October 9, 2009

Oracle OpenWorld - Updates on EPM and Hyperion

Blog - Frequent Updates
Yes, I will be blogging about the conference, but I don't know how frequent it will be. While I will try to blog multiple times per day, I can't guarantee it will be live, because I have several events to attend per day. To that end, I have enlisted some help blogging during OpenWorld, so don't be shocked if you see some updates from someone other than me.

If any news breaks, I or one of my collaborators will blog about it here immediately. If you just want to see the OpenWorld updates, use this link:

Twitter - Live Updates
If you do want live updates of every little, random thing that wanders through my mind, I encourage you to follow me on Twitter (account is ERoske). I'll warn you in advance that sometimes very scary things wander through my mind:

I'll be using my twitter account to give color commentary on the entire OpenWorld experience. I'll even have some pictures of what's going on at the conference, so it'll be just like you're there without actually having to suffer through tens of thousands of conference goers.

My OpenWorld Plans
Like most conferences, my schedule will be filled with sessions I'm attending, presentations I've giving, keynotes I'm blogging, meetings I'm attending, and food I'm avoiding. Subject to change at the drop of a hat, here is what I'm intending on doing. The bolded items below are presentations I'm delivering:

Sunday, Oct 11
Monday, Oct 12
Tuesday, Oct 13
Wednesday, Oct 14
Thursday, Oct 15
If You're at OpenWorld
If you're going to actually be at OpenWorld, all the presentations above (both by me and the ones by Oracle) have seats available at the moment. I encourage anyone attending in real life to pre-register for the sessions you want to see. The way OpenWorld works is that if the room looks like it will fill up, they will not let anyone in who hasn't pre-registered.

If you want to talk with me in person (can't imagine why you would, but crazier things have happened), start by going to the bolded items above. I'll have plenty of time to talk and answer questions during my book signing on Wednesday at 1:30-2:00PM. Contrary to popular belief, these book signings are very lonely affairs. You might also be able to find me at the interRel booth in the Hyperion Pavilion in the Intercontinental Hotel. Hope to see you there!
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October 7, 2009

OAUG Hyperion SIG - Leadership Update

Board of Directors
While I was taking a break from blogging, the OAUG Hyperion SIG held elections for its board of directors. Some of them have been previously announced here, but congratulations go out to the following full list of people:
  • SIG Coordinator, Kristin Newman
  • Programs and Education Coordinator, Doreen Fox-Dwyer from Hess
  • Marketing Coordinator, Julie Jacobs from Titan-Pinnacle
  • Communications Coordinator, Todd Rebner from AdvancedEPM
  • Secretary, Todd Randolph from Optimum
  • HUG Coordinators, Angela Slayton from HealthMarkets & Mark West from P3
  • Partner Liaison, Suzanne Hoffman
  • Domain Lead Coordinator, Cathy McCain from Lockheed
I still think the OAUG Hyperion SIG Board of Directors has too many partners/vendors and not enough customers, but with Doreen, Angela, and Cathy, they're making strides in the right direction.

Domain Leads
I'd congratulate the Domain Leads, but most of their terms expire at OpenWorld in a couple of days. So if you'd like to be a domain lead, now's your chance. The OAUG Hyperion SIG is soliciting leads for the following areas:
  • Essbase
  • Hyperion Planning
  • Strategic Finance
  • Crystal Ball
  • HFM & Enterprise
  • Financial Data Quality Management
  • Data Relationship Management (formerly MDM)
  • Infrastructure
  • Data Integration (HAL, DIM, ODI, EPMA, etc.)
They'll be taking nominations until October 19 and they're really looking for customer experts in those areas. If you want to do your part to help the Hyperion and Oracle EPM community, e-mail cathy.l.mccain (at) lmco.com to request a nomination form.
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October 5, 2009

Hyperion Solutions Conference Returns (in 2 different ways)

Solutions 2.0
The story first broke at Collaborate 2009 in Orlando when Kristin Newman (who's now President of the OAUG Hyperion SIG) announced that talks were underway to resurrect the Solutions conference. Now this meant different things to different people. Some thought of Solutions as the big, annual conference where 4,000+ Hyperion users got together. Others thought of it as a place where users of Hyperion could gather to be educated in-depth about Hyperion. So the question was, what exactly was going to happen in Solutions 2.0?

Turns out, there are two answers.

