Archive for the ‘Business Intelligence’ Category

Fall is in the air here in Seattle (and most other places in the U.S. and Europe).  We’ve had some lovely, crisp autumn days over the past week.

At the beginning of each quarter this year, I’ve written about topics that I’ll be tracking throughout the year.  With another quarter gone, it’s time for an update.  I’ll split this article into two parts – today I’ll cover work-related topics and next time I’ll look at my other, more personal interests.

Business Intelligence Industry

There are three big (and converging) industry trends:

• Big Data – everyone wants to analyze immense data sets.  When terabytes of data are involved, traditional DBMS and BI solutions can’t perform adequately, so new approaches are needed.  Vendors like QlikTech pioneered this space, but all the major players are now paying attention.
• In Memory Computing and Appliances – Oracle’s Exa-whatever family of products competes directly with SAP’s Hana offering.  As with Big Data, the big vendors are chasing some of the innovative smaller vendors (like QlikTech) while also trying to move into the space that Teradata has owned for years.
• Mobile BI – Apple’s iPad (with some help from the iPhone and Android phones) has brought this sector to prominence.  All of the vendors are racing to provide new offerings (or to emphasize how their old offerings are “mobile ready”).

For my company (and many others) the biggest event of the past several months was Oracle OpenWorld 2011 (although technically it fell in Q4).  I wrote about OOW here, here, here and here.

Meanwhile, SAP finally released BusinessObjects 4, a new major release of their flagship BI suite.  It became generally available on September 16.  It updates their entire suite: Web Intelligence, Dashboards, Crystal Reports, Explorer, the Business Intelligence Platform, and more.  It’ll be interesting to see whether SAP gains any momentum with this new release.  They had lagged behind in Gartner’s most recent Magic Quadrant, in part because the other major vendors had already delivered their major new releases.

For Microsoft, the Denali project now has an official (but not surprising) product name: SQL Server 2012.  It’s scheduled for release in the first half of next year.  Last week, Microsoft jumped on the Big Data band wagon, announcing that SQL Server 2012 will include big data features based on Apache Hadoop. Not surprisingly, they also announced that their mobile BI features will be extended to Apple iPads and iPhones. 

Oracle

In July, I said, “Fusion continues to be delayed – it’s still not generally available – but Oracle continues to tout its promise and its success with early adopters.  I’m still skeptical.”  Now that it’s generally available, it sounds really good.  However, I remain skeptical.  Even if it’s everything it’s claimed to be, will any customers be able to afford it?

On the acquisition front, things have picked up again.  After just one acquisition in Q1 and one more that I wrote about after Q2, Oracle gobbled up five other companies (two that I missed in Q2 and three more last quarter):

• Datanomic – April – data quality software for risk and compliance screening
• Pillar Data Systems – June – network storage systems
• Ksplice – July – an open source provider of Linux kernel extensions
• InQuira – July – service knowledge management software
• GoAhead – September — service management software for the communications industry

Can we find any trends or see any future direction from Oracle’s recent acquisitions?  I certainly can’t.  They all seem fairly unrelated – small, targeted niche additions to isolated parts of the product portfolio.  I expect we’ll continue to see more of the same, although I wouldn’t rule out a blockbuster acquisition. 

For now…I’ll leave you with this thought:

New trends in BI provide opportunities for many new niche vendors, but the major players seem quicker than ever in recognizing (and filling) the most important niches.

Oracle OpenWorld ended last Thursday.  The week included several major announcements from Oracle.  Here is my take on the biggest of those:

• Fusion Applications are now Generally Available
  • This marks the culmination of six years of effort and is a major accomplishment for Oracle.  They presented a list of more than 100 functional areas that are currently available, along with more than 200 early adopter customers.
  • The integration of business intelligence (BI) directly into the applications is touted as a major innovation.  It seems to be thorough and well thought out.  I’ll definitely be digging into this more in the coming months.

