Open World Day 1

This morning I spend as few minutes as possible walking through one of the vendor pavilions. Like last night’s keynote, the theme for the conference seems to be Cloud computing. There are so many companies talking about clouds you would there it was a meteorologist convention.  The second theme is iPad. Every vendor seems to want to get your attention by exchanging your contact information for a chance to win one. The will also give you junk to fill your suitcase to take home to give your children, decorate your cubical or throw into a drawer to never be seen again.

I did spend some time working with and for a couple of clients and spent a bit of time in the interRel Kiosk. It’s nice, the Kiosks are right outside of the Hyperion session rooms and we don’t have the pain of being on the main floor talking to people who have no interest or knowledge of Hyperion.

The first session I sat in on was “Introduction to Oracle's Hyperion Performance Management Applications” In the session the integration of different products was discussed including disclosure management and HPCM. I have to admit I did not pay as close attention as I should have as the discussion was mainly on 11.1.2 features and not the roadmap, but it was a good presentation.

Next I was sitting in the Planning features session and just heard the 11.1.2 patch will not be out until January (“December if we are lucky”) so for those of you waiting for the patch to be able to upgrade current applications. There was so much content, the speakers spoke so quickly, I could not capture much of the roadmap. But some things I heard were in the 11.1.2.1 (Now called 11.1.2 PS1) you can  upgrade from 9.3.1, 9.2.0  9.3.3, 11.1.1.3, 11.1.2 but if you want to upgrade from from 9.3.0 you have to first upgrade to 9.3.1. Other features I saw were better display in text on forms, new roles, dynamic owner assignment,  and more that I could not get. 11.1.2 PS2 will include an approvals dashboard. Sorry guys it was the end of the session and the speaker zoomed through the slides.

OK, today seems to be roadmap day. The last session I sat in on was features of Hyperion Applications. There is so much overlap in these roadmap sessions. I think everything I heard was talked about in prior sessions of the day. Big changes to Task management in Planning, Essbase application link for HFM to planning cubes, The ability to spin an ASO cube from Planning with text measures becoming dimensions, Oh wait, something new, HCPM micro allocation. The ability to do allocations down to a extremely low level in HCPM. The example was cost of doing business brought down to the customer/product level. I am sitting through a HPCM session later in the week. Hopefully I’ll hear more about this. 

In between sessions, I worked at the interRel booth answering questions and meeting customers and people looking for clarification and answers. At the end of the day, I went to a joint client appreciation reception between interRel and our friends at Star Analytics and Dodeca. Two companies that truly have innovative products for the Hyperion community.  It was nice to talk with customers I’ve met before or had the chance to meet. NExt I went to the OTN (Oracle Technical Network) appreciation event. In the crowd of people I actually met people I knew and we had an interesting discussion of the ODTUG elections that now underway. I won’t bore you with the details(oh wait, if you read this far , you are already bored) The discussion was around the real need to have a balanced board and that means getting Hyperion people on the board. This was from a non-Hyperion person. I couldn’t agree more as you can tell from prior blog posts.

After that a ride back to my hotel on the bart where I quickly fell to sleep from fatigue of all of the events from the prior two days.

Tomorrow round three.