The National Conference
As I've blogged about before (some would say that I've blogged about it ad nauseum), where there used to be one major gathering in the USA per year, there became at least three post-Oracle acquisition: Oracle OpenWorld, OAUG/IOUG/Quest Collaborate, and ODTUG Kaleidoscope. If you added Hyperion attendance for all three of these conferences in 2008, you got less than a third of the people who made it to the last Solutions. So where did all the people go?

They stayed home. Simply, since no one was quite sure where to go, 3,000+ Hyperion Solutions attendees went... nowhere. Well, the good news is that the dust seems to have settled on these major conferences and we seem to have a winner: ODTUG Kaleidoscope.

Of the three conferences with major Hyperion content, it was the only one to grow its attendance from 2008 to 2009, and it's growing even more next year. Compare that with Collaborate which reduced the number of Hyperion presentations from 2008 to 2009. Further, Collaborate is reducing their presentations on Hyperion even more in 2009 to less than 50 total sessions. OpenWorld will have fewer Hyperion attendees this year than 2007 or 2008 and the trend will probably continue into next year.

In other words, if you want to have a ton of different options spanning the gamut from the introductory Oracle EPM sessions to the hardcore Hyperion presentations, go ahead and make your reservations now for Kaleidoscope. It will be held in Washington, DC from June 27-July 1 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. For more information, visit http://odtugkaleidoscope.com/.

If you want a free pass to Kaleidoscope (and who doesn't with companies as frugal as they are these days), ODTUG is currently looking for presenters for the 2010 conference. Some of the Hyperion (Oracle EPM) categories for which they need speakers include Essbase, Hyperion applications (Planning, HFM, HSF, et al), Hardcore Hyperion, and the OBIEE/Hyperion Reporting Tools. The deadline for submitting abstracts is October 27, so hurry to:

The Regional Conferences
But what about those who can't devote a week of travel to Hyperion? For those users who want 2 days of intense Hyperion content including multiple presentations across multiple themes, theOAUG Hyperion SIG now has an answer for you.

The Hyperion SIG will be putting on a series of regional conferences in in 5 different cities around the USA over the course of 2010. These 2-day events will have 5-7 tracks of content and each track will have 10 or so different sessions in it. As such, users of Hyperion will be able to travel to their region's conference for more than 50 different sessions. For those cutting back on travel in 2010 (or those who only have 2 days to give to the cause of Hyperion and Oracle EPM learning), these conferences are a great option.

They're still trying to iron out the details for 2010, but as the Essbase Domain Lead for OAUG, I've been privy to some advanced briefings. Barring some political snafu, these conferences will definitely be happening. OAUG is finally to the point where they're starting to make the general population aware of these conferences.

OAUG Hyperion SIG Partner Briefing Call: October 9
There will be two introductory calls to brief the partner community on Friday, October 9. The first will be at 8AM Central and the second at 2PM Central. The dial-in number is (219) 509-8020 and the participant code is 154751. That's from an e-mail I received, so if that number doesn't work on the 9th, make sure to visit http://hyperionsig.oaug.org/ to see if they've updated the call-in information.

In case there were any partners who didn't received that e-mail, here's the bulk of it (reprinted with permission from OAUG Hyperion SIG President, Kristin Newman):

Dial-in Number:1-219-509-8020
Participant Access Code:154751

WE ARE EXCITED TO FINALLY ANNOUNCE AND SHARE INFORMATION WITH THE HYPERION AND BI COMMUNITY ABOUT 2010 CONFERENCES!! THIS IS A CALL YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS!!

Agenda:

1. Collaborate 2010 - Information on Hyperion presentations and focus for 2010 - presentation numbers, target audience, etc.

2. Regional Conference Model for 2 day "Solutions" type conferences across the USA for 2010.

This is a unique and innovative opportunity for Partners to be involved on the ground floor up! The OAUG has supported the Hyperion and BI community in supporting the need for Education in the local markets!

This has been in works all year and the Board of Directors of the Hyperion SIG and OBI SIG want to share first hand what we've been advocating for and what is happening.

We will discuss the conference model, sponsorship opportunities, speaking opportunities, tracks, etc.

If you receive this e-mail as a member of either the OAUG Hyperion SIG or OBI SIG, but you think that other decision-makers at your firms should attend, please forward this invite to them. We will hold 2 calls on Friday, October 9th to choose from. Additionally, we will discuss this model at our semi-annual meeting at OOW on Sunday, October 11 at the OAUG Hyperion SIG meeting (1-3pm). After Open World, we will publish this information on our website!

We look forward to sharing information with the Hyperion & BI Partner Community!!!

