Looking Forward to Kscope13

On June 9, the rates for Kscope13 go up $300 per person (basically, you're going up to the last minute, I-don't-know-why-I-waited-but-now-it-costs-a-lot-more price).  If you haven't registered yet for what is by far the best Oracle EPM, BI, Hyperion, Business Analytics, Essbase, etc. conference in the world, go right now to kscope13.com and register.  It'll be the best training experience of the year: you're basically getting 4.5 days of training that you won't see anywhere else the entire year... for the price of 2 days of training at an Oracle training center.

And when you register, don't forget to use promo code IRC to save $100 off whatever the current rate is.

The conference is June 23-27 in New Orleans though my favorite day is always the opening Sunday, so make sure you fly in Saturday night.  On Sunday, they turn the sessions over to the Oracle Development team to talk about everything they have planned for the next 1-3 years.  It's the one time each year that you can hear right from the people who are building it what you're going to be seeing in the future.  There's generally an hour on each major product line (an hour on Essbase, an hour on Hyperion Planning, an hour on mobile BI, etc.).  The keynote this year is Balaji Yelamanchili, the head of Oracle BI and EPM development for Oracle.  My only semi-complaint about this year's BI/EPM Symposium is that there's so much content that they're splitting it into three concurrent symposiums: Business Intelligence, EPM, and a special symposium for the EPM business users.

This year will be somewhat bittersweet for me since I am no longer actively involved with the chairing of the conference.  This means that I get to focus on going to sessions, learning things, playing/leading Werewolf games, and of course, presenting a few sessions.  Here are the ones I'm personally teaching:

• Using OBIEE to Retrieve Essbase Data:  The 7 Steps You Won’t Find Written Down.  This is in the BI track and it's basically all the quirks about connecting OBIEE to Essbase in a way that uses the strengths of each product.

• What’s New in OBIEE 11.1.1.7: Oracle on Your iPhone & Other Cool Things.  This is also in the BI track and it's an overview of all the things that people will like in 11.1.1.6 (for both Hyperion and relational audiences).

• Everything You Know About Essbase Optimization  is Incomplete, Outdated, Or Just Plain Wrong.  This is in the Essbase track and it's the one I'm most looking forward to delivering, because I get to break all of the optimization rules we all have been accepting as gospel for close to 20 years.

• Learn From Common Mistakes: Pitfalls to Avoid In Your Hyperion Planning Implementation.  This is a vendor presentation hosted by interRel.  I get to sit on the panel and answer Planning questions from the audience while talking about blunders I've seen during Planning implementations.  It should be fun/rousing.  Since it's all interRel, I wouldn't be surprised if a few punches were thrown or at minimum, a few HR violations were issued.

• Lunch and Learn: Oracle Essbase Panel.  This is an Oracle Technology Network panel during lunch on Tuesday.  I am chairing the panel and asking probing questions of a bunch of Oracle ACE Directors in the Essbase field.

• Innovations in BI:  Oracle Business Intelligence against Essbase & Relational (parts 1 and 2).  This is also in the BI track (somehow I became a BI speaker???) and I'm co-presenting this session with Stewart Bryson from Rittman Mead.  We'll be going over OBIEE on Essbase on relational and compare it to OBIEE on relational directly.  Stewart is a long-time friend and Oracle ACE for OBIEE, so it should let us each showcase our respective experiences with Essbase and OBIEE in a completely non-marketing way.

• CRUX (CRUD meets UX): Oracle Fusion Applications Functional UI Design Patterns in Oracle ADF.  This is in the Fusion track and I'll be talking about how to make a good user interface as part of the user experience of ADF.  No, this doesn't have a thing to do with Hyperion.

I am looking forward to all the wacky, new things Mike Riley (my replacement as Conference Chair for Kscope) has in store.  My first Kscope conference was in New Orleans in 2008 (back when they called it Kaleidoscope and no one was quite sure why it wasn't "i before e") so this is a homecoming of sorts albeit with 8 times as many sessions on Oracle BI/EPM.  If you're there (and let's face it, all the cool kids will be), stop by the interRel booth and say "hi."  It's the only 400 square feet booth, so it shouldn't be hard to find.

Webcast Series - What's New in EPM 11.1.2.3 and OBIEE 11.1.1.7

Today I'm giving the first presentation in a 9-week long series on all the new things in Oracle EPM Hyperion 11.1.2.3 and OBIEE 11.1.1.7.  The session today (and again on Thursday) is an overview of everything new in all the products.  It's 108 slides which goes to show you that there's a lot new in 11.1.2.3.  I won't make it through all 108 slides but I will cover the highlights.

I'm actually doing 4 of the 9 weeks (and maybe 5, if I can swing it).  Here's the complete lineup in case you're interested in joining:

• June 4 & 6 - Overview
• June 11 & 13 - HFM
• June 18 & 20 - Financial Close Suite
• July 9 & 11 - Essbase and OBIEE
• July 16 & 18 - Planning
• July 23 & 25 - Smart View and Financial Reporting
• July 30 & Aug 1 - Data & Metadata Tools (FDM, DRM, etc.)
• Aug 6 & 8 - Free Supporting Tools (LCM, Calc Mgr, etc.)
• Aug 13 & 15 - Documentation

If you want to sign up, visit http://www.interrel.com/educations/webcasts.  There's no charge and I don't do marketing during the sessions (seriously, I generally forget to explain what company I work for).  It's a lot of information, but we do spread it out over 9 weeks, so it's not information overload.

And bonus: you get to hear my monotone muppet voice for an hour each week. #WorstBonusEver

Becoming an Oracle Essbase Guru

I give presentations at conferences around the world including over 100 sessions in the last year throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Australia. So it may come as a shock that I don't actually teach that many classes anymore. Usually, it's once or twice a year and they tend to be on advanced topics (unlike my sessions at conferences which tend to be more intermediate and beginner level). It's time for that once or twice a year for me to teach the advanced classes.


I have two classes coming up and both are in November. To register for either, e-mail Danielle White at interRel and I strongly suggest you hurry since seating is very limited. That's not marketing hype. The first one of the classes is literally limited to 12 students. The other one has slightly more capacity since it's more seminar style and less hands-on, but it's limited too.


Becoming an Oracle Essbase BSO Calc Scripts Guru on November 12
This is a virtual class (meaning you can take it from anywhere in the world) and price is $750 for the day. It's designed to teach you all the major points of Essbase Calc Scripts and BSO member formulas in a single day. We'll start off with the basics but we will get to more advanced topics like allocations, goal seeking, multi-pass calcs, and so on. We close the day with an hour of calc script optimization.


The class format is part me teaching and part hands-on labs using the interRel cloud. It will have tons of real world examples (because if it can be done in an Essbase calc script or member formula, I've probably done it) and lots of interactive Q&A as well. As. I mentioned above, because this class will have exercises throughout the day, we are limiting it to 12 students. In other words, drop what you're doing and register now because it'll probably be full by month-end.


I don't know if this is a motivator for anyone, but attendees will all get a copy of the newest Look Smarter Than You Are with Essbase book autographed by the two authors (one of whom is actually a really nice person and looks great in a dress). If you've ever wanted to learn calc scripts or you've wanted to take your knowledge of member formulas to an advanced level, this is the class for you.


