Wednesday, July 8, 12 noon Eastern
BIWA Wednesday TechCast Series - Second Event!
Tales from the Front: Strategies for a Successful OBIEE Implementation
Click here for details
Are you starting a new OBIEE project? Or perhaps you're mired in the muck of an existing project, and things aren't going well. No matter what your experience with OBIEE has been so far, no matter what industry your company is in, this session will provide you with helpful tips and techniques to guide you toward a successful OBIEE implementation.
We'll discuss topics such as:
Divide and Conquer: The key strengths you need on your OBIEE implementation team.
Nothing Stops a Train: But a lack of proper training can stop your project in its tracks.
Any Way You Slice It: Why your security model should be one of the first, second, and third things you consider.
What's In a Name?: Ideas for implementing a standardized naming convention for the objects in your OBIEE schema.
Who's On First? The first, most important steps when beginning your project.
Tiny Steps, Big Results: Building your OBIEE environment in successive stages for quick Proofs of Concept.
Stars, Snowflakes, Constellations, and other Unnatural Phenomena: The proper schemas for a clean configuration and ease of maintenance.
Aggregates, OLAP, and Cache, OH MY: Your three-prong approach to great performance.
We'll use examples pulled from real projects. If you're interested in avoiding the "gotchas" of an OBIEE implementation, then come along for the ride and learn from our mistakes.
Presented by Cathye Pendley of Vlamis Software Solutions
Audio Dial-In: 888 967 2253 Meeting ID: 572994 Meeting Passcode: 334451
Web Conference: https://conference.oracle.com/imtapp/app/sch_mtg_details.uix?mID=149973030
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Other TechCasts Coming Soon - Mark Your Calendars!
July 22, 2009 - Oracle Data Mining Overview and Demos
Charlie Berger, Sr. Director of Product Management, Data Mining Technologies, Oracle
August 5, 2009 - The Oracle Database 11g Optimizer: Good things get even better
Maria Colgan, Principal Product Manager, Oracle
August 19, 2009 - CASE STUDY - Oracle OLAP: A Scalable Unified Approach to BI Reporting
Swapan Golla - Lead Developer, Gallup Organization
Friday, July 3, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Smart Strategies for Uncertain Times
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 others. They have lower DSO and other Finance KPI's are better but they have lower % headcount in Finance and hence lower costs, compared to peer groups. The SOX impacted the peer groups a shot their costs up.
So far the keynote is quite technology agnostic... more generic EPM / BI terminology... the next topic is 7 imperatives to deal with Crisis:
1) get insight and share it (e.g. provide finance professional with operational insight)
2) monitor continuosly
3) plan flexibilty
4) rething strategy
5) invest and divest
6) build trust
7) ... and do this all correct (not just YADT... it should not be Yet Another Dashboard Tool!)
Now John is explaining the importance of BI Applications in this challenging situation. Use the pre-packaged applications and quickly implement to get the insights in your business. Now once you have "insight" into the business problems, how do you "Plan Flexibly?" Time to rethink what does Planning process mean.
Yesterday, there was a lot of focus on the public sector Planning and performance management. Often budgeting is an yearly rituals and then forget about it... can it be used to convert to a rolling business event based activity...
We will see more of integrated business planning. I think BI apps for HFM will be a key bridge between BI and EPM... and will help to close the bridge between IT and Business.
Rethink Strategy: A good example when cost of oil went to $150/barrel.... financial modeling is back in fashion, a good example from IBM - had a financial model on mainframes. Seems like we forgot about financial modeling, important when "obvious" history would not tell us about future... now you need deep mathematical / data mining models to use financial models for "knowing" the future. ABB is a good example of using this to survive a financial crisis ($4B debt restructuring). Gave a good example of who should go to Univ of Vermount - use of data mining to go after the right target prospective students.
Invest and Divest Wisely: Companies need to identify porfolio of best product-market-channel combinations.
Customer success story - Burger King is using 3 month and 5 year planning cycles. Crystal Ball or the Monte Carlo simulation for predictive Modeling is being reintroduced. By the way, at Colaborate Steve Stein of Perot system had explained in brief how Crystal Ball works using human readable rules, so I need to look at it in details. John says, we often plan and budget but do not go and verify how the real worked outperformed viz-a-viz the plan/budgets.
Build Trust: How to "gain to sustain?" Identify the right stake holders...here you identify who are the right consumers of EPM and BI information. New York City (NYC.gov) used dashboards to make govt transparent to the citizens.
shyamvaran John: "TWEETing is great but you cannot run business on Tweets unless you have processes in place", (I think #ODTUG has process in place)
half a minute ago from web...
Before the Hyperion acquisition, BI was looked as add on technology by Oracle. BI / BI apps were post-ERP implmentations. Hyperion has made Oracle realize that BI/EPM cannot be an after-thought, rather needs to be part of the application strategy.
