• Mobile Analytics. Oracle is planning to create a BI Mobile "Applications Designer" that will allow developers to make HTML5 applications purpose-built for mobile deployment.  They will also continue to improve the mobile applications every version but they didn't go into what some of the new improvements are going to be specifically beyond more HTML5 deployment.
• Exalytics.  They promised a new Exalytics announcement in the near future.  I'm presuming this refers to the new Exalytics X3-4 version that's mentioned on the June 4 Oracle Engineered System Price List (page 5).  I expect this will be detailed more during Steve Liebermensch's session later this week.
• Cloud analytics.  Oracle is making a huge investment in the cloud and it looks like there will be more and more applications in Oracle Business Analytics that run in the cloud.  This makes it a lot easier for customers to get immediate ROI from a BI implementation without huge server investments.
• Big data.  Part of Oracle's strategy in this area is to tie into any data in any source behind the scenes into Oracle BI.  Data agnostic
• Predictive analytics.  Paul didn't really talk to this one other than to tease that they do have dedicated resources to expanding the Predictive Analytics capabilities of Oracle BI Foundation Suite.  There is some P.A. functionality in Hyperion Planning, Crystal Ball, and Hyperion Strategic Finance and that sounds like it will be expanded into the BI layer in future releases.

The one thing that's really apparent from Paul's session is that Business Analytics is now a $1+ billion dollar portion of Oracle revenue... and they're treating it as such in terms of research and development.  It's a fast growing space and Oracle seems determined to maintain their market share in overall Business Analytics.

I hope to blog later in the week if any new announcements come out.  Coming to you from Kscope13, this is your humble reporter, Edward Roske.

Kscope12 - Schedule is Published

Waterpark at the JW Marriott Hill Country

2012 will be my final year as conference chair for the Kscope conference.  In case you haven't heard elsewhere, in 2012, it's June 24-28 in San Antonio, TX at the gorgeous JW Marriott Hill Country.  The schedule has been finalized, published, and (I'll humbly admit this since I really had very little to do with it) it's the best schedule I've seen for a conference in my memory.  Yes, historians, the schedule is better than the last Hyperion Solutions conference because there are no marketing sessions (beyond one timeslot for clearly marked vendor sessions) and the content is deep and not just broad.

It's also not dominated by the software vendor (unlike Solutions).  When the maker of the software speaks (Oracle, in our case), it's because they're asked to speak and on topics we care about.  On the subject of Hyperion, for instance, Oracle is hosting an entire day-long symposium on what's going to be released in the future for Hyperion, Essbase, and OBIEE.  It's led by product development and not the Oracle product marketing guys.

One of the expansion areas this year is that in the areas of BI and EPM, they're adding more business and introductory content.  Here are all the dedicated BI/EPM tracks for Kscope12 amounting to over 150 sessions (click on the name of each to get a page about each track):

- Business Intelligence.  This track is led by some of the best OBIEE (and other Oracle BI product areas) people in the business.  The track has been expanded this year as the importance of BI has grown tremendously within Oracle.

- Essbase.  They have over 50 sessions all on Essbase this year.  This is more than any other conference in the world.  This track will cover intermediate to advanced Essbase sessions you won't get at conferences like Collaborate, Connection Point, or OpenWorld.

- Essbase Beginner.  This is a new track that allows people who are just getting started in the world of Hyperion to get some introductory training from the best in the business.

- Hyperion Applications. Hyperion Planning, HFM (Hyperion Financial Management), Hyperion Strategic Finance, and all the other Hyperion applications finally get a track of their own... and it has over 50 sessions dedicated to the Hyperion applications.  Like the Essbase track, this makes it the largest Hyperion application track of any conference in the world.

- Hyperion Business Content. For the first time in 2012, we are adding a track devoted to the business users.  If you're a director, manager, VP, controller, power user, or any type of person who primarily uses or manages Hyperion/Essbase instead of implementing it, you finally have a place to turn.  Since Solutions ended in 2007, a true Hyperion or EPM business-specific user didn't have dedicated content at any conference.  Collaborate tried (and no offense, failed).  OpenWorld missed dramatically by assuming most users were either CFO's or users with hard-core IT backgrounds.  Business people, welcome to Kscope.

In addition to those 150+ sessions on Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management, there are other tracks serving the non BI/EPM community:

- Applications Express

- Oracle Database

- Developer's Toolbox

- Fusion Middleware

If you haven't registered for the conference yet, I will save you $100.  If you've already registered, it's too late.  When you register, put in promo code IRC (it stands for interRel Consulting) and it'll take $100 off whatever the prevailing rate is.  Consider that my gift for you reading this far in the blog (for which $100 is not nearly enough, I'm sure you're thinking).

Kscope - Sessions All Finalized

Despite all rumors (and some fond desires from my competition), I'm not actually dead. I have not been in a Platonic cave nor was I abducted by aliens (this time).  The best excuse I can plausibly provide (unless I could convince you that a massive snowstorm hit Dallas the week leading up to the Super Bowl, cause ya, like that's believable) is that I and the rest of the conference team have been hard at work putting together the agenda for ODTUG Kscope11 to be held June 26-30, 2011 in Long Beach, California.