Becoming an Essbase Optimization Guru on November 15
This is a class I've been wanting to offer for years. Basically, we'll spend an entire day focusing on designing and optimizing Essbase cubes. It will span both ASO and BSO cubes. It is going to be seminar format so mostly lecturing from me with lots of Q&A by you. Cost is only $375 (that's the good part) but you'll have to attend in real life (IRL, for those who only know text acronyms). The class will be taught at interRel's headquarters at the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, TX. Lunch will be included for attendees, so it's a pretty darned good deal. And we're only 15 minutes from DFW Airport and only 20 from Dallas Love Field (for those Southwest Airlines junkies).


The seminar will cover every aspect of optimization and to a far greater level than your standard one hour optimization presentation at a conference. Among other things, we'll cover data loading, dimension building, dimension ordering, outline tuning, caches, config settings, ASO specific tips, BSO calc script tips, and 64-bit optimization too. We'll even cover how cube design and optimization changes when you get to the Essbase 11x world.


I will be using various examples of cubes I've optimized in the past, but iI'm also willing to use attendees' cubes for examples too. As such, if you sign up before the end of October and send me your outline, database settings, and calc scripts, I may use them (sanitized so no one knows it's your company) as examples in the class. In other words, you may be getting free Essbase optimization consulting as part of your $375 too which makes it potentially an even better deal. Even if you don't send in your application, there will be lots of time for questions throughout the day.


Oh, and to spice up the day, i will be sprinkling several of my "Hacking Essbase" tips throughout the class. These are the undocumented, unsupported, void your warranty things I've come up with over the last 15 plus years. I can't put them in writing for fear of being sued but we'll be covering the tricks (both helpful and shocking) whenever we have a break in the class.


There is a good thing about scheduling this for November 15th. Many of you will be coming to Dallas for the EPM Connection Point conference on November 16-17. Since this class will be from 10am-5pm on the 15th, you can just come in a day early and learn some advanced Essbase content before the 2-day conference. And if you do register for EPM Connection Point, make sure you use the InterRel promo code of "interrelclient" so you get invited to our super-blowout party on the night of the 16th.


Registration
Hurry and email Danielle at interRel to save your spot because I won't be offering either of these classes again until 2011 (and that's if I ever get a chance to offer them again at all). I can't wait to see many of you at one of the two classes!

OpenWorld 2010

I'm getting ready to leave for Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) and I'm mentally preparing myself the same way one would prepare oneself for, say, storming a beach under a steady barrage of heavy machine gun fire: by trying to pretend that my memories of the last time I survived this experience couldn't possibly be as bad as the real thing. No, I'm not a fan of Oracle OpenWorld. It's too many people spread across too many venues with too few hotels and buses to handle them all.

So that probably makes you wonder: why am I going? Because everyone else is, basically. Last year had something like 45,000 attendees and with the addition of the Java users, this year should be more like 50,000 to 55,000. A lot of Hyperion/EPM/BI attendees have stopped going to OOW, so I was hoping my schedule for this year would be lighter. We just finished putting together the interRel Customer Guide for this year (helping our customers with things they might want to see or do), and on the contrary, it actually seems to busier than in prior years. I'm giving four presentations and hosting a Hyperion day on Sunday. Glenn Schwartzberg is giving another 4 sessions, and Eduardo Quiroz (co-founder of interRel, among other things) is giving a session too.

About the only thing cut out from this year is that I'm doing a book signing. We had 2 of the Top 20 best selling books at the OOW bookstore last year, so they asked Tracy McMullen (Best. Co-author. Ever.) and I to do another booksigning. Since Tracy's not going this year due to some family obligations, I just didn't think it'd be the same signing books all by myself. There will still be lots of our books on sale, though.

Like last year, there will be a "Hyperion Pavilion" on the 5th floor of the Intercontinental hotel next to Moscone West. We will have a booth right by the entrance in case you want to come by and say hi to one of the members of the interRel team (Danielle White will be giving away an iPad, so make sure you find her and give her a business card).

In case you want to stalk me (what better way to show you really care?), here's my schedule for the next week:

EPM Connection New Jersey - Agenda and Single Day Rate

The EPM Connection conference (also known as "OAUG Connection Point - Enterprise Performance Management") in New Jersey is less tha 3 weeks away (Feb. 23-24) and there are two developments of note.

Finalized Agenda

The agenda is ready in PDF form (ignore the fact that it says Dubai in the page header). The festivities kick off at 8:30AM on Tuesday, February 23 with a keynote from John O'Rourke on "Smart EPM Strategies for 2010." It then breaks into 5 different tracks covering a range of mostly business topics until 3:30PM. There's a vendor-paid commercial from TUSC that afternoon and a reception that evening.

I'm doing one presentation on the first day along with Steve from Pepsico titled "Achieving a Common Goal: Creating an Oracle EPM Center of Excellence." Tracy McMullen from interRel (Best. Co-author. Ever.) delivers "Day in the Life of a Planning Admin" on the second day. I'm also doing "Finding Profitability in 8 Weeks or Less: An Intro to HPCM" on day two.

Speaking of the second day, John O'Rourke kicks off with another keynote at 8:45AM on what's coming in Oracle EPM in 2010. There are then three more breakout sessions until 1PM. There are a couple of general session things happening from 1-2:30PM before the event wraps up, but I honestly can't tell at the moment what's really going on during that 90 minute period.

The agenda seems to cover a lot of products (though Essbase is woefully underrepresented at about 3 presentations) and a number of good business topics. Total, there are 35+ sessions to choose from which for $495 is a pretty good deal.

One-Day Pass for $350

The conference is two days long, but there's definitely more content on Tuesday, so some might only want to go for the first day. Realizing this, the kind folks at OAUG added a one-day pass for a reduced charge.

The rate is $350 which is around 30% less than the two-day rate. Since Jersey City is nicely located near New York City, I expect that this one-day pass will allow some regional Hyperion users to go who otherwise could not break away for a couple of days. I hope to see you at least one of these days at EPM Connection.

#7. Consulting Company Consolidation

When the decade started, the Hyperion consulting world was dominated by niche companies that only did Hyperion (and sometimes, its competitors like Cognos and Business Objects). Some of the big names included Application Partners, Beacon, Ranzal, ThinkFast, Painted Word, Navigator, Vertical Pitch, and WhittmanHart Consulting. By the end of the decade, not one of those firms was still standing.

Starting in about 2003, the value of BI/EPM really started taking off, and the merger/acquisition of the independent firms began. The first to go was Beacon (acquired by what’s now called Hackett in 2003). The next year, Edgewater gobbled up Ranzal and then in 2007, it also ate Vertical Pitch. ThinkFast and Painted Word merged with Balanced Scorecard Collaborative in 2005 to form Palladium (raise your hand if you think that was a good idea in retrospect). Hitachi acquired Navigator Systems in 2006, WhittmanHart was acquired by Rolta (an Indian conglomerate) in 2008, and the list goes on. Oh, and Application Partners? They just disappeared.