• New Exalytics BI Appliance
  • Exalytics is especially interesting to those of us in the BI space.
  • Early reactions from SAP:
    • Why SAP Hana is better (written by SAP)
    • Old Wine in New Wineskins

• Oracle Public Cloud and Oracle Social Network
  • Oracle Public Cloud is a hosted offering of Fusion Applications (with Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database as the foundation).
  • Early analyst reactions match mine – this is yet another hastily assembled incomplete offering.
    • Oracle Social Network baffles
  • This is Oracle’s PaaS (Platform as a Service) offering and, as such, it takes direct aim at Microsoft Azure (and the recently announced not-yet-available Google Cloud SQL).  It will be interesting to watch the battles that unfold in that space.

The week featured a lot of distraction from the ongoing war of words (most of it childish) between Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff.  I won’t elaborate on that here – I spoke enough about it last week.

One final comment: the concerts at the Appreciation Event on Wednesday night were a great success.  Sting was incredible.  Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers also delivered an outstanding performance.  Those who stayed until the very end (which I did) saw a short but inspired performance by The English Beat.  The evening was rain-free (confounding all the weather forecasts).  Nothing hampered our enjoyment – not even the drunken idiot who (literally) collapsed and crashed into my wife and me.  Congratulations to Oracle for a spectacular event.

For now… I’ll leave you with this thought:
 
It will be interesting if Oracle can deliver on its product promises, especially the new cloud offerings.  We’ll be watching (along with lots of others).

Tuesday at Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) was another busy day of sessions for me and Wednesday promises to be just as full.

The Tuesday morning keynote featured Michael Dell (founder and CEO of Dell Computer), followed by EVP of Systems at Oracle, John Fowler.  Not surprisingly, both focused on hardware, so there was little in either presentation that captured my interest.

Wednesday morning brought John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, delivering a great keynote about strategic directions and change in the technology industry.  He was followed by Oracle’s SVP of Application Development Steve Miranda, covering Oracle applications, including Fusion Applications, which are now generally available.

• Exadata / Exalogic / Hardware
  • No change from yesterday.  I still get a B for predicting a new machine announcement, but not having any idea what it would be.
• Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff
  • My Prediction: I don’t expect Ellison to let Benioff get the last word here.  There’ll be more theatrics (and probably some more dismissive comments about SalesForce) in Ellison’s keynote.
  • What Happened So Far: This is the big news of the day.  On Tuesday evening, Oracle cancelled Benioff’s planned keynote for Wednesday morning.  Here are a few reactions:
    • “Petty or just incompetent?”
    • “Is it all a set up?”
    • “Benioff hits back…”
    • “Benioff yanked from OOW”

Benioff quickly rescheduled to deliver his presentation at a local hotel.  That is scheduled for 10:30 am Wednesday.

I’ll give myself an A here, and I’ll guarantee there will be more excitement still to come.

• Fusion Applications
  • My Prediction: Ellison (and probably EVP of Product Development Thomas Kurian, in his keynote) will repeatedly emphasize the point that “Fusion is ready” (even if it isn’t).  However, I don’t expect any significant new announcements here.
  • What Happened So Far: Steve Miranda and Group VP of Oracle Fusion and GRC Apps Dev Chris Leone covered this in detail at the Applications General Session on Tuesday and again in Miranda’s keynote Wednesday morning.My grade has gone up to a B here.  I mistakenly expected Kurian to talk about Fusion, but the rest has been pretty accurate.

• Oracle BI 11g
  • My Prediction: I don’t expect many new announcements in this area either, although there will be many conference sessions providing real-life details about Oracle’s BI products.  Any BI focus for OpenWorld keynotes will probably be part of a larger discussion of Fusion Applications.
  • What Happened So Far: This one goes up to a C, since I got most of the keynote part right (and the “many conference sessions”).

• Hewlett Packard and Oracle
  • My Prediction: Ellison (and others) will focus on “HP as a competitor we want to destroy” and possibly attempt to portray HP as an even larger villain than SAP.
  • What Happened So Far: This grade is still an F.