Kind Regards,
Kristin Newman
President/Coordinator
OAUG Hyperion SIG Board of Directors
E-Mail: hyperionsig(at)gmail.com
214.223.7171

So if you're a partner/vendor interested in presenting or exhibiting at one of the regional Solutions 2.0 conferences, make sure you attend the call on the 9th.

So, to be clear...
If you're looking to go to a national conference in 2010 that comes the closest to what you got out of Solutions, go to ODTUG Kaleidoscope. If you want something more regional in scope (like the Hyperion User Groups of old but on cool, designer steroids), make plans to attend whichver of theOAUG regional conferences in 2010 is closest to you.

So where does that leave Collaborate and OpenWorld? Well, I'd go to OpenWorld or Collaborate if Oracle EPM and Hyperion were not my primary concerns. These conferences will still be there for people looking to find out about multiple products though the EPM content will be noticeably light in 2010 (even more so than it was in 2009).

Personally, I'm breathing a sigh of relief because we finally have a clear answer as to where the Essbase and Hyperion user community will be gathering in 2010. I'm just glad we found out before the budget season closed. Go forth and make your Hyperion conference travel request for 2010.

Where does that leave me?
Not that anyone particularly cares, but I have to go to all of the conferences and that now includes five more regional conferences. An Oracle ACE Director's speaking life is never done.
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September 29, 2009

Oracle Buys HyperRoll

... well, at least they bought some of HyperRoll, and frankly, it's about time. It all started back in the day when HyperRoll found a better way to roll-up Essbase data. Originally, there was scuttlebutt about Hyperion buying HyperRoll, but (so the story goes), the price was too high. So instead, Hyperion decided to create ASO which bore eerie similarities to HyperRoll. There was a nasty lawsuit involving Hyperion infringing on HyperRoll's patent that got settled eventually for millions.

By that time, though, Hyperion had ASO firmly entrenched in Essbase customers world-wide and HyperRoll somewhat disappeared from the Hyperion landscape. They made a reappearance recently with their LiveLink technology that essentially let you build Essbase cubes from HFM data really, really fast. In some cases, it was almost real-time. I saw a demo of it where a user made an elimination entry in HFM and it was visible in an Essbase cube literally 3 seconds later.

So what exactly did Oracle buy? It's unclear at the moment. HyperRoll's website proudly proclaims "Oracle Buys HyperRoll." Oracle's release is a bit more coy on what exactly they purchased:

On September 29, 2009, Oracle announced it has agreed to acquire certain assets of HyperRoll. HyperRoll is a leading provider of financial reporting acceleration solutions with interactive reporting capability to support complex data calculation requirements. Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) already enables rapid, accurate and secure financial consolidation and reporting. With the addition of HyperRoll's reporting acceleration technology, customers are expected to be able to execute a faster financial close.

HyperRoll's employees are expected to join Oracle, and will bring domain expertise in multi-dimensional technologies and algorithms for large scale financial and business intelligence systems.

In other words, they're definitely buying the parts of HyperRoll that matter to us Oracle EPM (Hyperion) junkies including the LiveLink technology mentioned above. What I can't figure out is what they're leaving behind at HyperRoll. Either way, the good news is it will all be rolled into the Oracle EPM product suite. It also mentions under the HyperRoll acquisition FAQ (scroll down to page 3) that Oracle will be increasing the R&D around the HyperRoll products.

I did find the best source of details on what Oracle is buying can be found in this 10-page presentation. It even shows where HyperRoll will be fitting in the EPM suite:

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September 18, 2009

Essbase 11 and Smart View Books On Amazon Kindle

Amazon Printed and On-Line
I mentioned back in June that you could get our Oracle Essbase 11 and Smart View 11 books from our publisher directly. At the time, many of you wondered when they'd be on Amazon.com. Wait no more:

On a very cool note, our two newest 11x books are also available in an Amazon Kindle edition. So if you want to always have Essbase or Smart View material available at your fingertips or if you just love saving trees, get a Kindle copy here:

Direct from interRel Press
Now, of course, I would still prefer you buy them from our publisher because we get to keep more of the revenue, but I understand why some prefer Amazon. If you want to help us starving authors get higher royalties (and get your shipment faster too, generally), please visit:

As always, if you want to buy 5 or more copies of one of our books, please e-mail dwhite(at)interrel.com and she'll be happy to arrange 30% off the list price. Now your entire finance department can afford a copy of the end user book!

Look Smarter Than You Are with Hyperion Planning
Finally, as an update, our next book will be released before OpenWorld. Stay tuned to this blog if you're a user of Hyperion Planning who's been waiting patiently for a book to refer to.
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