While the landscape was once dominated by focused BI/EPM firms, by 2010, only a handful remain. Yes, as of this writing, interRel is still independent, and you'll get this company out of my (and my co-founder, Eduardo's) cold dead hands. I think I sounded a little like Charlton Heston right there (when he was alive enough to say things like that).

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

OAUG Hyperion SIG - Election Results

We finally have an elected board for the OAUG Hyperion SIG. Congratulations to the following winners:

• President: Kristin Newman, interRel
• Secretary: Todd Randolph, Optimum
• Programs & Education: Doreen Fox-Dwyer, Hess

Kristin and Doreen have been active in the SIG virtually since its inception, and I think I speak for everyone (with the possible exception of the people who ran against them and lost) in saying that I'm happy they're still around. Their continuity and proven commitment will serve the SIG well going forward.

Todd is a new addition to the SIG, and I only hope he works half as hard as Doreen and Kristin have over the last year as he tackles the role of board secretary. If you know these three, send them your congratulations. If you don't know them, send your congratulations after explaining who you are so you don't freak them out. The internet has enough stalkers already without you adding to the mix.

I would also say thank you from the entire Hyperion user community to the outgoing president, Ed Delise. Ed founded the Hyperion SIG back in 2007 and has been a major driving force in getting it to where it is today. As an Essbase domain lead for the Hyperion SIG, I will sincerely miss Ed and his leadership. We appreciate everything you've done, Ed!

Essbase Classes by Edward

In case anyone wants to attend, I'm teaching my annual class on Oracle Essbase Design & Optimization on May 28-29 at our Ballpark offices in Dallas, Texas. It was originally supposed to be the week before, but I asked that it get moved back a week so I could personally teach the class. The class will cover Essbase versions 7, 9, and 11, since most design tips are the same across all the versions. Here's the description:

This training course will teach you the steps effectively design and optimize your Essbase environment. We’ll review design best practices used by the consultants to improve the end user experience and make your life easier as an Essbase administrator. We’ll cover how you can improve system performance by an order of magnitude as well as how you can realize faster dimension builds, speedier data loads, and blazingly fast calculations by modifying caches, configuration settings, calculation commands, outline optimizations and more. This knowledge is gained through material review and hands on exercises. This course is recommended for Essbase administrators and developers.

The class is only $1,500 for both days and there are spots available. If you want to sign up, e-mail Danielle White, interRel's Director of Client Education. As a bonus, if you get in early enough on the night of May 27, you can watch the Texas Rangers play the New York Yankees from our balcony in the outfield of the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Texas. This is a sold out game, and it should be a great one.

Calc Scripts for Mere Mortals

Oh, I almost forgot. I'm also teaching my annual class on Essbase Calc Scripts at our Ballpark offices on the 12th of June. It's only a one day class, so if you don't want to fly in just for this class, we can make arrangements for you to participate remotely. If you've always wanted to learn more about Essbase BSO Calc Scripts, this is your one-day chance. Yes, there is also a baseball game that day, so if you're a Dodgers fan come in person and stay around after the class to watch the Rangers take on Los Angeles. After the game, there will even be a remarkably impressive fireworks show. All that for only $750? Money well spent, people.

Collaborate - Day Two

9:00AM - My 1st Presentation of the Conference

I just finished delivering a presentation on "The New Essbase Studio." This sessions was scheduled for 8AM on the opening day of the conference. Note to whomever at OAUG has the cruel sense of humor: I am not a morning person. I'm more of a "sometime after 11AM I start to wake up, I really get going in the mid-afternoon, and I don't hit my peak until well after dark and if you really want me to, I'd be happy to present at midnight" sort of person.

Much to my shock and pleasantly surprised awe, around 75 people showed up to hear me talk and give me support in my sleep-deprived state. The first person to walk in (who got there around 20 minutes early, amazingly) said that the only thing was going to get her to an 8AM presentation was if I was giving it. While I always love a fan, I think she was just trying to make me feel better. Since it worked, I went on to give what for me was a fairly lively "just past dawn" presentation.

I love Essbase Studio. I think that along with Varying Attributes and Text in an Essbase Cube, Essbase Studio is one of the three killer reasons to go to Essbase 11. Two best reasons to implement Essbase Studio? Unlimited, easy-to-build drillthrough reports and xOLAP (the ability to put Essbase as an empty outline shell right on top of a relational warehouse to enablereal-time data access). I think my passion for the product came through, and I sincerely hope people start upgrading to it soon.

I've got to run across half the convention center now to find the opening kickoff session. I don't plan on much EPM or Hyperion specific content, but if the room is dark enough and I can get a seat way in the back, I might get in a power nap.

9:45AM - General Kickoff Session

I'm sitting in the general kickoff session right now listening to Charles Phillips (one of the Presidents of Oracle) talk about all the great product releases and changes over the last year. Here are all the relevant things he said about Oracle EPM and Hyperion:

• (This bullet intentionally left blank.)

Charlie just announced the release of Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. I don't know why, but everyone seemed to be impressed.

10:15AM - Opening Session Continued

A fairly humorous man just went up to the stage to talk about Oracle Beehive. This (along with the HP Oracle Exadata Storage Server) was announced at OpenWorld. Beehive, Oracle's collaboration technology, does look like it's been enhanced since OpenWorld, and this article seems to confirm that:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9132500&intsrc=news_ts_head

I'm off now to join some friends of mine with ODTUG for lunch. I'm running a bit early, so I think I'll stop by the exhibit hall first and check out the interRel booth (3849, in case you're here and want to stop by).

12:15PM - Early Lunch at Tommy Bahama's

Lunch was at Tommy Bahama's Cafe. Yes, I know what you're thinking: yes, I ate lunch at a clothing retailer, but their Caribbean food was quite good. Apparently, Tommy Bahama now has something nearing 10 of these cafes attached to their clothing stores around the world. I had quesadillas and they were extremely tasty and original.

My counterparts who stayed to eat the Collaborate food were not treated nearly as nicely. It seems that the prison food from 2008 (horrid sandwiches with a couple other boxed items) has made a return. Blog reader Eric H sent me this via Twitter: "Wow. You were right. I'm packing a lunch tomorrow. :)" I may actually brave the lunch and document in detail what the food looks like.

2:00PM - Exhibit Hall First Impressions

I finally made it to the exhibit hall. It always amazes me at these things how there can be so much setup chaos a mere 3 hours before the hall is supposed to open. The interRel booth looks good, but the banner proclaiming us "EPM Partner of the Year" is still lying on the floor. There's a union guy who's going to put it up as soon as he stops doing his impersonation of a three-toed sloth with two missing toes.

The hall seems smaller to me than Collaborate 2008. I think the number of vendors is down due to the economy.

7:03PM - Opening Night Exhibit Hall Reception

The opening night reception had high points and low points or to be more specific, a high point and a low point. High point: the food. While I was only close enough to observe a dessert table, it was a very well stocked dessert table with enough types of candy and chocolate to make Willy Wonka proud. Yes, I know I just complimented the food at Collaborate. Don't stand near me folks, the conference Gods are vengeful and they be wielding lightning. Note that the lunch food from today would be classified by the Obama administration as torture, but the reception snacks seem downright impressive.