So, that’s one A, two Bs, a C and an F.  That’s a 2.4 GPA, which won’t move me to the top of the class.

For now… I’ll leave you with this thought:

I’m looking forward to Benioff’s non-keynote Wednesday morning and Ellison’s keynote Wednesday afternoon.

Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) is under way. I attended a full day of sessions on Sunday and Monday. In addition, I saw Larry Ellison’s keynote address Sunday night and the Monday morning keynote by Oracle Presidents Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, EMC CEO Joe Tucci, and Oracle EVP of Product Development Thomas Kurian.

The big trend of the show (at least for the keynotes) has been the nearly total dedication to hardware. Ellison and Kurian both talked almost exclusively about the trio of Exadata / Exalogic / Exalytics. [See below for Exalytics details] We heard lots of details about how they work, why they’re so fast, and how they will dominate the competition.

Ellison’s keynote was 100% focused on hardware: Exadata, Exalogic, and the newly announced Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine. His delivery was aggressive (especially toward IBM) and his demeanor was more superior, more confrontational, and more smug than usual (which isn’t easy!). General reaction among Twitter observers seemed to be pretty negative.

Here are some follow ups to my predictions from last week:

• Exadata / Exalogic / Hardware
o My Prediction: There’s been a fair amount of analyst speculation that Oracle is planning more Exa-whatever announcements at OOW. It seems a pretty safe bet that we’ll see something new. Meanwhile, Ellison will probably continue to explain “why Sun Microsystems was a successful acquisition.”
o What Happened So Far: The big announcement so far is the new Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine. I’ll give myself a B for this one – I guessed that there would be a new Exa- device.

• Larry Ellison and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff
o My Prediction: I don’t expect Ellison to let Benioff get the last word here. There’ll be more theatrics (and probably some more dismissive comments about SalesForce) in Ellison’s keynote.
o What Happened So Far: Nothing yet from Ellison related to SF or Benioff. It hasn’t been completely silent though – Benioff tweeted a few barbs in response to Ellison’s keynote Sunday night:
• “A low bar has been set. See you Wednesday at 10 AM”
• “In what some are already pegging the worst keynote ever, Larry’s opening speech was perhaps more boastful than usual” [Quoted from this article.]
Meanwhile, others are anticipating some more fireworks from Benioff on Wednesday.

I’ll give myself an incomplete grade here – the story isn’t finished.

• Fusion Applications
o Prediction: Ellison (and probably Thomas Kurian, in his keynote) will repeatedly emphasize the point that “Fusion is ready” (even if it isn’t). However, I don’t expect any significant new announcements here.
o What Happened So Far: Nothing – Ellison didn’t address Fusion at all. Neither did Hurd or Catz. Kurian mentioned it only in passing. This seemed strange. There have been lots of Fusion Applications sessions, but the “public” emphasis has been near zero. It’s likely that this will change in Ellison’s second keynote on Wednesday.

So far, I get a D here, but I have a chance to raise my grade with SVP of Application Development Steve Miranda and Larry Ellison’s upcoming keynotes.

• Oracle BI 11g
o Prediction: I don’t expect many new announcements in this area either, although there will be many conference sessions providing real-life details about Oracle’s BI products. Any BI focus for OpenWorld keynotes will probably be part of a larger discussion of Fusion Applications.
o What Happened So Far: I missed this one completely – the Exalytics announcement is all about BI. There’s a new OBI EE release planned to support the new BI machine and it’ll have new features to take advantage of the massive performance improvements that Exalytics will provide.

Nearly all of my time has been spent in BI sessions, getting updates on the product road map for various parts of the Oracle BI product family.

Another D.

• Hewlett Packard and Oracle
o Prediction: Ellison (and others) will focus on “HP as a competitor we want to destroy” and possibly attempt to portray HP as an even larger villain than SAP.
o What Happened So Far: So far, I’m wrong here too. Ellison’s focus on Sunday was IBM, not HP or SAP.

