Back From Collaborate 09

May 8, 2009 by Jim Glazar

So I am back from Collaborate 09 and have to say that overall had a pretty good time. On Sunday we had our OAUG OBI SIG meeting and had a great Build vs. Buy panel discussion. The folks from Humana and Gallup provided a lot of insight into the decisions that went into their OBI EE implementations. Ray Payne who heads the OAUG came by and said that Oracle is looking at possibly sponsoring a conference that would be specific to EPM much like the old Hyperion Solutions conferences. I will post more details as I get more information. I also got a chance to meet several of the OAUG Hyperion SIG Board Members and look forward to working with them more closely as Hyperion EPM and Oracle BI continue to merge under the Oracle EPM umbrella.

On Monday morning I attended the key note speech given by Charles Phillips. One of the key announcements that relates to Oracle BI was the rollout of BI Apps version 7.9.6. One of the key additions is the inclusion of Project Analytics. Another announcement was the enhancements to their Beehive product which includes new collaboration functionality to compete with the Microsoft suite of tools such as SharePoint. Oracle is touting the integration of this product in comparison to Microsoft's disjointed applications. Charles also went on to highlight Oracle's accomplishments this year and this list was pretty extensive.

The participant estimates for the conference was around 4500 so not too bad considering the current economy. It was a great opportunity to network and forge new partnerships and I look forward to Collaborate 2010 which will be at the Mandalay Bay in Vegas.