Low point was definitely the attendance. We had remarkably little booth traffic for what should arguably be the busiest time of the week for the exhibit hall. There were maybe 35 clients (or potentials) that we saw the entire night. The other 100+ people who stopped by our booth were partners/vendors. 3-to-1 ratio of partners to customers? That's not marketing money well spent.

11:30PM - Tuesday's Plan

I'm back at the hotel reviewing my "must do" items from tomorrow:

• 9:45AM - Visual Analysis going beyond grids and two dimensional charts in room W230D. This is my first session at this conference with a client or to be more specific, a partner. Deepak from Tableau will be talking about using Visual Explorer against Essbase and other data sources. I'm really just there to answer questions.

• 11:00AM - Workarounds for What the Essbase Developers Forgot in room W101B. My second presentation of the day (with all of 15 minutes between even though they're on completely opposite sides of the Orange County Convention Center) is sort of a "Hacking Essbase" presentation. If it's not there in current versions of Essbase, I'm going to be showing how to workaround it. This will either be really well attended or no one will be there because it's totally wrong for the Collaborate audience.

• 3:15PM - Essbase Aggregate Storage is the way of the Future. My final presentation of the day is on how under 11x, Essbase cubes should be assumed to be ASO until BSO proves to be necessary. I'm supposed to be presenting with Matt Hanselman from American Girl but to some budgetary restrictions, he couldn't make the conference. Guess I'm presenting this one by myself!

• 5:30PM - Happy Hour Reception in the exhibit hall. Back to the exhibit hall for more fun, frivolity, and maybe even more decent food?!?

• 7:00PM - Customer Appreciation Dinner. My company is taking several of our clients out to eat at Pat O'Brien's. It's on Universal City Walk so afterwards, we'll have access to all the City Walk clubs. I'll probably end up out until midnight or later.

I may actually get 8 hours of sleep tonight. Maybe that's good karma for saying nice things about one small amount of Collaborate food?

Essbase 11 and Smart View Books Are Now Available

I Can't Keep a Secret, Apparently

This was supposed to stay quiet until the press release came out in May, but so many people have already discovered it that I thought I might as well fess up. My (along with Tracy McMullen, the best co-author ever) two new Oracle/Hyperion/Essbase books are now available. At the moment, you can only get them directly from the publisher. If you're interested in Essbase 11 (now with more ASO!) or Smart View, you finally have a place to turn.

Look Smarter Than You Are with Essbase 11: An Administrator's Guide

This book has over 300 pages of new content in it, but the book it self stays under 700 pages. How did we manage this, you ask? Well, with the exception of a very brief chapter on Smart View that's used to introduce Administrator's to dimensionality, we've removed all of the end user content from this book. Yes, that means that if you want end user information, you've got to buy a second book, but if we hadn't done this, the book would be close to 1,000 pages. Since we're not trying to re-write War & Peace (now with a new happier ending!), we made the decision to split the end user stuff out.

So how in the name of Thor did we come up with 300+ pages of new information? Well, some of it was due to the new Essbase 11 features like Varying Attributes and Text Lists. A lot more, though, is due to the new Essbase ASO (aggregate storage) content we wrote. In the last few Essbase books, we treated ASO as an after thought only to be considered if you wanted to build truly huge cubes. In the new book, we talk about ASO as your primary default options for new cubes. For the first 350+ pages of the new book, we just focus on building ASO cubes before we finally get to building BSO cubes.

Some of you Essbase people are cheering right now, "thank God, finally a good source for learning ASO!" A number of you are also wondering, "but shouldn't BSO be the default and ASO only used in certain specific cases?" In our opinion, not any more. With the 11x improvements to ASO, it should be the first place you go to build all new databases (even wee lil' ones). BSO (block storage) should only be used if you need sophisticated writeback or complex calculations. While we still cover BSO in the new book, we show ASO first and then eventually show how to do the equivalent things in ASO (and not the other way around, as our previous Essbase books have).

We hope you'll like all the additional content (and we only had to up the price a mere $10 USD). Here's the link to buy your copy:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/look-smarter-than-you-are-with-essbase-11/6402010

Look Smarter Than You Are with Smart View and Essbase 11: An End User's Guide

If you're looking for instruction on how to use the old Essbase Excel Add-In, you'll want to buy our previous end user book, because this one is all about Smart View for over 250 pages. With all the new features in Smart View 11 (Smart Slices, Report Designer, and more), we had to abandon the Essbase Add-In content and just focus on Smart View.

You might notice that "Essbase" is in the title. Don't be mislead: this is primarily a Smart View book and can be used even if you're accessing HFM, Planning, OBIEE, or whatever; however, we had to pick a data source to use in our examples. Since the majority of people using Smart View have Essbase (even if it's just underlying Planning), we chose Essbase for our exercises in the book. So if you've been wanting a book on Smart View, this is the book for you. Best news, the price (for the moment) stays the exact same:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/look-smarter-than-you-are-with-smart-view-and-essbase-11-an-end-users-guide/5570907

Where can I buy a copy?

For the moment, the only place to get the books is direct from our publisher. They will be on Amazon.com in 6-10 weeks, because it takes a while to get new books through their system unless you're a major publishing house. If you're coming to Collaborate, the books will also be for sale at their bookstore, and Tracy and I are doing an official book signing there too. We'll also be bringing some copies of each book to sell at our booth at Kaleidoscope if you're going there instead. If you want to buy more than 5 copies (bulk discounts give you more fun for less money!), you can get them through interRel at 30% off: just e-mail info@interrel.com.

Go ahead and tell your friends that the books are available, but when you see the press release in early May announcing the official release of the books, please try to act surprised. In the meantime, don't say anything to interRel Press' marketing department.

Edward Roske is Personally Teaching an Essbase Class

And the question on everyone's mind is, does he still remember how to teach and more importantly, will anyone actually show up?

Normally, I don't teach training classes (so many students, so little time), but I'm going to be teaching one from April 22-24 at interRel's training center at the Rangers Ballpark in Dallas, TX. The class is about how to administer Essbase 11 (though we will be pointing out where System 9 and 11 differ) and it's designed for a technical audience. In other words, it's for people who won't be building cubes but will be maintaining them.

Why you might ask am I teaching this class? It's because I have a book coming out in the next couple of weeks on Essbase 11, and I want to try out some of the material in a live class environment. It's always nice to see in-person how people react to your exercises. If they literally throw the book at you, then you have to ease up on some of the more tedious sections.

There are a couple of spots available in this class (I think it's $750/day), so if you want to learn about Essbase administration from me directly, this is about your only chance for the foreseeable future. The last time I taught this class was in 2006, and I'm probably not doing it again until another major release of Essbase comes out. If you want to sign up, visit interRel's website.

Yes, I did say that the Essbase 11 book would be out shortly, so if you want to be the first to own a copy, keep checking lulu.com under keyword "Essbase" over the next few days.

