Oracle BIWA User Community

The Monday keynote by John Kopcke (happy the keynote is in the BI/EPM space, so the lanyard by RittmanMead and bags logo of Interrel!) Do business executives really do not know what they want for BI/EPM is it simply the dashboard envy that drives the projects? John is highlighting the importance of economic downturn for new opportunities. Smukers has grown in profits recently. So what are the high impact strategies: - Cash conservation is a no-brainer here... - Manage risk and performance - Management Excellence (ability of business to be agile in changing times) E.g. Southwest took 4 days to respond to the 911, to change routes and supporting changes... how does this compare at other business... an example of management excellence. I would add the oil price hedging as an another example that has given Southwest an advantage over others. John is now talking about he Hackett Value Grid based on 2000 companies surveyed, as the foundation of World class companies and how they outclass o...

Monday sessions start... Todd Trichler is getting the Oracle Contributor Award. Second award goes to Al Marciante - for contribution to Hyperion SIG, having seem him last year and this year at Hyperion Symposium, this is a well-deserved award. Paper awards being announced now ( Editor's Choice ) ...and the winner is Peter Koletzke! Speakers awards based on speaker feedback 1) Presentation style Peter Koletzke (won a kaleidoscope as his award! the real one) 2) Best presentation content topic ...and the winner is Dimitri Geillis (a proud new father this week) I am sitting next to Tom Kyte and have asked him to touch on the recent Big Blue announcement in the Database Panel, that he will participate in. Jeff is explaining why Kaleidoscope has grown in size this year in size, an important milestone in this economy...focus on content. They are inviting Track Managers for next year. The event received over 500 abstracts for 2009, in the 4 main tracks. The APEX track is shown explosiv...

Hyperion Planning Roadmap 11.1.2 Release Theme Public sector Budgeting (out of box ERP implementation using ERPI, Support position based budgeting for public sector, public sector process / workflow management, budget books etc) Establish MS Office as a prominent Planning user interface Enhance and Evolve Planning Web Functionality and Usability 11.1.2 also has Data Validation Rules in the Forms for Traffic lite kind of display, based on thresholds. Also this release introduces a much robust member selector. ASO Reporting Cube Links are possible. Lightweight Data Entry Pages (Ajax grids): Planning client can retrieve data from the server asyncronously.

Financial consolidation is almost synonymous with HFM both for Oracle and SAP customers. Janette Hollar of Oracle will be speaking now. In last 25 yrs HFM is the industry leader. It has 1500 customers worldwide. EPMA is used to manage dimesionality over multiple applications. Calculation manager is coming out for it in CY09. On the roadmap for CY10 is better hardware utilization. HFN-GRC provides fully integrated GRC reporting. GRC has application access controls governor to enforce the proper segregation of the duties in applications. The OBIEE and HFM integration will allow HFM data participates in Common Enterprise Information Model. There is plan for BI app for HFM. It will be to see if new content for Informatica will be generated or only ODI connectors will be provided. With this HFM BI apps, dashboards will be able to BI and EPM data in same dashboard out of box. SEC is adopting XBRL for reporting 10K, Quarterly reports in a fashion such that companies can be compared ...

Mike Cassey is now speaking on ERP and EPM integration.FDM source adapters for eBS R12.06 and 12.1. Target adapters for HFM etc...the goal is to integrate metadata and prevent re-development for the users. FDM ERPI ERP integrator is a new product . Also see this Peoplesoft V9 is also supported. Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) is used behind the scenes. More support such as public sector planning, SAP and Oracle Fusion GL will be coming in future. Look for some of these in the Talleyrand release. Two important features are Drill Through and Budget write-back. Public sector Planning needs budget data being written for GL encumberances. eBS hierarchies can be pulled by the EPMI, with no need to re-define them. The EPM System workspace has a data load with places for creating the data rules. Likewise, the calendar mapping can be set. Incremental data loading is also possible. FDM allows flat file load, but there is no Universal adapter in the plan right now.

The first key note of today, from Robert Gersten, Snr VP (EPM and BI Development), starting now. Tim did a nice intro of the speaker but there audio problems to begin with... Robert, thanked the Hyperion customers for their loyalty to the product. The 5 core processes of EPM are metrics, planning, management reporting, specialized analytics and financial reporting. Specialized analytics includes what-if, predictive analytics etc. EPM is part of Oracle Fusion Middleware group under Thomas Kurien...The current largest install base of EPM is on 9.x Fusion EPM System 11 will work with OBIEE 11g. This version of OBIEE will support HFM etc. out of box. Oracle EPMS ERP Integration expected in Aug 2009. 11.1.1.x (also called) Kennedy) was a very feature rich release - HFM 64-bit), Essbase (ASO/BSO enhancements) etc. 11.1.2 (Talleyrand) will include features for Public sector, full-featured experience in Excel etc...expected in 4th Quarter. The OBIEE 11g is code named Negril (vacation sp...

The sessions started today, got registered at 7:30AM, a see a lot of people, met MArk Rittman picking up his registration. The location is quite a contrast from last year..in the heart of New Orleans with all the traffic, here a very quite resort location, just off the Pacific, and the Hyperion session is in room called Pacific. Got a nice ODTUG jacket at registration, will be good for the chilly weather here (50's). Ed Roske opened the HYP session and talked about the Hyperion Board ballots in the registration bag for the ODTUG attendees. Ed mentioned that there will be a lot of Twitter use this year. And there is mid-night session with chocolates... Al Marciante, mentioned we do not have to see for 8 hrs today and he is going to delegate the tasks much more to the others today (unlike last year). First session on Essbase roadmap started around 8:30AM - speaker is Aneel Shenker. This was followed by the OBIEE 11g roadmap... a number of cool features were talked about - Mike Don...

This is the week prior to Kaleidoscope and also the week when Oracle had started inviting the speakers based on the call for presentations. So let's look at what is hot this year, more from the Information Management perspective - i.e. Business Intelligence (BI), Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Data Warehousing (DW), Enterprise Data Management or the Master Data Management (EDM/MDM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM). In other words, IM is the catch all phrase today for BI/EPM/DW, EDM/MDM and ECM. The Sunday Symposium in Kaleidoscope has Hyperion/ EPM as one of the tracks. BI will be in the back drop. However, there are about 13 talks in the BIDW track , about half are by Oracle speakers. There are about 26 talks in Hyperion related topics , and a number of hands-on sessions. Equal number of Essbase talks . Thus EPM outnumbers BIDW, a few times at Kaleidoscope and that has been the historical trend. What is interesting though that this is a Development Tools User Grou...

It was not too long ago that I blogged about Collaborate '09 and now it's about time for Kaleidoscope. It will be my second time at this event. Last year, it was at New Orleans where I volunteered on Saturday to paint a school along with several other volunteers such as Mary Lou Dopart from Oracle. This year the scene shifts to Pacific, Monterey Beach, CA is a very beautiful location. So all those who do not often go to CA or more so to this part of coastal California, about 100 miles south of San Francisco, should definitely try to set aside some time to visit the surrounding places. About 30 miles south is Big Sur...the picture below is a nice view but any picture or video cannot do real justice to the natural beauty of the Monterey and its surrounds. Well enough about the surroundings, let's now get to what we are "really" to the conference for. So even though the conference starts on Saturday with the voluntary event, the main attraction for me is the full d...

Check out my proposal for Oracle Openworld 2009, via the Oracle Mix: http://ow.ly/dVg1 Any comments are welcome. It is about implementing Oracle BI Applications - 7.9.6 Thanks