I get an F for this prediction.

For now…I’ll leave you with this thought:

The focus so far has been hardware and “Engineered Systems.” My prediction grades are really bad, but I’m hopeful that they’ll rise before the end of the show.

Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) is next week in San Francisco.  Oracle describes it as “the world’s largest and most important conference for Oracle technologists, business users, and partners.”  Each year, this event serves as a focal point for major announcements from Oracle, leading to widespread speculation about what those announcements will be.  Oracle CEO Larry Ellison consistently uses the event as a forum to trumpet new ideas, re-emphasize old ideas, and denigrate his adversaries. It should be an interesting show.

Here are some things I’ll be anticipating, along with a few predictions:

• Exadata / Exalogic / Hardware
  • Background: Since acquiring Sun Microsystems, Oracle has been pushing aggressively into the hardware business, but there’s been criticism of the acquisition from many analysts and industry observers.  The Exadata database appliance (initially developed jointly with HP) was improved (in Version 2) by integrating Sun technology.  Last year, Oracle announced the Exalogic Elastic Cloud.  Last week, Oracle announced the Oracle Database Appliance – a medium-sized Exadata aimed at small and mid-sized businesses. 
  • Prediction: There’s been a fair amount of analyst speculation that Oracle is planning more Exa-whatever announcements at OOW.  It seems a pretty safe bet that we’ll see something new.  Meanwhile, Ellison will probably continue to explain “why Sun Microsystems was a successful acquisition.”
• Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff
  • Background: At last year’s event, there was some mutual mocking about “cloud” offerings between Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and SalesForce CEO Marc Benioff.  Early this month in a keynote at his company’s Dreamforce event, Benioff re-ignited that battle by mocking Exadata (again) as “the false cloud.” The disagreement is deep (and isn’t going to go away anytime soon).
  • Prediction: I don’t expect Ellison to let Benioff get the last word here.  There’ll be more theatrics (and probably some more dismissive comments about SalesForce) in Ellison’s keynote.
• Fusion Applications
  • Background: Ellison said this about Fusion in Oracle’s Q3 earnings call last week: “We’ve been working on Fusion Apps for almost six years now, and we have about 200 customers using Fusion Apps. We’re going — before the end of this calendar year – we’re going to have general availability on Fusion.”  
  • Prediction: Ellison (and probably EVP of Product Development Thomas Kurian, in his keynote) will repeatedly emphasize the point that “Fusion is ready” (even if it isn’t).  However, I don’t expect any significant new announcements here.
• Oracle BI 11g
  • Background: This will be my focus for the show (as it was last year).  The 11g version of Oracle’s flagship business intelligence (BI) product (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition or OBI EE) was released about a year ago.  Accompanying releases of Oracle BI Applications have been delivered this year.  Most of the sessions I’ll attend will be focused on these offerings.
  • Prediction: I don’t expect many new announcements in this area either, although there will be many conference sessions providing real-life details about Oracle’s BI products.  Any BI focus for OpenWorld keynotes will probably be part of a larger discussion of Fusion Applications.
• Hewlett Packard and Oracle
  • Background: Oracle hired Mark Hurd as co-president about a year ago.  That hiring (and the drama around it) began a very public battle between the two companies.  [I’ve written about this previously: here and here.]
  • Prediction: Ellison (and others) will focus on “HP as a competitor we want to destroy” and possibly attempt to portray HP as an even larger villain than SAP.
• Customer Appreciation Event
  • Background: I’m particularly looking forward to the Appreciation Event on Wednesday night.  Featured performers: Sting, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Dave Wakeling & The English Beat. 

    [OK – I’ll admit it.  I’ve never heard of Dave Wakeling & The English Beat.  But the other two?  I’m thrilled!]

For now…I’ll leave you with this thought:
 
Pay attention at Oracle OpenWorld; Larry Ellison is never boring!