Upcoming Webcast on the Hyperion User Conferences

One of the questions I get asked the most often is, "Now that the Hyperion Solutions conference is sadly no longer [pause for moment of quiet reflection] which conference should I be attending?"  The answer is remarkably confusing since there is no longer one catch all conference.  While I've been answering this question in person and on this blog for close to two years now, this is still a major point of confusion in the user, partner, and Oracle communities.

So on March 3 at 11AM Central and March 5 at 1PM Central, I'm going to be hosting brief (30-45 minute) presentations on all the major conferences and who should attend which ones.  Normally, the weekly interRel webcasts are not open to our competitors, but for this one topic, we are opening it up to everyone.  While I normally don't like training my competition, in this case, I figure the more people who know where to go, the better.

I'll be featuring the OpenWorld, Collaborate, and Kaleidoscope conferences, but I'll also be speaking briefly about the local HUGs (Hyperion User Groups) and their replacements at OAUG, IOUG, and ODTUG.  I'll cover which type of users should go to which conferences (and user groups) and I'll give you an idea of the agendas for Hyperion/EPM attendees you're likely to see at each conference.

If you don't want to end up at the wrong conference in 2009 and beyond, try to carve out a few minutes to attend one of these talks I'll be doing.  Feel free to send a link over to your friends (those people you're connected to on Facebook and LinkedIn) so they can attend too.  Each webcast can handle up to 1,000 people, so the more, the merrier!  Here's the link and I'll see you on March 3 or 5th:

http://www.interrel.com/upcomingwebcasts.aspx

OpenWorld - Final Thoughts

I'm writing this entry while on the 7:45AM flight back to Dallas (although it won't be posted until I land at 1PM).  The plane is packed with people returning from OpenWorld.  Everyone has some form of Oracle logo on or with them, and everyone is completely exhausted.  The lady in the middle seat next to me keeps falling asleep and leaning her head on my shoulder.  She couldn't keep her eyes open if someone paid her.

After the last session yesterday, I had a few meetings with some of the leadership of the OAUG Hyperion SIG - by the way, Kristin Newman did an awesome job taking care of all of OAUG Hyperion SIG's logistics at OpenWorld - and some of the Oracle EPM sales team members.  After meetings at various hotel bars, I ended up eating dinner at Greens in Ft. Mason overlooking the bay.  It's a very upscale all-vegetarian menu.  Dinner ended up being over $50 per person and none of us had alcohol.  It was the best meal I've had all week.

Once I taxied back to my hotel, I packed and then took a quick nap before having to leave for the airport at 5:30AM.  San Francisco looks different that early in the morning: you can appreciate the architecture far more when there aren't people standing in the way.  There's something less hectic that allows you to take in the more serene side of San Francisco.

I've been thinking about some of the highlights and lowlights of the conference.  Here are the good things about OpenWorld:

• What's New sessions.  While I heard very little strikingly new information about Hyperion (or "Oracle EPM," which I may never get used to saying), a lot of rumors were confirmed by official people in official settings.  It's nice to hear people go under the record (even though many did it after showing a disclaimer slide saying basically "don't hold me to anything I say, because I'm liable to change my mind in a New York minute").
• Positive Hyperion vibe.  I'm not just talking about the vibe headed interRel's way from Oracle (thank you again for the awards, Mr. Ellison, sir).  What I mean is that Hyperion, Essbase, and EPM were on a number of people's lips.  Thomas Kurian couldn't stop saying Hyperion (and Rich Clayton couldn't stop demoing Hyperion) for the majority of the Middleware Keynote, for example.  To paraphrase John Kopcke, it's not a question of how will Oracle change Hyperion, but rather, how will Hyperion change Oracle?
• Sense of Community.  It's good to get together with fellow Hyperion customers, partners, and Oracle sales people and there were a number of them here.  I kept running into the same people at various events (Hyperion sessions, user group meetings, the interRel reception, the Oracle/OAUG reception, the EPM think tank, exhibit halls, and more) which gave me the nice feeling that we were all in this together.  That said, I think the Hyperion attendance was down from last year.  I think a lot of clients are going to Collaborate or Kaleidoscope (more on this in a bit).

That's about it for the positives.  Here are the negatives:

• Most of the stuff doesn't matter to Hyperion visitors.  95%+ of the content isn't relevant to the people here for Hyperion.  That would be okay if it was a lot more obvious upfront which sessions were relevant and which ones weren't.  Larry Ellison, God bless his soul, didn't say a thing that mattered to the EPM-only visitors to the conference.  Can you imagine if the Hyperion Solutions conference had a time designated for a keynote where nothing else was happening... and the keynote was all about the price of car mufflers in China?
• Too much marketing.  Yes, I know I've said in the past that OpenWorld is Oracle's chance to talk about Oracle, so why was I expecting anything but non-stop marketing?  I guess I was hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.  Collaborate has some marketing-level presentations (as did Hyperion Solutions conferences) but OpenWorld ratchets it up a few hundred notches.  Imagine sitting through 5 straight days of sales pitches from your software vendor.  Sound like fun?  Then OpenWorld is for you!
• Not much information.  With the exception of SOME of the What's New presentations, I didn't learn anything.  This may just be me rehashing the last point.  A lot of the presentations are marketing from beginning to end.  Okay, so if it's going to be a non-stop product briefing (and not training, as many who have gone to Hyperion Solutions conferences in the past have come to expect), then don't charge people to attend.  Those people who came expecting to go back to their companies with actionable tips on better ways to use Hyperion products were (with far and few between exceptions), went away disappointed.
• Too big.  OpenWorld needs to be chopped up.  There were relevant Hyperion (Oracle EPM, sorry) events at Moscone West, Moscone North, Moscone South, the Marriott, the Hilton, the Hyatt, and the Westin St. Francis.  No, those places are not all next to each other.  I've walked so much this week that I've lost 5 pounds.  Split up the technology and the applications into two different conferences or come up with some other arbitrary breaking point.  The only value of having the entire user base together at one event is that the appreciation party can afford higher end talent (Elvis Costello is no Billy Joel, though).  Oh, and Ellison only has to speak once.

From an interRel standpoint, it was a great conference: we made friends, won some awards, got a few new clients, and drove our competitors bonkers.  From an attendee standpoint, I was disappointed.  I miss learning things.

My advice to the user community: if you like Hyperion Solutions conferences, stay away from OpenWorld.  Go to Kaleidoscope if you're a developer/administrator of Hyperion products.  Go to Collaborate if you're an end user of the products.  Suggest that your CIO go to OpenWorld... so you don't have to.

This is my last entry for this year's OpenWorld.  Thank you for following along, and I hope you weren't too terribly bored (even when I was).  I will be coming back to OpenWorld next year, but until then, good bye, San Francisco.  I'm going to sleep now.  Wake me on Monday.

Quiroz on interRel in the News

Everyone's talking about interRel this week:

• On Edward becoming an Oracle Ace Director. Congratulations and well deserved Edward!
  

• On Pearson Education and interRel winning an Oracle Excellence Award.
  
• On interRel receiving EPM Solution of the Year award.
  
• On interRel achieving operational and management excellence.
  
• On Oracle honoring all the winners of the Titan Awards.
  