There are five tracks at the conference:

• BI & EPM
• Fusion Middleware
• Application Express
• Oracle Database Development
• MySQL

Big Picture
The one that's the dearest to my skillset is, of course, the BI, EPM, and Hyperion track.  This year's track has around 100 BI/EPM sessions, several half-day hands-on labs, and two day-long deep-dive symposiums on Sunday.  In the BI/EPM world, there are 7 major areas we'll be focusing on:

• Financial Management Solutions (HFM, FDM, Disclosure Management, Financial Close Management)
• Planning Solutions (Planning, Strategic Finance, EPMA, Operational Planning, Crystal Ball)
• Essbase Solutions (Essbase, ASO, Studio, HPCM, Java API, all the rest)
• BI Solutions (OBIEE, Warehouse Builder)
• Reporting Solutions (Smart View, Financial Reporting, Interactive Reporting, Answers+, Dashboards, Publisher, Visual Explorer)
• Keeping It All Running (Utilities, Tips & Tricks, Tuning & Optimization, ODI, MDX, MaxL, Scripting, etc.)
• Third Party Tools (Dodeca, Star Analytics, Cloud Computing, etc.)

All those are detailed on the Kscope11 landing page for BI & EPM at Kscope11.com/BIEPM.

I'm a technical user/admin/developer

If you're a technical user, administrator, of developer of Essbase, Hyperion Planning, HFM, OBIEE or any of the other Oracle BI and EPM products, then by all means, this is the place to go.  Kscope 2010 had more Hyperion and Oracle EPM attendees than any other conference in the world (yes, that includes Oracle OpenWorld and Collaborate).  Attendance was also 50% greater from 2009 to 2010, so obviously it's where people in the former Hyperion community are gravitating.

I'm advanced

Congratulations on rising up to the upper levels of Hyperion, Essbase, and/or OBIEE knowledge.  Your mother must be very proud.  If you're an intermediate, advanced, or guru-level user of Oracle BI/EPM, then you'll find lots of like-minded people at Kscope.  I'm personally giving, for instance, 2 hours of sessions on how to hack Oracle Essbase and an entire presentation on the fine art of writing ASO calc scripts.  You won't find that level of content at any other conference, so if you want good training you can't get anywhere else for less than $300 per day, join us in June.

I'm a beginner

Don't feel bad.  We all started there.  One of the comments we got from last year is that with the Hyperion Solutions long in the rearview mirror, there's no longer a place for new users of the Oracle BI, EPM, Essbase, and Hyperion products to get started.  I know I began my Essbase career back when by looking at what other companies were doing with Essbase, so we've expanded the beginner content this year.  We now have implementation stories and sessions from ~40 companies for you to choose from.  Here's an entire track of suggested beginning sessions:

Kscope11 Beginner Track

But I'm not a techie

The number one area we wanted to improve on this year was to add an entire track for business users, end users, and decision makers.  We've added around 20 sessions focused on the non-technical side of Hyperion.  If you want to learn how Oracle EPM can be better used at your organization, if you want case studies of other successful firms, or you want to know how to better use the investment you've made in Oracle BI, EPM, and Hyperion, we now have an entire track devoted to you:

Kscope11 Functional and Decision Maker Track

I need to register right now

I have to admit: I love Kscope.  It's the best of the old Hyperion Solutions and Hyperion Top Gun conferences rolled into one (with all the marketing stripped out).  It's the only conference each year that I look forward to (which is why I volunteered to help chair the conference this year).  If you want to sign up, visit Kscope11.com/registration.  Early bird deadline is March 25, but I wouldn't wait, because seats in the hands-on labs will be assigned based on the order people sign up for the conference.  Oh, and as a reward for reading this entire blog entry, use promo code IRC at checkout for $100 off.  That's a limited time code and don't share it with anyone.  It's a secret for the 7 people who actually still read my blog after my 4 month blog sabbatical.

Mea Culpa

Sorry for the massive break between posts.  Expect a flurry in the near future.  You have been warned.

#2. Hyperion Creates BPM Out of Thin Air

In 2002, Hyperion realized that though they had the best budgeting, scorecarding, and financial consolidation products in the industry, their competitors were still lumping them in the BI (Business Intelligence) category. So Hyperion simply decided they would create their own category: BPM (Business Performance Management). BPM was created to include BI but also add in applications that sat on top of BI. Gartner picked up the ball and ran with it creating their CPM (Corporate Performance Management) magic quadrant and placing Hyperion firmly in the leadership quadrant.

Cognos, Business Objects, Oracle, IBM, SAP, and the rest were left playing catch up as they stuck with BI a little too long giving Hyperion a 2-year head start. When Oracle acquired Hyperion, they renamed CPM to EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) but the entire xPM acronym can be traced back to the excellent work of Hyperion’s product marketing group.