It’s officially summer here in Seattle (and everywhere else in the northern hemisphere).  The 4^th of July holiday (Independence Day in the U.S.) is behind us and warm weather has finally arrived.

In January, I wrote about some things that I’d be tracking throughout the year and in April I looked back at the first quarter of the year.  Now it’s time to review the first half of the year, while also looking forward to the rest of 2011.

Business Intelligence Industry

One big recent trend has been the continued growth of Microsoft BI.  You might ask “What is Microsoft BI?” since many people don’t even realize Microsoft has a BI offering.  That’s part of their problem – Microsoft’s message is incoherent and their products are disjointed.  In spite of those problems, they’re gaining some traction because the functionality they offer is pretty strong.  Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference is taking place this week in Los Angeles and I expect there will be some big BI announcements there.   I’ll explore this topic (including their announcements from the conference) in an upcoming post dedicated to MS BI. 

Meanwhile, SAP Business Objects is primed to catch up to Oracle and IBM Cognos with Business Objects 4, a new major release of their flagship BI suite.  Maybe they’ve already released it – maybe it’s coming soon.  Sadly, I can’t tell.  Go ahead – use your search engine and try to figure it out.  Reports from earlier this year indicate that it would be released at SAP’s Sapphire conference in May.  Since I didn’t attend that conference and I can’t find a release announcement online, I just can’t tell.  It’s a terrible job of marketing and publicity (even worse than Microsoft BI).

Oracle

Oracle announced its fiscal Q4 financials and (just like last quarter) the results were strong.  This marked Oracle’s first ever quarter of $10B in total revenue and $1B in applications revenue.  Oracle continues to be fairly quiet and subdued about Fusion Applications (the next generation of ERP/CRM offerings).  Fusion continues to be delayed – it’s still not generally available – but Oracle continues to tout its promise and its success with early adopters.  I’m still skeptical.

On the acquisition front, Oracle is again being uncharacteristically quiet.  After just one acquisition in Q1, Oracle made only a single pickup in the second quarter.  In June, Oracle announced the acquisition of FatWire Software, a web content software provider.  What’s going on with Oracle?  After nine acquisitions in 2010, the pace has slowed to a crawl.  At the Q4 earnings call, Oracle’s executives stated their belief that many companies were not overvalued and that they would not overpay to acquire them,  We’ll wait and see how long that remains true.

Musical Theatre

The Tony Awards were presented on June 12.  The big winner was The Book of Mormon, which took home 9 Tony Awards, the most of any show since The Producers won a record 12 in 2001.  Of personal interest to me was Norbert Leo Butz winning his second Tony (Leading Actor in a Musical) for his performance in Catch Me If You Can.

Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark finally opened in mid-June.  It had gone on hiatus for some retooling and script doctoring.  The reviews upon its return were better than the reviews from earlier this year, but still not very good.

Sports

Not much has changed on the sports labor front since I posted in April.  Will the threatened labor disputes in professional football and basketball result in cancelled games (or even entire cancelled seasons)?  The NFL players have been locked out, in a labor battle with the NFL owners since April.  Meanwhile, the NBA has entered its own labor battle and the 2011-2012 season looks to be in jeopardy.   In my opinion, the NFL battle will be resolved, probably within the next 10 days.  The NBA, on the other hand, looks to be positioned for a long and ugly stand-off.  It wouldn’t surprise me if the entire season were cancelled.

The Major League Baseball season is in full swing.  Notable stories of the year:

• Many of last year’s losers are respectable in 2011
  • Seven teams lost more than 90 games in 2010, all with winning percentages of .426 or worse.
  • Four of those seven – Washington Nationals, Pittsburgh Pirate, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Cleveland Indians are currently above .500.  That’s a tremendous turn-around for teams that were expected to be pretty bad.  In addition, the Seattle Mariners (who were also terrible in 2010) had been playing around .500 until a recent losing streak.
• The Philadelphia Phillies look like the team to beat.  Their pitching (especially starting pitching) is dominant.  Still, the Atlanta Braves look like they’ll challenge the Phillies for the NL title.
• Derek Jeter, a guaranteed Hall of Fame player who is paradoxically also one of the most overrated players in baseball, reached 3000 career hits – the 28^th major league player to achieve that milestone.  Soon, I’ll write a post about how greatness can be overrated.

