Oracle’s OpenWorld conference was huge this year. With all the acquisitions, Oracle has truly grown out of San Francisco; however, I hope they don’t do something crass like move the event to Las Vegas. Oracle is a massive success – in my opinion they’ve leveled SAP and Microsoft and are closing in on IBM and HP. That’s impressive – I genuinely love and admire this.
But, enough of this – let’s have a little fun: Just some superficial, nonsensical impressions and observations before getting serious. This year OpenWorld spilled far out of Moscone – they even had JavaOne tents as far away as Union Square. The Sun people must have felt like Gulag prisoners. Then there were the multiple exhibit halls – those places were zoo-like, almost distasteful – “Sans-culottes“, as the French might say.
For example:
HP had a Magic show. One company was giving away a Tesla – I didn’t even notice this company’s name let alone what they were selling, but who cares? I mean, how does software compare to a Tesla?
Accenture had a sign saying “high performance delivered” which I read as “high performance divorced” – most likely a Tiger Woods thing.
BlackBerry had a caption reading “Experience Oracle Applications on BlackBerry.” Fat chance unless they’ve recently announced iPhone emulation. I can’t experience the web on my BB let alone Oracle Apps, and I can barely take a picture of the sign – this is my BB experience. Imagine what an Oracle App would look like!
KPMG went with the golf theme this year – don’t they read? Dell had a juice bar, Brocade had some guy spinning plates and juggling. Idhasoft was giving away a Lexus, but I just kept thinking they had some really cool potato app and wanted to see a demo. Best Software had an off road racer, and Groupware had a craps table. The only thing missing was Cirque du Soliel.
On the serious side, Oracle announced Fusion Apps for the fourth year in a row. This is massive and should be very cool – think about the undertaking: over $4 to $5 billion rebuilding more than 100 existing applications written on top of Oracle (BEA) middleware. That’s impressive. Existing EBS, PeopleSoft, and Siebel apps will still continue, so the customer can choose to go “old wave” or “new wave”.
The DB, Apps, and Middleware groups are the big bucks winners in this game, and the trailers are riding their coattails. On the business intelligence side, Fusion Apps are now “BI driven” and will include “Oracle Transaction BI” (OTBI), consisting of “BI View Objects” – this complements Oracle BI Apps. The BI View Objects are ADF (Oracle Application Development Framework) middleware components which in turn query the database – they are not DB views. The BI View Object component can be used by the BI Composer – a new ADF-based BI authoring tool – and can also be exposed to OBI Answers by integrating with the BI Server’s metadata repository (RPD). This may sound complex but keep in mind that Oracle relies on their customers to pull this together and make it work – it is the customer that has to ultimately make EVERYTHING work.
In any case, this doesn’t come out until 2011 so there’s plenty of time to implement the recently released Oracle BI Apps 7.9.6.2, but beware, the 7.9.6.x BI Apps won’t be integrated with Fusion Applications or even OBI EE 11g. A new version of the BI Apps, called Oracle BI Apps 11g v1, is expected to support Fusion Apps and OBI EE 11g. Strategically, customers would want to implement Oracle BI Apps 11g v1 since that is the go forward BI Apps code line, BUT Oracle BI Apps 11g won’t be integrated with the Applications Unlimited product lines (old wave) until Oracle releases Oracle BI Apps 11g Patchset 1 late 2011 / 2012. There also doesn’t appear to be an automated upgrade path from Oracle BI Apps 7.9.6.2 to 11g. 11g utilizes a new data model and corresponding set of ETL maps that extract data through the BI View Objects.
This is very complex – so to do a short recap, OTBI only works with Fusion Apps and Oracle seems to not have a plan to offer a similar product for EBS customers. In addition, Oracle is introducing another new version of Oracle BI Applications with Fusion Applications that won’t integrate EBS data until the end of 2011 or 2012, and existing Oracle BI Apps customers are apparently unable to migrate. Customers are expected to re-implement the new Oracle BI Apps data warehouse.
Let’s take a look at our Oracle BI life history as far as I can discern it:
1999 – BIS
2001 – EDW
2003 – DBI
2006 – OBI EE & Oracle BI Apps
2010 – OBI EE 11g
2011 – Oracle BI Apps for Fusion
As a customer,
If you developed BI apps for BIS, you need to rewrite
If you developed BI apps for EDW, you need to rewrite
If you developed BI apps for DBI, you need to rewrite
If you developed BI apps for Discoverer, they’re in limbo and you need to migrate and rewrite
If you bought Oracle BI Apps for Oracle EBS you will need to re-implement when you upgrade to Fusion Applications or upgrade to Oracle BI Apps 11g
If you haven’t bought or implemented Oracle BI Apps 7.9.6.x you may want to consider waiting for Oracle BI Apps 11g PS1.
Let’s see what all this might look like graphically — you know, the big picture:
Like I said at the beginning, Oracle is a great company that I highly admire and respect, but the BI direction has been plagued with product HD-ED (High Definition – Evolution Dysfunction). Now new leadership has entered the picture and this is a good thing. There are solutions to this, and I am hoping that new leadership will take the opportunity to deliver what the customers want and need. As a customer you have to examine this and decide. This is not religion – you don’t have to believe to be successful.
As I said – this is very complex so I welcome your feedback and comments – particularly from those of you who attended the event. I am trying to get the facts straight so I look forward to writing another version or two of this. Oracle’s roadmap is fluid, and can change based on customer feedback.
I hope to blog again.