Collaborate Regional Conferences - First is Feb. 23-24 in NJ

OAUG Connection Point - EPM Regional Conferences

There is apparently a name for the 3 regional 2-day conferences on Hyperion/EPM/BI that OAUG is putting on in 2010. It's "Oracle Connection Point - Enterprise Performance Management" regional conferences. The first one of these (per Kerdock Consulting's blog) is going to be held February 23-24, 2010 in Jersey City, NJ at the Grand Hyatt.

I don't know any details yet on when the call for speakers is going out nor when they'll have more details on vendor information. As soon as I know it, I'll do an update. It can't be far off, because the conference is less than 4 months away.

There are supposed to be 2 more of these regional conferences in 2010, but I have no details at present on where or when these will be. I get the impression that OAUG is waiting to see how well the first one goes before making a commitment to the others.

interRel Repeats as EPM & BI Partner of the Year

Wow, back-to-back wins. I am seriously stunned. Earlier this evening in Moscone South at the Oracle Partner Network Titan Awards, interRel won the award for "EPM & BI Solution" of the year.

Last year at Openworld was the first time they've given this award out and we were honored (and surprised, frankly) to win it then. We had zero expectation at interRel of being able to repeat as winners. Don't get me wrong: we do consistently good Hyperion and Oracle EPM implementations at interRel, but the odds of repeating seemed astronomically stacked against us. I didn't even know if you could or if Oracle liked to spread the wealth around to multiple partners.

This year, so we were told, the competition for this award was far more fierce than in 2008. We are ecstatic to have won it again making us the only company ever to have received the EPM Solution of the Year award. I am so amazingly happy right now that it's difficult to put into words. We're putting a press release together that should come out this morning.

UPDATE:Press Release has been rapidly assembled (good job staying up all night, Danielle):

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20091012005260&newsLang=en

Brighton's Biggest Bi Event

Here's the brand-new shirt I got here in Brighton. Notice it even has my name on it:

When I decided to wear my shirt from the Rittman Mead BI Forum around Brighton last night, I was unaware of two things:

1. "BI" means one thing to a techie and another thing entirely to the world at large.
2. Brighton is home to the largest gay, lesbian, and transgendered community in England.

BI Forum in England

I'm here in sunny (well, rainy, to be honest) Brighton, England after a near 24-hour trip from Dallas, Texas. The view out my window is of the ocean (and both a carnival pier and a burned down pier) and it's stunningly beautiful. It's about 11:30PM here in Brighton, and my screwed up inner clock just woke me up for the day. Who needs jet lag: just wake up and go to sleep by your internal clock, time zones be damned.

I'm here to speak at an event Mark Rittman's company is putting on. They've invited people from around the world including some from as far away as India and the United States (that'd be me from the USA). We're all going to be talking about Oracle EPM and BI. Though they do tend to skew more towards OBIEE and Oracle OLAP, there are two presentations on Essbase. I'm doing one on the inner workings of Essbase which is basically a "How Essbase Thinks" presentation but taken down to a slightly lower level due to the expert-level of the audience.

I'm looking forward to getting grilled during my session as the attendees play a rousing version of "Stump the Speaker." [Is it weird to look forward to that sort of thing? Discuss Edward's potential mental issues in the comments.] The schedule for the next two days is fairly comprehensive and includes speakers from Oracle as well as the partner community (and maybe a customer or two):

May 14

• Craig Stewart : “Pure Oracle - New BI Applications with Oracle Data Integrator”
• Edward Roske : “The Internal Workings of Essbase”
• Mark Rittman : “Optimizing the Oracle BI Apps using Oracle Data Warehousing Features”
• John Minkjan : “OBIEE Cache Management”
• Venkat Janakiraman : “OBIEE and Essbase Security Integration”
• Adam Bloom : “How to Blow Up the BI Server - A Case Study for Diagnosis of Performance Issues “
• Andreas Nobbmann : “Scripting OBIEE - Is UDML and XML all you need?”

May 15

• Mike Durran : “Oracle BI Roadmap & Strategy”
• Emiel van Bockel : “OBIEE - The Rising Sun to Leave Stars and Snow Behind”
• Daan Bakboord : “Oracle BI EE and Mapviewer”
• Gerard Braat : “Understanding the Oracle BI EE Server Engine - Mastering the Random Request”
• Adrian Ward : “OBIEE Global Implementations”
• Antony Heljula : “Oracle BI & SOA Integration”
• Peter Brink : “Integrating Cube Organized MVs into a Data Warehouse Environment”

If anything interesting comes up, I'll be sure to mention it. My presentation is in less than 12 hours, so now I just need to figure out if I should force my body to try to sleep or just stay up all night?

Follow "Look Smarter" on Twitter

As those of you who actually read this blog on-line at http://looksmarter.blogspot.com/ know, you can know follow me on Twitter (my feed is in the top-right corner). Clicking on http://twitter.com/ERoske will let you follow everything I do, everywhere I go, and every random thought I have. I will warn you ahead of time: a lot of thoughts go through my head that are not Oracle, Hyperion, EPM, or BI related. While I try to leave those off the blog, I won't filter my thoughts/happenings on Twitter.