Here are my baseball predictions (with very little risk taking):

• NL Playoffs: Philadelphia, Milwaukee, San Francisco, and Atlanta
• AL Playoffs: Boston, Cleveland, LA Angels, and the evil NY Yankees
• World Series: Philadelphia over Boston in 6 games.

For now…I’ll leave you with this thought:

Enjoy the summer!

Noetix Executive Bloggers Morris Beton and Daryl Orts sat down to discuss the 8 gifts the Business Intelligence Industry received for Hanukkah in 2010. Click here or watch the video below.

In Morris’s blog post today, he draws an analogy between the BI industry and a turducken.  He’s on the right track, (funnier and more irreverent than I am, too) but I think his comparison would work a lot better with a different approach.

A turducken is a deboned turkey that’s stuffed with a deboned duck that’s stuffed with a deboned chicken. The cavity of the chicken and the spaces between the birds are usually filled with sausage, breadcrumbs, or stuffing.  [For the curious or adventurous, the venerable New York Times provided the history of the dish and a recipe in a column from November, 2002.]

This image conveys the main idea:

To compare this to the Business Intelligence sector of the software industry (as Morris does so colorfully), we need to understand some core facts about that business:

• The primary objective of all BI projects is to provide access to data. [Wikipedia defines BI as “computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing business data.”
• BI platforms (by themselves) don’t solve BI problems, because they don’t have any “content” to help users find their data. [See my blog post from July describing this.]
• Most of the cost of BI projects (as much as 60%) pays for consulting services to get things working. [Morris wrote about this on his blog in June]

So, it seems clear to me that the center of the picture – the chicken in our turducken – is the business data itself.

Wrapped around the data – representing the duck in our turducken — is the BI platform. The BI end user doesn’t generally see it and, by itself, it doesn’t do anything.  It’s the bridge between the core and the outside.

The stuffing (between the chicken and the duck and between the duck and the turkey) represents the “BI content” – the data models and the reports, dashboards, and queries.

Engulfing the entire thing (and weighing the most, just like the turkey in our turducken) is the huge array of consulting services that are required to provide a workable solution for the business.  Without the turkey to wrap everything, we’d have a bunch of stuffing (not to mention duck and chicken pieces) spread all over the place.

So, here’s the image, updated to match our BI analogy – notice how Consulting Services show up everywhere.

Morris’s summation is absolutely correct:

Business Intelligence is the Turducken of the software industry. It’s one thing stuffed into another and then once again stuffed into something much bigger surrounded by a lot of hard work and complexity. It’s big, expensive and hard to swallow, and if you do it wrong, you get badly burned.

Try not to get burned.

Click here to watch the Turducken debate.

For now…I’ll leave you with this thought (about the real turducken – not about the BI metaphor):

Last week’s Oracle OpenWorld was the biggest one yet, with increased attendance resulting from the addition of Sun and Java topics.  More than 41,000 attendees joined Oracle at their annual showcase event.

There was a lot of news, coupled with some missteps and high-level corporate bickering.  Here’s my take on the conference highlights:

• What is a cloud anyway?

There was a lot of highly publicized back-and-forth between Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff about whose vision of “the cloud” is clearer (or cloudier).  For the most part, this was a lot of bluster about things that don’t really matter (other than posturing).

So, what does matter?

