#1. Oracle Acquires Hyperion

Was there any doubt about number one? By far the most significant event of the last ten years if not the entire history of Hyperion was announced in March of 2007: Oracle was buying Hyperion for $3.3 billion US dollars. It led to a wave of consolidation activity within the next few months: SAP bought Outlooksoft (and then Business Objects when the world was underwhelmed with the Outlooksoft purchase) and IBM bought Cognos. In 2007, the three largest BI/EPM vendors were gone.

The Hyperion acquisition was one of the smoothest I’ve ever seen thanks to a couple of factors. Oracle extended offers to 92% of the Hyperion workforce so all the key personnel made it into Oracle. Oracle also put some great Hyperion people in charge of BI and EPM at Oracle including John Kopcke and Robert Gersten. While the old Oracle BI/OLAP guard was not amused, I’m sure, Hyperion provided new life to the BI group at Oracle when they were put over the top of the existing leadership (rolling up to Thomas Kurian in Fusion Middleware).

Oracle has made some great decisions since the acquisition: Essbase got its name back (may “Hyperion System 9 BI+ Analytic Services” burn in the 7th circle of hell for eternity) as simply Oracle Essbase, Smart View became the Office standard for BI products, Hyperion Planning became the standard for budgeting at Oracle, Financial Management became the strategic direction for financial consolidation, and more. The only negative things I can really say about the acquisition are the loss of the annual Solutions conference and the disappearance of the Hyperion User Groups, and by this point, I’m almost nitpicking.

Like it or not, Oracle’s acquisition was by far the most significant event in Hyperion’s decade. While I never thought I'd say this, I thank God that Larry Ellison decided to forgo buying a bigger yacht in favor of a $3.3BB EPM software firm.

ODTUG Kaleidoscope - Final Thoughts

The ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference in Monterey, California was magnificent. Attendance was up over last year making it one of only two conferences I'm aware of that went up since last year (the other has to do with Blackberries). There's a good high-level review of K'Scope from my friend, Prashanth Prasanna, at http://blog.seguetech.com/?p=185.

The Hyperion hands-on labs were packed to the gills. The 3 Hyperion track rooms in most cases weren't standing room only, so next year has room to grow in terms of attendance. The Hyperion Developer's Symposium on Sunday went very well as Al Marciante from Oracle brought a great cast of Product Managers to talk about the future of the various Hyperion, Essbase, and Oracle EPM tools and applications. I personally enjoyed most the keynote from Robert Gersten, because I enjoy his off-the-cuff, absent-minded professor style of speaking. Robert seemed to enjoy speaking to a crowd of a couple of hundred Hyperion fans too.

There were two unexpected highlights of the week. The first was the Hyperion Midnight Madness event. The "Ask a Guru" panel went from 10PM-midnight on Monday and there were 100+ people there eating chocolate, drinking caffeine, and asking questions. Attendance kept growing over the two hours and at midnight, our moderator, Tim Tow, finally had to cut off the questions or we were going to be there all night. The panel consisted of all the Oracle ACEs and ACE Directors for Hyperion/EPM at Kaleidoscope as well as a couple of guests from the Hyperion SIG board just to keep it lively.

Speaking of lively, the other hit of the week outside the normal conference fare was a bluffing/detection/strategy/party game called Werewolf. The first night of Werewolf (go to http://games.bezier.com/direct.html for a copy of the game) was held right after midnight madness. Moderated by interRel's CFO, Stephanie Kelleher, about 13 people stuck around just to see what people were talking about.

On Tuesday night, everyone requested we play it again (which we did until about 3 AM) and we increased to 25 players. On Wednesday, the groundswell continued and we went up to 45+ people playing until almost dawn. While it ruined any chance of sleeping I might have thought I was going to get, it made for one of the most fun conferences I've ever attended. Apparently, Werewolf is sweeping the software conferences of the world:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10225896-36.html

Was the conference perfect? No, but my gripes are minor compared to the things they did right. The food wasn't as good as Kaleidoscope 2008 and there weren't as many vegetarian options. The internet at the hotel was horrendous making it so on several occasions I couldn't even get a connection. The location was too far from the local city so you had to drive to the local restaurants for nightlife. I would have liked to see even more Hyperion attendees, but considering that Collaborate Hyperion attendance was down 40-60%, I guess Kaleidoscope should be happy that they saw any growth at all.