Quiroz on Vertigo Inducing Escalator Rides

Does this seem unusual to anyone in any way. This is one big honking escalator. I'm glad I am not acrophobic, yet I still get uneasy on these escalators. They don't out do the escalators that take you down into the subway in Wachington DC. I would love to get some pictures and comments on other escalators. Please hold on to the handrails while on board.

OpenWorld - Sunday, Sep. 21

12:51AM: OMFG, interRel won EPM Solution of the Year

We won.  We actually won.  I take back everything I ever said about these awards being political, because we just won the Titan Award for best EPM Solution.  This is the first time this award has ever been given out at Oracle (they added it after the Hyperion acquisition) and interRel will forever be known as the original winners.  The awards were 5+ hours ago, and I'm still stunned.  I was half right, though, in that the honorable mentions for EPM Solution went to Deloitte and IBM, but we actually won (proving that once in a while long shots come in first and good guys don't always finish last).  For anyone that put $2 down on interRel to win, you just won $8,000.

Deloitte won either winner or honorable mention in something like 12 of the 17 categories.  They actually won 4 of them.  IBM, Bearing Point, and Accenture all showed up as winners or honorable mentions too.  For the Manufacturing Industry Solution award, I can't tell you who won (because I don't remember), but I was thrilled to see interRel get Honorable Mention (along with, shock of shocks, Deloitte).

We should go back in time a bit to what happened at the awards ceremony.  The awards were held in the Hilton (same place as the Oracle ACE Director briefing earlier in the day) in a massive ballroom.  The place probably held 5,000+ people.  The host for the event was Ted Bereswill, Sr. Vice President for North America Alliances and Channels.  Jeff Henly (Oracle Chairman of the Board) was also there to meet and greet the winners of each of the awards.  Tyler Prince, Group VP for Applications Alliances and Channels presented the awards.

Eduardo Quiroz, Michael Manes, and I took seats half way back.  The awards started off fairly predictably with Deloitte winning 2 of the first 5 awards and receiving honorable mention for a few others.  Over the course of the night, Deloitte ended up winning so many awards (not EPM Solution, though) that we were jokingly referring to these as the "Titan Awards brought to you by the good folks at Deloitte."  The new Deloitte logo has a green dot at the end to show they're environmentally savy.  Eduardo speculated that we would be more likely to win if we put a green dot somewhere in our logo.  Maybe the dot over our interRel 'i'?

For each of the awards, they announced the honorable mentions first.  They then told what the winners did for their clients to win the award followed by some details about the partner and then finally, they revealed the name of the winner.  I have no idea what they said about what we did to win the EPM award.  I just remember the stunned silence of the entire room when they announced, "and the winner for EPM Solution is... interRel Consulting.  Edward Roske, CEO, will be accepting their award."  I think the collective thought going through the other 19,999 partners' minds was something along the lines of, "interRel who?"  I remembered some people in the audience clapping as we walked up.

Eduardo and I took a while to get up to the stage since we were halfway back in the room.  On stage, we shook the hands of the Oracle luminaries and then they gave us a huge crystal award/cup with interRel etched into it along with the award we won.  I held the cup like a baby as the photographer took a few pictures.  We shook hands again and I took interRel's newest child (the award, I mean) back to our seats.  As we left the stage, the Deloitte people sitting towards the front gave us a round of applause.  I felt that was very classy, and I'm going to make a point to reach out to the Deloitte EPM team since they could have been sore losers but instead were gracious in defeat.  That's the type of people I want to work with.

When we got back to our seats, a few people around us gave us high fives and said congratulatory things.  We sat patiently through a few more awards and were pleased to see our logo on the screen as one of the three finalists for the Manufacturing Industry Solution award.

After the ceremony, there was a reception at the back of the ballroom.  We mingled for a bit.  I carried around the award cup like a proud papa (yes, I do realize that it's a piece of crystal and not a real baby: I'm not that delusional) as I walked around not finding anything to eat.

We ditched the reception after introducing some of our competitors to little Baby Award.  We ended up over at the restaurant at the Serrano Hotel.  I had potato & leek soup, tofu with Thai chili sauce, and a tempura banana split.  While it was a lot of food, I'm still hungry.  Until this meal, all I had eaten today was a granola bar and a banana.  My conference diet is starting in earnest.

Today was a whirlwind.  It started at 9ish with the ACE Director briefing and has been going non-stop ever since.  Tomorrow will be just as busy.  The first keynote of the day is at 9AM from Charles Phillips, Oracle's president.  I then have non-stop events (some overlapping) until midnight.  I'm hoping to get some blogging in during the middle.

Did I mention we won the award for best EPM Solution?  Out of more than 20,000 Oracle partners in the world, we won the inaugural EPM Solution award.  How cool is that?  I am so high on life right now that I will never touch back down to Earth.  I don't think I'll be sleeping tonight.  I promise not to dwell on the award tomorrow, but tonight?  I'm reveling.

Oracle, you're now my friend for life.

6:30PM: Kopcke Meeting with ODTUG

I just had a meeting with John Kopcke, Mark Conway from Oracle, and the ODTUG board of directors.  It went very well, because John seemed extremely receptive to ODTUG Kaleidoscope becoming the home for the technical content that the Hyperon Solutions conferences used to have.  He did also acknowledge (as did Mark Conway) that no one seems to be getting the mailers from Oracle about the state of EPM.  We all agreed to work together to distribute information to the former Hyperion community as well as the Oracle world that's interested in the former Hyperion world.

I may never get used to saying "Oracle EPM."  I know that "Hyperion" is no more, but it's going to take me some time to get used to it.

I'm now racing back to my hotel to change clothes for the Oracle Titan Awards.  These are the awards given away by the Oracle PartnerNetwork to North American partners.  We're nominated in a couple of categories (Manufacturing Industry Solution and EPM Solution) but we're like 4,000 to 1 underdogs.  These awards always go to huge companies to Deloitte, IBM, Accenture, Bearing Point, and the like.  It's basically awards like these come down to politics: the winners are the wons who can drive revenue to the company giving the awards.  Still, it's nice to be nominated, so I'll go put on a tie, shake a few hands, and try to find something vegetarian to eat.

5:25PM: Kopcke's EPM Roadmap Session

I just introducted John Kopcke, SVP of the EPM Global Business Unit.  With the OAUG and ODTUG groups together, there are around 150 people in the room, so it looks decently full.  Before introducing Kopcke, I spoke briefly about the two user groups and how they work together.

Kopcke started off by saying, "there's really no longer a distinction between Hyperion products and Oracle products.  It's a single Oracle platform (even though the heritage of a lot of the EPM unit came from Hyperion." He also said, and it got a round of applause, "no, there is no enablement fee to go from System 9 to 11.1.1."

I love how much Hyperion has affected Oracle and it pervades John's entire presentation.  Rather than "what's Oracle's plan for Hyperion" it's more like "what will Hyperion be doing for Oracle EPM?"  Here's another quote from John just now: "Oracle used to dablle in a lot of business intelligence products... but to be very clear, while all of those products are being supported, but they're not the strategic director.  EPM Fusion Edition is our direction going forward."  Music to my ears.