• Oracle made a big splash with their Exalogic announcement, but for the most part, only very large customers will ever be able to buy one.  For more than 90% of attendees, Exalogic will not be a factor in any upcoming purchasing decision (at least in its current form).
• Oracle also announced a new, bigger, faster version of their Exadata appliance.  Again, most enterprises can’t afford this kind of hardware, so it won’t matter for most customers.
• Meanwhile, SalesForce made a big splash with the opposite view: cloud computing is all about small up-front costs, elastic expansion, and invisibility of where the resources actually reside.  That value proposition provides something most customers would certainly want to take a look at.

In my opinion, Benioff is right and Ellison is wrong.

• Fusion Applications

It looks like this ambitious suite of products is getting close to reality.  It’s a shame that Fusion got so obscured in the keynotes by the over-emphasis on new Oracle hardware and by the “cloudier than thou” arguments.  When they did talk about Fusion, Oracle spent too much time explaining how difficult it was to build, and not enough time explaining the benefits customers will realize.  If Oracle can actually deliver on the Fusion Apps promise, those benefits will be real – customers won’t care about Oracle’s self-congratulatory “you wouldn’t believe how much work this was” comments.

Still, I have to step back and wonder how quickly most customers will be able to see that value.  Oracle spoke often about the ability to have Fusion Apps co-exist with Applications Unlimited products (EBS, PeopleSoft, Siebel, etc.), but it’s not clear to me how practical that will be for a customer.  Unless a customer does a whole lot of custom integration, the data won’t be shared, the interfaces won’t be shared, and the BI foundation won’t be shared.  I’m still skeptical about whether customers (other than a handful of new implementations and early adopters) will actually get real value from Fusion Apps before close to the end of 2012.

• Oracle BI EE 11g

I attended a lot of sessions on Oracle BI EE 11g.  Overall, I was very impressed.  They’ve done a lot of good work making their flagship BI suite more “enterprise ready”.  There are still some shortcomings, along with some fundamental tenets that are limiting and (for customers) frustrating.  I’ll write more about OBI EE 11g in a future blog post.

Before the event, I made some predictions about OOW and then proceeded to grade myself on those predictions.  I assessed a few of them last week, but wanted to take another look at them now:

• Ellison won’t mention Phillips at all, but he will emphasize how well Catz and Hurd will complement each other.
  • A-.  I was completely accurate on ignoring Phillips, but Safra Catz and Mark Hurd seemed to be completely separate and distinct entities.  Other than introductions, they never mentioned each other and Ellison never talked about Safra and Mark together.  The Oracle co-presidency continues to be a curious organizational structure.

• He’ll be nice to HP, instead aiming his barbs at IBM (with some well-placed insults directed at SAP, because he just can’t resist the temptation).
  • A.  Ellison ignored HP (even in the Sunday keynote which immediately followed the HP presentation).  He directly attacked IBM and SalesForce.com, along with SAP.

• It’ll be all love and kisses between Oracle and HP…at least on stage.
  • A-.  HP was 100% positive, while Oracle seemed to ignore HP completely, so I suppose in a way that is positive, as well.

• I expect that they’ll make some significant announcement [about Exadata type hardware devices], possibly including a medium-sized acquisition.
  • B+.  The major announcement was Exalogic. [As I noted last week, the big acquisition announcement wasn’t Oracle’s – it belonged to IBM, who announced the planned acquisition of Netezza.]

• They’ll announce a release date for Fusion Apps, but it’ll be vague (as far as what apps will be included).
  • B.  GA in Q1 2011, with a list of more than 100 apps that will be delivered.
• They’ll also be vague about interaction with existing apps – there will be lots of platitudes about “Applications Unlimited” promising eternal support for the legacy applications coupled with more platitudes about “co-existence” and “gradual migration” and “SaaS architecture providing flexibility.”
  • C+.  It was not vague at all, so I missed the mark on that one.  Still, there was lots of talk about “Applications Unlimited” with commitment for continued support and development.

• In the end, lots of customers will leave still scratching their heads.
  • A-.  Many weren’t scratching their heads in confusion, but a lot of attenedees came away shaking their heads, incredulous at the displays of inanity.