So if you want unedited, stream-of-consciousness Edward, subscribe to me here:

http://twitter.com/ERoske

I apologize in advance for anything offensive I Twitter. May Gods have mercy on your soul.

OpenWorld - Tuesday, Sep. 23

11:00PM - Evening Wrap Up

After the Excellence awards, I went back to the Oracle Hyperion reception that was joint hosted with the OAUG Hyperion SIG.  When I got there, the room was packed so tightly no one could breathe.  Remember how I said that the room held 300 people?  They apparently let in four hundred and fifty.

I had a nice talk with Rich Clayton towards the end of the night.  He congratulated us on the EPM Solution of the Year award win.  He expressed to me his appreciation of how of the smaller partners deliver high quality solutions that are quite often better than the huge multi-national conglomerate consulting firms.  Rich is a great guy, and I was sincerely grateful for his words of encouragement.  I complimented on his ability to move the mouse during the "demo" at Kurian's keynote using only the power of his mind. Although the reception was supposed to end at 8PM, I didn't get out of there until 9:30.

After the reception, I stopped at a Thai restauraent with a friend of mine from the Oracle community.  It was probably the best food I've had since arriving in San Francisco.  I ate a huge bowl of Tom Kha (vegetarian) and took some Green Curry (with tofu) back to the hotel.

I've got a meeting at 7:45AM, so now it's off to sleep.  And by sleep, I mean watch on iTunes the season premiere of Heroes...

7:30PM - Oracle Excellence Awards

The Oracle Excellence Awards were held in the Oak Room of the Westin St. Francis.  It was a much smaller venue than the Titan Awards from Saturday.  Whereas the Titan Awards were in a grand ballroom with thousands of people, these awards are held in a smallish room holding fewer than 200 people.  Hey, it's only the second year of these awards, and they'll be getting bigger each year, I'm sure.

Pearson Education, one of interRel's best clients and the largest textbook manufacturer in the world, won an Oracle Excellence Award for the implementation we did with them of Hyperion.  Pearson asked me to come up and be in the picture which was very nice.  They also showed the interRel logo on the screen at the front of the room as a "Supporting System Integrator" which I didn't expect at all.

We ate some free appetizers (actually, I didn't because they were all beast-based) and after a Coke, I'm heading back to the Hyperion reception at the Hyatt.

6:25PM - Oracle Hyperion Reception

I just left a reception for Hyperion customers and partners at the Grand Hyatt Union Square.  It was packed.  Kristin Newman from Linium (and a really good friend of mine) arranged the logistics for the event, and she did a great job.  The room the event was held in was the Bay View Room on the 36th floor of the Hyatt.  It had a panoramic view of the bay to the West and the city to the South.  It was gorgeous.  The room holds about 300 (it's half the top story of the Hyatt)  and right now, it's about 1/3 full.

Kristin arranged for a 3 feet tall cake.  It has multple levels and around the edges of the cake are edible scale models of Oracle HQ, Oracle's sailing yacht, and the Oracle racing plane.  It's one of the most impressive custom cakes I've ever seen.  Kopcke and Gersten are showing up later to cut the cake and it almost seems like a travesty.  Kristin also arranged for lots of free food and several open bars, just so we know we're at Oracle OpenWorld (home of free food and open bar).

I'm running out now to go to the Oracle Excellence Awards at the Westin St. Francis.  Luckily, it's about a block from here.

5:46PM - Oracle OLAP and Essbase

I got to the presentation late.  Luckily, there was plenty of seating.  The room probably held ~500 and was maybe 1/4 full.  Ray Roccaforte was delivering the presentation.  He started off by saying that both Oracle OLAP and Essbase are Oracle's strategic directions for OLAP.  "But wait!," you scream in confusion. "How will I know which one to use?"  Well, here was Ray's exact quote as best as I could capture it:

The difference is in the target audience....If you're consolidating data, the OLAP option is probably your best bet.  If you're more interested in being more software compliant and merging with different systems, Essbase is your best bet.

Ray elaborated on Oracle OLAP by saying that it's more of an IT product than a business product and is designed for people who are more "rationally focused."  Interesting move referring to business users as not rational.  He added that "our target audience with Oracle OLAP is SQL application developers.  It's all about improving BI applications in the Oracle database."  He concluded his portion by saying that Oracle OLAP is best on an Oracle data warehouse.  By "best," I think he means that you should only use Oracle OLAP on a Oracle data warehouse.

John Kopcke came out next to talk about when to use Essbase.  He started by saying that the target audience of Essbase is end users and primary sponsors of Essbase implementations are lines of business (not IT).  Kopcke continued with the theme of "Oracle OLAP is for IT and Essbase is for business."  He had a cute quote:

The Essbase users are the business users, the ones with the ties on. If you're in a shirt with the top button open, you're probably more interested in Oracle OLAP.