I will be touching some of the concepts today in my MDM for BI - talks at 3:45PM, Session 91
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 others. They have lower DSO and other Finance KPI's are better but they have lower % headcount in Finance and hence lower costs, compared to peer groups. The SOX impacted the peer groups a shot their costs up.
So far the keynote is quite technology agnostic... more generic EPM / BI terminology... the next topic is 7 imperatives to deal with Crisis:
1) get insight and share it (e.g. provide finance professional with operational insight)
2) monitor continuosly
3) plan flexibilty
4) rething strategy
5) invest and divest
6) build trust
7) ... and do this all correct (not just YADT... it should not be Yet Another Dashboard Tool!)
Now John is explaining the importance of BI Applications in this challenging situation. Use the pre-packaged applications and quickly implement to get the insights in your business. Now once you have "insight" into the business problems, how do you "Plan Flexibly?" Time to rethink what does Planning process mean.
Yesterday, there was a lot of focus on the public sector Planning and performance management. Often budgeting is an yearly rituals and then forget about it... can it be used to convert to a rolling business event based activity...
We will see more of integrated business planning. I think BI apps for HFM will be a key bridge between BI and EPM... and will help to close the bridge between IT and Business.
Rethink Strategy: A good example when cost of oil went to $150/barrel.... financial modeling is back in fashion, a good example from IBM - had a financial model on mainframes. Seems like we forgot about financial modeling, important when "obvious" history would not tell us about future... now you need deep mathematical / data mining models to use financial models for "knowing" the future. ABB is a good example of using this to survive a financial crisis ($4B debt restructuring). Gave a good example of who should go to Univ of Vermount - use of data mining to go after the right target prospective students.
Invest and Divest Wisely: Companies need to identify porfolio of best product-market-channel combinations.
Customer success story - Burger King is using 3 month and 5 year planning cycles. Crystal Ball or the Monte Carlo simulation for predictive Modeling is being reintroduced. By the way, at Colaborate Steve Stein of Perot system had explained in brief how Crystal Ball works using human readable rules, so I need to look at it in details. John says, we often plan and budget but do not go and verify how the real worked outperformed viz-a-viz the plan/budgets.
Build Trust: How to "gain to sustain?" Identify the right stake holders...here you identify who are the right consumers of EPM and BI information. New York City (NYC.gov) used dashboards to make govt transparent to the citizens.
shyamvaran John: "TWEETing is great but you cannot run business on Tweets unless you have processes in place", (I think #ODTUG has process in place)
half a minute ago from web...
Before the Hyperion acquisition, BI was looked as add on technology by Oracle. BI / BI apps were post-ERP implmentations. Hyperion has made Oracle realize that BI/EPM cannot be an after-thought, rather needs to be part of the application strategy.
I will be touching some of the concepts today in my MDM for BI - talks at 3:45PM, Session 91
Monday at Kaleidoscope
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 explosive growth. If you look at Oracle Mix, some of the top proposals are related to APEX. The Sundown session on Tuesday evening is for attendees to talk to the Oracle ACES.
Now the Keynote speaker is being introduced as former Hyperion, now Snr VP of BI & EPM (developer's developer as head of development from Hyperion)...
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 explosive growth. If you look at Oracle Mix, some of the top proposals are related to APEX. The Sundown session on Tuesday evening is for attendees to talk to the Oracle ACES.
Now the Keynote speaker is being introduced as former Hyperion, now Snr VP of BI & EPM (developer's developer as head of development from Hyperion)...
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Hyperion Planning
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.
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.
Hyperion Financial Management (HFM)
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 easily.
There are new products that are under NDA... so can't be detailed here.
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 easily.
There are new products that are under NDA... so can't be detailed here.
ERP and EPM Integration (ODTUG 2009)
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.
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.
Robert Gersten at Kaleidoscope 2009
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 spots!!!) will have OBI Server + essbase, HFM Planning and other integrations. Robert said that BI apps is the fastest growing segment of the Oracle BI/EPM market segment. The PL/SQL API for MDX sounds cool, you can expose data from cube via PL/SQL calls.
do you have an interesting EPM implementation, check out:
http://www.oracle.com/goto/2009biepmaward/index.html
This is the first time any company has made concerted efforts to bridge the gap between BI and EPM. Though, there are some areas yet that need work such as high availability, failover, cluster etc....
Question about Essbase applicance or EPM appliance like Exadata? Is that in near future?
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 spots!!!) will have OBI Server + essbase, HFM Planning and other integrations. Robert said that BI apps is the fastest growing segment of the Oracle BI/EPM market segment. The PL/SQL API for MDX sounds cool, you can expose data from cube via PL/SQL calls.
do you have an interesting EPM implementation, check out:
http://www.oracle.com/goto/2009biepmaward/index.html
This is the first time any company has made concerted efforts to bridge the gap between BI and EPM. Though, there are some areas yet that need work such as high availability, failover, cluster etc....
Question about Essbase applicance or EPM appliance like Exadata? Is that in near future?
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