Still, Kaleidoscope was the best conference I attended in 2009 and I can't wait for 2010. Keep watching this blog because as I get official confirmation of the days and location for next year, I'll be posting it here.

Kaleidoscope Announcements

Promo Code Extended - Get in for $1,225 until June 2

Remember how I said back in April that there was a top secret code for getting into Kaleidoscope for only $1,225 that was only good until April 24? Well, I just found out that the promo code has been extended until June 2. The code is IRC and you put it into the registration code box for big savings (between $300-500, at last check):

http://www.odtugkaleidoscope.com/registration.html

As I've mentioned time and and again, Kaleidoscope will be the best conference for Hyperion and Essbase content in 2009. I felt that going into Collaborate and I feel it even more strongly now. Go the ODTUG Kaleidoscope website to see just some of the 80+ hours of classes they'll be hosting on Essbase and Hyperion:

• Essbase content
• Hyperion content

If you haven't already signed up, this is your chance to 4+ days of jam packed Hyperion intermediate- and expert-level training. At $1,225, that's around $300 per day and it includes really great food.

Content Announced for Sunday Hyperion Developer's Symposium

Also, my favorite part of the conference is that all-day Sunday will be delivered by the Hyperion development product managers. They'll be talking about all the things Oracle has planned for EPM, Hyperion, and Essbase in 2009 and 2010. They'll be showing the current builds of the products and they'll even be soliciting audience feedback about what's desired going forward. Here's what Al Marciante and his superfriends have on tap on the Hyperion Developer's Symposium Day (each of these topics gets at least an hour):

• Essbase by Aneel Shenker from Oracle. Among other things, Aneel will be talking about "persisted calculation functionality on ASO." In other words, he'll be showing us calc scripts on ASO. You heard it here first folks: "calc scripts" are coming for ASO, and Kaleidoscope is your first chance to find out more details.
• OBIEE by Mike Donahue from Oracle. Some of the more interesting topics include the Web Analysis to Answers Roadmap and the SQR to Publisher Roadmap. If you've been wanting to see the future of the reporting tools and especially how to put the OBIEE products on Essbase, this is the session to see.
• Smart View by Toufic Wakim from Oracle. Toufic will be showing all the neat things coming in Smart View including the dramatically enhanced new integration of Planning into both Excel and Outlook (yes, Outlook).
• HPCM by Don Bean from Oracle. This session will start by showing everyone where HPCM is, but it will also show everyone where it's going. There's a lot of money going into R&D right now for HPCM, and we'll be the first ones to see the HPCM roadmap.
• Keynote by Robert Gersten from Oracle. In case anyone doesn't know, Robert is over about 2,000 developers at Oracle including all the EPM and BI developers. Normally, Robert doesn't give keynotes (except at internal and partner events) but when he does, they're doozies. For the most off the cuff information you'll ever be privy to, make sure you attend this hour even if you skip the rest of the day.
• HFM by Janette Hollar from Oracle. For those who thought Kaleidoscope had no HFM information, this session will prove you wrong. Not only will Janette be talking about some architectural and functional enhancements planned for HFM, she'll be talking in detail about the new financial close and disclosure management modules for HFM.
• Planning by Shankar Viswanathan from Oracle. The Planning roadmap may be the most impressive of all. By the end of 2010, Hyperion Planning will not only be the most scalable, but also it will be the most functionality rich planning product on the market. True workflow, anyone?

In case anyone's curious, if you aren't at the Sunday session in person, you won't be able to get any of that information. It's only for people physically there at the symposium and there definitely won't be PowerPoints about it on the internet later.

Again, the code to get the discount is IRC and it's been extended to June 2. Feel free to forward this code on to your friends (I'm making an assumption here) because the code really isn't all that secret anymore. I hope to see you there at the end of June!