Kopcke's talking about how EPM enables "Management Excellence" above and beyond "Operational Excellence."  Suffice to say that operationally excellent companies focus on the transaction systems (like GLs and ERPs) whereas management excellence firms capture that data but then go beyond it to perform greater and faster levels of analysis.  What differentiates a Southwest Airlines from Northwest Airlines?  They both have ERPs.  They bought have invoicing systems.  They both have budgets, and so on.  The simple answer is that Southwest Airlines has management excellence and Northwest is on a path to bankruptcy (correction: they're already there).

Kopcke made a good point that BI (Business Intelligence) is the most overused and underdefined term in enterprise software.  He asked "if I told you that next week I was going to go do Business Intelligence, would any of you have any idea what work I would be doing?"  Compare that to GL (General Ledger) which is well understood in the industry, and you realize how BI means different things to different companies (and even different people within those companies).

Per Kopcke, "SmartView is our strategic direction for Office technology going forward."  People have speculated over that for months, so now that Kopcke's spoken, we can take that one to the bank.  Start learning Smart View and you'll be sure Oracle will be expanding it going forward. 

John's talking about the new things in 11.1.1.  One of the things I was happy to hear is that Oracle has been focusing on improving the installation from the old dark ages of Hyperion System 9 installs.  He made me laugh outloud when he said "raise your hand if you survived a System 9 upgrade?  You people all deserve t-shirts."

He just talked about the current world record for dimensions in an Essbase cube is 104 dimensions.  The record for members in a dimension is 51,000,000.  Those are ASO cubes, obviously.  If you're not using Essbase ASO, you should be.

John's talking a lot about the strategic direction for products.  Here's another quote: "Hyperion Financial Reporting is Oracle's strategic tool for creating for financial reports," so put to rest, everyone, those rumors of Financial Reporting's demise.  It's here to stay and it's their go-forward canned financial report writer.  In response to a question from me, Kopcke also said that Oracle's strategic direction for budgeting is Hyperion Planning, their direction for financial consolidations is Hyperion Financial Management, and their strategic direction for OLAP is... Oracle OLAP and Essbase.  Basically, there are reasons to use both (per John Kopcke).  To oversimplify, Oracle OLAP is for OLAP on top of Oracle data warehouses.  Essbase is for OLAP on multiple data databases and against non-Oracle sources.

I appreciate John Kopcke taking the time to talk to all of us.  I always enjoy hearing him speak, because not only does he have a dry sense of humor (a man after my own heart), but he's extremely knowledgeable.  I learn more in 15 minutes with him than hours with some others who are supposed to also be visionaries in the EPM space.  I'm supposed to the 2nd floor to meet further with John Kopcke and the ODTUG leadership about partnering up more in the future.  I hope I can talk him into coming to ODTUG Kaleidoscope for a keynote.

3:57PM: ODTUG Hyperion Symposium

I'm back in room 3016.  ODTUG was taking a break (for snacks, compliments of Oracle) from 3-3:30.  Sean is now over in the OAUG room (3022) giving a talk on Hyperion Planning best practices.  I asked a few people how Sean's "Hyperion Reporting Toolset" presentation went.  The feedback was positive.  A couple of people mentioned that it was a bit too high-level, but it's difficult to cover all the Hyperion front-end reporting tools in an hour at anything below a 10,000 feet level.  Overall, though, people seemed to appreciate the information.

I spoke for about 5 minutes on the future of the ODTUG Hyperion Developer's SIG.  Right now, I'm the President of the ODTUG Hyperion Developer's SIG (I think I've mentioned that before) until we load elections at Kaleidoscope 2009.  I mentioned that I'm actively recruiting members for the ODTUG Hyperion Developer's SIG Board of Directors.  I think we have 6 members on the board right now.  If you're interested in ODTUG Hyperion Developer's SIG (and/or helping drive the direction for Hyperion content at Kaliedoscope 2009), send me an e-mail at eroske@odtug.com.  After the success of the Essbase track at this year's Kaleidoscope, we need all the help we can get arranging next year's conference.

Mark Rittman is talking (in a faux British accent) about integrating Essbase and OBIEE (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition).  As he points out, there are a lot of places where Essbase and OBIEE intersect:

• Essbase can be a data source for OBIEE
  
• OBIEE can be a source for Essbase
  
• SmartSpace can access both OBIEE and Essbase
  
• Workspace can host OBIEE Dashboards, Answers, Delivers, and Publihser.
  
• Informatica PowerCenter is the strandard ETL tool for Oracle BI apps and Essbase
  

Mark's a great speaker (though I may think that just because he's British), but there was a problem with his clip-on microphone, so he's hard to hear from the back of the room unless he's holding one of the microphones from the stands.  Mark will be speaking until 4:25PM and then the OAUG Hyperion folks will be coming to this room for Kopcke's talk at 4:30.

3:00PM: OAUG Hyperion SIG

I'm in the back of the room at the OAUG Hyperion SIG meeting.  Tina Weiss is at the front of the room who works with user groups at Oracle and reports to Mary Lou Dopart.  She's talking about the value of user groups at Oracle.  It's boring me to tears, frankly, because it's not very Hyperion/EPM-centric.  She did mention that 5 months ago, the regional HUGs (Hyperion User Groups) decided to affiliate with OAUG.  The problem is that the individual Hyperion users have no idea where they specifically are supposed to be going (OAUG, ODTUG, IOUG, or ???).  I think this message has been communicated poorly (if at all) to the user community.

Since I'm bored to tears (sorry), here are my personal thoughts on where users of Hyperion products should go:

• OAUG: End users of the product who don't spend time developing and/or administering Hyperion.
• ODTUG: Developers and administrators of Hyperion products who spend a lot of time working with Hyperion.  Essbase users probably want to join ODTUG too.
• IOUG: Oracle DBAs who want to expand their IT offerings at their companies to include Essbase.
• Quest: Don't bother.
• There are also a few industry-specific user groups that may or may not be creating Hyperion SIGs.

Tina's wrapping up her part and turning it over to Mark Conway from Oracle's EPM Global Business Unit (that's the group that rolls up to John Kopcke).  Mark is the Oracle liaison to the OAUG Hyperion SIG.  Fittingly, he's also the Oracle liaison to ODTUG Hyperion SIG.  He just mentioned that the Hyperion community has complained about poor communication to the users.  Mark's talking about Oracle working with Regina from OAUG (and Tina from Oracle who presented a bit ago).

He brought up the fact that John Kopcke's user group letter from the summer didn't make it to a lot of people.  I'm glad that Oracle realizes that since I know of only 4 people who got the letter and it supposedly went out to thousands.  He just said that "80% of the Hyperion users will go to OAUG and 20% of them will go elsewhere.  OAUG will be the home for the vast majority of the customer base."

I don't think that it's true that 80% of the Hyperion users will gravitate to OAUG.  While I am a part of OAUG Hyperion SIG so am a little biased, OAUG is all about the Hyperion applications.  There are far more users of Essbase than there are of Planning and HFM put together and OAUG is for application users not Essbase developers.  Maybe Oracle doesn't realize how many of the type of users that join Hyperion user groups are not end users of the product.  I suspect it's going to be more like 50% OAUG, 40% ODTUG, and 10% all the other groups put together.  That said, there are about 30 more people right now in the ODTUG Hyperion SIG room than in the OAUG Hyperion SIG room, so maybe ODTUG and OAUG will flip-flop.