I get a kick out John's presentations, as you can tell.  He also said that Essbase should definitely be used when data is coming from multiple sources.

So what did we learn?  If you have an Oracle data warehouse and want to rack and stack you some data warehouse, use Oracle OLAP.  In all other cases, use Essbase.  I can actually see situations where we would want to use both together.  For instance, take your Oracle data warehouse, roll it up with Oracle OLAP, and create an Essbase 11 xOLAP cube (basically, a virtual cube that sits on top of a relational product) to make it easy for your users who like an Essbase like engine.  The data would then sit in Oracle OLAP while users accessed a transparent Essbase cube.

I know have to race to the Hyperion reception at the Grand Hyatt.  My feet are killing me.  Santa, please give me a Segway for Christmas.  I've been a good (enough) boy.

4:50PM - Thomas Kurian Keynote (now with more Kurian)

When Intel finished at 3:28, one third of the room left.  They were here just for the commercial?  That strikes me as very weird.  Maybe they thought it was all over?  Ah, many of them are now coming back.  Silly people.

Thomas Kurian, SVP of Oracle Fusion Middleware, came out at 3:30 on the dot.  The man is prompt, I'll give him that.  He's talking about Oracle Data Integrator (and other data translation products) at the moment, but there's nothing earth shattering being said.

Hey, he just said "Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Manager" (formerly known as Hyperion MDM)!  He's just showing how it's part of the Oracle Data Integration Suite.  Rich Clayton (a former Hyperion guy and now a director in the Oracle EPM Product Marketing group) was just brought out on stage to demo aspects of the Oracle Data Integration Suite.  Wait, Thomas Kurian said demo, but it's really a recording of a demo done at some point in the past.  Basically, we're listening to Rich Clayton narrate a video.  I guess that means that we won't be treated to any sudden software crashes during the "demo."  Note to Rich: it's not as obvious that it's recorded if you leave a hand near the computer when the mouse is moving.  Rich, a friend of mine, did get a nice round of applause as he left the stage just now.

Thomas is now talking about all the new Essbase 11x features.  He just misstated that "Essbase can now stay up and running while users are submitting data through Planning."  Um, it always did that.  I think he meant that Essbase 11x ASO cubes can stay up during retrieves and submits even submissions from users.  He also said that "Essbase now can combine multiple cubes into one on the fly."  Again, it has done that for years.  I think he meant that Essbase ASO cubes can now be targets of transparent partitions and he was trying to explain that to non-Essbase users.  He did mention that Essbase 11x has new time intelligence and allows text in an Essbase cube.  I would have led with "Essbase can now handle text in the cube" but that's just me.  He did talk briefly about the existence of the new Essbase Studio, but didn't explain why it kicks EIS ass.

He's now talking about Smart View (now called Oracle Smart View for Office) and Oracle Smart Space. He's on a Hyperion roll, but there's no new information beyond standard marketing.  It's just nice to see Oracle talking about the former Hyperion products during a keynote.

Rich Clayton just came back out to do some more video narration.  He's starting off with a dashboard in Oracle EPM Workspace (formerly Hyperion Workspace).  Rich is talking about how cool page dropdowns are when they are linked to the entire dashboard.  Yes, dropdown page filters are handy, but not exactly cutting edge.  The recorded demo from Rich is a bit too "look at how we're doing things like conditional formatting or multiple sources on a grid" for me.  I tend to shy away from a feature-centric demo and go more for of the "and how does this help me?" demo.  Considering most of the people in the audience are IT (whereas I'm a finance guy at heart), a technology demo may very well be appropriate.  People around me seem to be interested.

I do like how Rich Clayton and Thomas Kurian keep saying "Essbase" over and over.  It's music to my ears.  Rich just showed OBIEE Publisher sitting on top of Essbase.  I didn't realize that the new version of Publisher could do that.  Maybe I should spend next week learning all the new OBIEE 10.1.3.4 features?  Rich just left to another round of applause (his third, I believe) while Thomas gave some statistics about how fast Essbase is.

Thomas is now talking about Oracle EPM Architect (note that there's no "Hyperion" anywhere in the name), Oracle Hyperion Planning, Oracle Hyperion Profitabiltiy and Cost Management, Oracle Hyperion Financial Management, Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting, 

He just said that one of the new features of Hyperion Planning are the Workforce planning and CapEx Planning modules.  No, these have been around since System 9.3 (and earlier, in the case of Workforce).  I wonder who vetted this speech?  Weird.

Rich Clayton came out again.  This time he's talking about integrating Oracle eBusiness Suite and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management.  He started off in Hyperion Financial Reporting and talked about the new annotations available in Financial Reporting 11x.  He then jumped over to HFM, right-clicked on a number, and jumped out to Hyperion FDQM.  He then clicked on a transaction in FDQM and jumped out to Oracle eBusiness Suite.  That's remarkably powerful integration.  I'd like to see this same capability for other GLs (notably, SAP).

