Oracle BIWA User Community

The week of Collaborate conference 2012 is over! It turned out to be a action packed week. It started on Saturday with a full day IOUG board meeting. I have been nominated to the IOUG Board for 2012-213 and will be taking care of Product Integration Portfolio with focus on Exa-systems. On Sunday, we conducted the Deep Dive on Oracle BI Applications (OBIA) along with a friend JV and Oracle Product Management folks. This was intense 5 hr class between 9 am and 3 pm on Sunday and had 20+ attendees. The day ended with IOUG SIG reception were Mark Townsend was recognized for his contributions to IOUG community, posthumously. It was nice meeting Dr DBA or Ken Jacobs in the event, even though he has retied from Oracle. The BIWA SIG board had dinner the same night and discussed possibilities of BIWA SIG and the Quest BI SIG working closer in future. Monday morning was no rocket science! It was key note with Mark Kelly... I was lucky to obtain his autographed book and here is the picture with

It is that time of year!   Collaborate  2012 is less than two weeks away. This time it is in Las Vegas, April 22-26. It has been alternating between Orlando, FL and Las Vega, NV, tow cities that are very conference friendly. The event will be full of exciting content in the BI, DW & EPM (BIWA) Track, starting with the Deep Dive on Oracle Business Intelligence Applications on Sunday. The Mon-Wed will be filled with several sessions from customers, implementer and Oracle Product Managers. Apart from regular sessions and Panel discussions, take advantage of the Hands on Labs, at no extra cost on a variety of topics from OBIEE, Spatial/MapViewer to Advanced Analytics such as Oracle Data Mining, Oracle Enterprise R and OLAP.  In the Hands on Labs (HoL) you actually work on a computer, on a virtual machine and get to carry out the exercises in 1-2 hr session.  Add these to your schedule if you want to join these sessions and come in early. I have to jump on an IOUG call, so more late

The coverage of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications for Oracle and SAP  ERP continues to extend. The most recent addition from April 4, 2012 is the the new Oracle Manufacturing Analytics and Oracle Enterprise Asset Management Analytics Applications including the connectors for IBM Maximo. This was released through the Extension Pack for 7.9.6.3 branch.  At the same time Oracle extended the coverage for the SAP customers from Finance to Sales & Distribution and Materials Management with the support for Procurement and Supply Chain Performance Applications on the 7.9.7.1 branch.  I have come across companies that are a mix of Oracle and SAP either by choice such as PeopleSoft for HCM and SAP for Finance and Manufacturing or due to acquisitions. With the availability of coverage for back-office applications (ERP) for both Oracle and SAP, now customers have increased choice for packaged applications. The new applications such as the Manufacturing and Enterprise Asset Manageme