Ed Delise, OAUG Hyperion SIG president, is now talking about the SIG accomplishments over the last year.  They now have 500 members, a board of directors with domain leads, a Hyperion e-mail list, monthly e-Learning sessions, a website with resources/calendar.  He wants to have 1,500 members by end of this year and 4,000 by the end of next year.  I think this is way too aggressive, because Oracle is not being forthcoming with the previous HUG attendees.

Ed announced that elections for board positions will not be until May of 2009 (argh).  In May, they will be voting at Collaborate for the following board positions: President, Member Services, and Oracle Liaison.  In September at OOW 09, they're voting for Program/Education, Marketing/Communications. and HUG Liaison board members.

I'm surprised to hear that OAUG Hyperion SIG doesn't even have approved bylaws yet, but I'm glad to hear their goal is to have them by October 31.  They want to sync up all the local HUGs with the local OAUG Geos by June of 2009 (good luck).

Ed's encouraging everyone to join the OAUG Hyperion SIG.  He just said the cost for a company to join OAUG is $725.  He pointed out that you have to be a member to be president of the Hyperion SIG, attend the e-Learning sessions, or get any of the Hyperion SIG content from the Knowledge Factory.  Have I complained enough times yet that charging for on-line information should be a criminal offense?  It is worth noting that joining OAUG only has to be done at a company level and not individual members.  That said, they're still charging which the HUGs never did, so... I'll stop complaining now.  Ed's opening it up for Q&A now, so I'm going to be heading back over to the ODTUG room now.

Ed just talked briefly about the differences between OAUG and ODTUG.  He said that business users of Essbase go with OAUG and developers with Essbase go to ODTUG.  He joked that "if you like looking at code" join ODTUG.  Speaking as someone who never looks at any code more complicated than an Essbase calc script, I'm a member of both.  I'm a member of OAUG for the business-side of Hyperion and ODTUG for the technical side, and I'm not a code by any means (by background is in finance, actually).  Also, there are certainly non-Essbase developers joining ODTUG (Hyperion Planning admins, for instance).  That said, ODTUG is definitely NOT the home for strictly end user types of the Hyperion products.  If your job consists of accessing existing implementations of Hyperion Strategic Finance or Hyperion Performance Scorecard (for instance), then you should be joining OAUG.

2:08PM: ODTUG Hyperion Symposium

I just finished up my "How Essbase Thinks" presentation.  Attendance was a lot better than I expected.  I thought there would be about 50 people, but it was closer to 100.  Normally, people leave towards the end of a session (to get somewhere else) but in this case, people kept arriving.  I guess their flights got in late (or maybe they heard that the last 15 minutes of my presentations are often the best...).

I enjoyed giving the presentation mostly because I got to spend 30+ minutes talking about ASO (Aggregate Storage Option).  I love ASO, but most people only care about Block Storage.  I've seen databases built in ASO that have upwards of 17,000,000 members: cubes no one in his right mind would ever try to build under BSO.

I turned it over to Sean Bernhoit to talk about when to use which Hyperion reporting tools.  Originally, I was going to deliver that talk too, but I wanted to share the speaking with other people.  He's talking until 3PM, so I have time to go visit the OAUG Hyperion SIG.  It's just down the hall in Moscone West 083022.

11:48 AM: ACE Director Briefing

I'm sitting in the Oracle ACE Director briefing in the Hilton San Francisco.  I was pleased to find out that the Hilton is about 100 feet directly across the corner from my hotel.  This let me sleep in a bit more than I will be able to the other days.

There are about 30 ACE Directors in the room which means that around 60% of the ACE Directors are here at OpenWorld.  Tim Tow and Duncan Mills are at my table, and there are some familiar faces at other tables around the room.  First on the agenda is a briefing from Mark Townsend, Oracle VP of Product Management for Oracle Database.  He's talking right now about how much larger Oracle's market share is than the other top databases put together.  He's also talking about how much faster Oracle is getting in Oracle 11g.

I really can't write about any of the things Oracle will be sharing with us at this briefing due to a non-disclosure agreement I signed when becoming an ACE Director.  So what can I write about?  Well, I guess I'm safe in saying that everyone needs to pay very, very close attention to Larry Ellison's keynote on Wednesday afternoon.  If there is something big to announce, it'll come out during Larry's keynote.  I'm not saying that there is or is not something interesting to announce, but Larry does like to save the best announcements of the week for himself.  Speaking as a CEO of my own company, I completely understand, by the way.

I'm leaving at noon to head over to Moscone West for the ODTUG Hyperion Symposium.  I'm meeting Eduardo at the shuttle stop here at the Hilton.  It's not that far of a walk, but the shuttle has the nice benefit of allowing me to sit down and blog more.  The Oracle EPM update for the ACE Directors is from 3-3:30PM, so I won't be here for it.  This is too bad because this is definitely the most relevant for me (and you!).

While I'm here in this meeting, interRel's senior practice director is attending the Oracle PartnerNetwork Forum.  It's also here at the Hilton (in a much larger room) and there's a briefing going on over there that is not quite so secretive and forward-looking as the one I'm in.  If something interesting comes out of the partner forum, he will let me know and I'll share it here.

At the rate I'm blogging at the moment, I'll double the total content of this blog by Thursday.  Look for my wordiness to slack off as the week gets busier and busier (and I develop a nasty case of carpal tunnel).

10:03 AM: Walking to the Hilton

I'm writing this entry from my iPhone while waiting for the traffic light to change.  I was just surfing the net while waiting for the elevator down to the lobby.  I found a press release that says the attendance at this year's OpenWorld is expected to be 43,000 people and there will be just under 1,800 presentations.  The 43,000 attendees is less than I was predicting.  I've been saying 45 to 50 thousand, because they had 43,000 last year and with the addition of BEA, I figured they'd be increasing the attendance by at least a couple of thousand.  Apparently, I forgot to factor in the current state of the economy (Recession or media hype? Discuss.).

I just missed the light because I was iPhone blogging.  Well, I guess I have 3 more minutes of blog time.  Continuing with the theme of this entry, there's another press release from Oracle discussing the keynote speakers.  I will be missing tonight's keynote (with James Carville, Mary Matalin, and the mayor of San Francisco) because I'm attending a meeting between John Kopcke and the ODTUG Hyperion SIG.

I read somewhere that San Francisco has the highest incidents of pedestrians being hit by cars in the USA.  I don't know if it's true or not, but judging by my personal experiences, I'm completely willing to believe it.

9:35 AM: My hotel room

I just woke up.  I hate mornings.  Yes, I know it's 11:35AM in my home time zone, but it's still morning, and I hate that.  Why couldn't they hold the Oracle ACE briefing starting at 10PM instead of 10AM?  I asked that rhetorically, but part of me really wishes they would hold meetings in the middle of the night.