Rich is now demonstrating PowerPoint.  No, not PowerPoint slides; he's showing how to access Hyperion Planning data from inside PowerPoint (via Smart View).  He just jumped from PowerPoint over to Excel to show Smart View in Excel.  He's now showing a brief demo of Hyperion Profitability.

Did I mention I'm impressed that all of Kurian's demos so far have been about Hyperion products (and in some cases, how they integrate with OBIEE)?  It gives me a warm feeling inside.  Rich just left to a third round of applause.

I would like to advise the Oracle keynote speakers (all the speakers, actually) to add some humor to their presentations.  Don't be so dry: people are more receptive to information when they're having fun, smiling, and not falling asleep.  I haven't the audience laugh in at least an hour, and that's not good.  By the end of the keynote, half the room had left.  Not a good sign, so make it more interesting, for your sake and ours.  Maybe all of the top people from Oracle could get together and write a wacky musical about the software industry?

While we're being critical of speakers, may I also advise that the keynote speakers not read everything off teleprompters?  First of all, it's weird to see all of the keynoters looking down at their feet (where the teleprompter screens are) half the time.  Second of all, if you're reading, you're not being spontaneous.  You can't react to your audience.  If your audience is bored with what you're saying, you can't try a different approach, because you're a slave to the prompting gods.  If you're worried about forgetting where you are, may I suggest you have the teleprompter just show you the bullets you want to be covering?  Or you could memorize your talking points, perhaps.  I'm just saying.

In case you're wondering why I've stopped blogging about what's actually going on in the room around me, it's because Thomas Kurian has switched from BI/EPM to the other fusion technologies.  While those are probably great fun at parties (and they have great personalities), I'm not terribly concerned with those other products.

There's a demo going on right now of Oracle Beehive (catchy, eh?) which Oracle describes thus: "Oracle Beehive provides a centralized, secure and auditable collaboration platform that helps organizations reduce the cost and complexity of regulatory compliance and legal discovery."  If you have any idea what means, please feel free to send an e-mail to wtf@oracle.com.  It seems to be about increasing collaboration (via e-mail, IM, wikis, portals, mobile phones, or whatever) across a company.  Think "Web 2.0 but focused within a company."  Now why couldn't the Oracle marketing department just say that?

Speaking of marketing, Oracle just issued a press release about customers who have "selected or evaluated" Hyperion 11x.  They actually included a quote from me (or someone making up a quote and attributing it to me) on the release.  Here's the quote.  Note that it sounds nothing like me:

“The latest release of Oracle’s EPM System includes hundreds of feature enhancements that will help improve user experience and simplify application administration for our customers,” said Edward Roske, CEO of interRel Consulting. “The new Hyperion Calculation Manager redefines enterprise integration and user accessibility while the enhancements to Oracle Essbase solidifies its position as the world’s leading OLAP server."

The room is now 90% empty.  I guess that's because it's now 4:45.  I wonder why it's running so much over?  I could walk out to go to Kopcke's presentation on "Oracle's Strategic OLAP Technologies - Essbase and Oracle OLAP Option" but it doesn't seem right to walk out on a keynote.

Thomas Kurian just called an abrupt end to the meeting.  I'm going to run to Kopcke's presentation at the Marriott and see if I can still get in.  Here I go running...

3:15PM - Thomas Kurian Keynote (brought to you by Intel)

I got to the Thomas Kurian Keynote a little after 2.  I stopped off to get one of Oracle's vegetarian boxed lunches.  While the food at OOW is nothing to blog home about, they are vegetarian friendly... if you can find where they hide the vegetarian food.  The main lunch places only have meat-based food, because they put all the "special meals" in one specific lunch spot: the Sinking Ship pavilion in the Yerba Buena Gardens (in what Oracle calls the "Green Marketplace").  When I finally found it, I was extremely impressed at the variety of special meals: vegan, lacto-vegetarian (I never see that), kosher, halla, Indian, gluten-free, lactose intolerant, and more.  Now that said, my lacto-vegetarian meal was basically tofu on salad in a boxed lunch and definitely not filling.

While people were getting seated, I was treated to a cello quartet by a nice young lady.  Yes, it was a single person.  She played along in front of the room and recorded it.  She would then play it back with a foot pedal and play along live with the recording all the while recording this.  She'd then play this recording back and play along with (and so ad infinitum).

This keynote is much better attended than the other things I've been to in this hall so far.  The room seems to be mostly full.  (I'm speculating that they're not holding any competing events right now.)

Safra Catz from Oracle just came out to introduce Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel (not to be confused with interRel).  Paul is going to be talking about "how Intel is driving the pace of Moore's Law to deliver innovative solutions that will enable enterprises to use time to their advantage."  He has a nice blue background and he came out after an interesting video homage to the concept of time.  It showed how clocks have evolved over the last thousands of years and included various slow-mo and fast-mo images with quotes about time from famous thinkers flashing across the screen.

He just mentioned that Intel is working on the flux capacitator from Back to the Future (though he added that they haven't perfected it yet).  We're going to presume he was joking (but if not, it's very cool that Intel is going to be the market edge leader in time machines).  He's been talking about linear and exponential improvements in the speed of business.  There hasn't been any EPM content, but there have been a lot of pretty pictures flowing across the screen.

A woman from a medical imaging firm just came out and showed us 3-D images of blood flow in brains.  I don't know what it has to do with Oracle, but brains are cool.

I think Thomas Kurian will be coming on at about 3:30.  Until then, I think I'll be taking a power nap.

1:22PM - Hyperion Performance Scorecard

I sat in the Scorecard session for about 20 minutes.  Unlike the "BI Roadmap" presentation (that was standing room only), there were only 65 people in this room.  I was hoping to hear about the future of Performance Scorecard.  Unfortunately, this presentation was more of an introduction to the topic.  This is, admittedly, exactly what the abstract said it was going to be, so my hopes were minimal.

I just left the Scorecard session and now I'm off to find something to eat.

1:02PM - Book Signing

I just spent 30 minutes at the Oracle bookstore in Moscone West signing copies of "Look Smarter Than You Are with Essbase."  A lot of people came up, glanced through the book, asked "are you the author?", and when I said yes, they asked, "so what is this Essbase thing Oracle bought anyway?"  I enjoyed talking with everyone (I love to educate people on Essbase, Hyperion, and now Oracle EPM) but it did teach me something.  A lot of the Oracle user community has heard about Essbase, but hardly anyone understands what it does.  BI and EPM are not cool well defined concepts like GL, ERP, CRM, and the like.  Calling Essbase an "OLAP tool" way oversimplifies what it can do.  Oracle needs to define where Essbase fits in the enterprise, because right now there's confusion and no one wants to see Essbase pigeonholed into the Finance group again.

12:23PM - Business Intelligence Roadmap and Strategy

I was 5 minutes late getting into the room, because the place is packed.  The line to check in to the room was over 150 feet long.  It literally went down the hall and around the corner.  Paul Rodwick from Oracle is talking about the current and future world of BI/EPM at Oracle.  Please remember that all this information is speculative, so Oracle is likely to change their minds at the drop of a hat.  For the moment, though, this is their plan.

Paul has been offering up some great insight to Oracle's strategic direction for various Hyperion and OBIEE products.  For instance, Paul just said that "Hyperion Workspace has been adopted as the primary interface to Business Intelligence information at Oracle.  [Hyperion Workspace] has been renamed the Oracle EPM Workspace."

The three major components of Oracle's BI Foundation are Essbase, BI Server, and Predictive Analytics (Oracle Real-Time Decisions).  I'm glad to see Essbase in there as a key component of Oracle's BI strategy.

He said that HFM is Oracle's go-forward product for global consolidations like Planning is for budgeting.  I heard this from Kopcke on Sunday, but it's good to hear it reiterated.  He also said that Oracle's strategic direction for dashboards is not Interactive Reporting but rather OBIEE Dashboards.  He also said their strategic direction for ad-hoc querying is OBIEE (Answers, I'm presuming, but he didn't specify).  This is, I think, the last nail in the coffin of Web Analysis.  I'd heard this before, but never in an official setting.  Paul had a slide that showed Oracle's direction for canned reports is OBIEE (presumably Publisher) and not Hyperion (SQR Production Reporting).

He reiterated that the installation of System 9 took up to 270 screens of installation prompts whereas 11.1 takes only 8 screens to install everything.  While 11.1 is easier than System 9 to install, there are still some tricks to it, so don't think it's a walk in the park.  Maybe it's more like a walk through Central Park at 3AM.

OBIEE 10.1.3.4 came out in August and adds a great deal of integration with Hyperion.  One of the neat features of OBIEE 10.1.3.4 is a sample "Best Practices" application which shows some of the best practices for KPIs, dashboards, detailed reports, trending, and the like.  If you don't know where to start with your EPM application, check this out on OTN or edelivery.oracle.com.  OBIEE 11g should be out within the next 12 months and it should add a lot of expansion to the existing OBIEE products to make them work better with multi-dimensional data (like Essbase).  There are more than 140 major projects as part of OBIEE 11g: so many that I can't reasonably cover them all.

One of the really neat things about OBIEE 11g is the enhancement of Answers+ to give it more of an "OLAP experience" that doesn't "flatten all the hierarchies."  They're also enhancing and optimizing the capabilities of Answers+ against Essbase.  Yes, it looks like Web Analysis really is dead.

He reiterated Kopcke's statement that Hyperion Smart View is Oracle's go forward product for Business Intelligence inside the Microsoft Office products.  He also stated that Hyperion Financial Reporting is Oracle's strategic direction for creating reports of an accounting nature.

Paul is saying so much interesting information that I'm having a hard time keeping up (and I type at 80-100 words per minute).  This is definitely the most helpful session so far.  I'm definitely not bored.  While a lot of this presentation is talking about what's currently released in Hyperion 11.1 and OBIEE 10.1.3.4, there is really good "our strategic direction for XYZ product is" information to be had.

Sadly, I have to duck out of the room now (it's about 12:20) to make it to my book signing at 12:30.  Thankfully, the bookstore is only about 100 yards from the room I'm in on the same floor.

11:03AM - EPM Management Excellence Think Tank

I just finished helping facilitate one of the two subgroups for the EPM think tank at the Westin St. Francis.  The attendance was outstanding.  There were 50+ companies there.  There were about 4 partners from the OAUG Hyperion SIG in attendance to help coordinate things.  There were also far more Oracle employees than I expected, but they were hosting the event, so I guess I'm not totally shocked.

Breakfast was put out for the attendees and it had an international flair to it.  Some of the stranger items included pickled eggplant and pickled eggs.  Some of the other things I couldn't even identify, but the people who got there earlier enough for the world-spanning buffet seemed to enjoy it.

The meeting kicked off with a brief introduction from Stephan Scholl who is over Oracle consulting for North America.  He then handed it of Gauthier Vasseur to lay the ground rules for the event.  He did a neat little magic trick with a bit of rope that turned hard when "everyone started collaborating."

They split everyone into two groups.  My group was in the "Study" room at the St. Francis Suite.  We had 30+ people in our room and I shared the facilitation with Oracle consulting honchos John Van Puffelen and Naren Truelove.

I can't go into the details of what we discussed, but I will say that our group was very forward looking.  We spent our time trying to stop looking backwards and imagine what the EPM world will look like going forward.  Almost everyone in the room participated and for the most part, we stuck to the mission (high-level creative thought) and stayed out of product details and gripes.

After the breakout sessions, everyone regrouped in the main room where John Kopcke was waiting to thank everyone for coming.  A professional photographer then came in to take a professional picture of all the attendees together in front of one of the many marble fireplaces.

I have to run now to Moscone North 2022 for a BI roadmap session.

6:03AM - My hotel room

I had to get up at 6AM so I can help setup the think tank.  Considering the time I got to bed, I'm not very happy about getting up this early.  I apologize in advance if my blog today is a bit grouchy.

Someone Tell Romulus We Cannot Do This All in One Day

The journey of 1 gazillion steps begins with just one. This is the very first post on my very first blog, and you've managed to scroll all the way down to it. You are a decent human being despite what some stupid war crimes tribunal in The Hague has to say. A time will eventually come when this blog will bigger than The Beatles' blog, but only you can say that you were there at the beginning.

It probably makes sense to say a little about who I am or what it is I do that qualifies me to write a blog. My profound work-related joy these days is running interRel Consulting. My business partner, Eduardo Quiroz, and I originally founded interRel in 1997 to provide the highest-quality and highest-bill rate Arbor Essbase consulting we could. We were a little cocky: our original motto was "Reaching for Perfection, we achieve the impossible in record time." Essbase, for those who are curious, falls into a category of databases known as BI (Business Intelligence) although at the time they called it OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing). For a complete history of BI from a completely unbiased source, read "A Short History of Business Intelligence and Where It's Headed" by Howard Dresner, former Chief Strategy Officer at Hyperion.

Hyperion is the company with which Arbor merged in 1998. Hyperion made financial consolidation and planning software and the merger of the two companies is widely concerned to be a model for how not to merge two companies. interRel expanded our consulting offerings in '98 to include the additional Hyperion products. What we didn't do was start consulting on competing BI products (Cognos, Business Objects, and all the rest). In April of 2007, Oracle purchased Hyperion for $3,300,000,000 (that's 3.3 billion with a 'B'). At some point, I'll comment on the acquisition, but suffice to say that interRel will, for the near future at least, be devoted to the former Hyperion product lines within the new, much larger, Oracle world. interRel celebrated its 10th anniversary in May of 2007, and the future looks even brighter. Sorry, that was trite.

I have two wonderful children (I'm not bragging, but they really are the two best children on the planet), two intelligent dogs (again, I'm not bragging, but my dogs are smarter than most people's children), and a beautiful wife (still not bragging, but if she was missing her arms and was made out of rock, people would mistake her for the Venus de Milo). I live in Dallas, Texas which is a nice place to work and a lousy place to live. Most people here complain about the heat, but being from the Pacific Northwest, I miss hills and mountains. Those people who complain about the heat aren't wrong, though. There's probably a lot more too me, and I'll open up some more once I've trapped you into visiting here for "useful" information. Oh, I co-wrote a book once that for a while was on lulu.com's top 100 best selling books of all-time.

I promise that I will update my blog as often as I have the time and inclination to do so. I will not necessarily wait until I have something interesting to say, so brace yourself for a sea of inanities and needlessly long sentences with big words that I try to use to make myself sound more articulate than I actually am.

I'll leave you with one last link. For the first five seconds or so, you'll wonder why a guy explaining "Smart BI" is stripping during the introduction. Continue on if you want beyond five seconds, but the stripping stops when he starts doodling (get your mind out of the gutter, pervert) on a virtual whiteboard.

Look smarter than you are,
Edward Roske, CEO
interRel Consulting