• This (OBI EE 11g) will be impressive.  However, once we look under the covers, it won’t be quite as impressive as Oracle wants us to believe.
  • A-.  It is impressive, but many of the features Oracle touts as “innovative” simply allow Oracle to match features already offered by Cognos, Business Objects, or MicroStrategy.

• Salesforce.com slams Oracle – selling ‘false cloud’; Benioff to speak at OOW. Fireworks coming?  [that one was from my tweet the Friday before OOW]
  • A+.  I couldn’t have been any more prescient!

There you go – nine predictions, nine grades.  If they were all weighted equally, I’d have a 3.52 GPA.  Not too shabby!

For now…I’ll leave you with this thought:

Don’t believe everything Oracle told you at Oracle OpenWorld 2010.  It is, after all, their biggest  marketing event of the year.

Oracle OpenWorld 2010 started Sunday. The first day’s highlight was the keynote address by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

I attended a round table discussion of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBI EE), featuring a few people I admire tremendously. Mark Rittman (the smartest guy I know, when it comes to OBI EE) and Jeff McQuigg (the smartest guy I don’t know when it comes to OBI EE) were on the panel, along with Jon Mead and Kevin McGinley, both of whom are also incredibly knowledgeable. Overall, it was an outstanding panel. They spoke a little about the new 11g features in OBI EE and a little about existing capabilities for OBI EE deployments.

Moving on to the keynote address – here are my reactions:

• Judy Kim (Oracle’s Chief Marketing Officer) and Safra Catz (Oracle President) said nothing memorable. Safra presented some awards to partners and customers, but it seemed rushed and perfunctory.
•  A series of HP presenters embarrassed themselves and their company.  Ann Livermore and Dave Donatelli were the primary speakers. Overall, their presentations were little more than advertisements for a collection of HP offerings. There was nothing compelling or interesting or innovative – nearly everyone seemed bored as they spoke. The entire HP presentation was a terrible waste of an opportunity.
• Larry Ellison spoke, for a very, very long time. Initially, he was compelling and interesting (partially because he followed the execrable HP presenters). Unfortunately, he went on for far too long, delving far too deeply into technical details that seemed to lose the interest of even the most technical attendees.

Ellison’s key announcements:

• Definitions of “what is cloud computing?” that align Oracle with Amazon EC2, with a slam against SalesForce.com and their definition of “cloud.”
• Introduction of the new Exalogic appliance, featuring 30 servers, with 2 processors of 6 cores each, resulting in 360 cores per device.
• Lots of details about Exalogic scalability and throughput, highlighting its superiority to offerings from IBM.
• Fusion Applications (more than 100 of them) will be generally available in Q1 2011. Oracle expects “50 to 100 customers” to use Fusion Apps in 1H 2011.

Last week I made some predictions about OOW. Let’s see how I’m doing so far:

Prediction: Ellison won’t mention Phillips at all, but he will emphasize how well Catz and Hurd will complement each other.

This is incomplete, until his address on Wednesday. So far, he did completely ignore Phillips, but mostly ignored Catz and Hurd too.

Prediction: He’ll be nice to HP, instead aiming his barbs at IBM (with some well-placed insults directed at SAP, because he just can’t resist the temptation).

Another incomplete, leaning toward a grade A. He ignored HP and aimed a few subtle criticisms at IBM and SAP.

Prediction: It’ll be all love and kisses between Oracle and HP… at least on stage.

Completely correct, from the HP perspective. Ann Livermore took time out to explicitly address the HP / Oracle partnership. In that light, she was 100% positive.

Prediction: I expect that they’ll make some significant announcement [about Exadata type hardware devices], possibly including a medium-sized acquisition.

Let’s give me a B here. Major announcement: Yes – the Exalogic device. And, on Monday morning, Hurd announced a major new Exadata release.

Regarding an acquisition, there was a big announcement on Monday morning, but not by Oracle. IBM announced an agreement to acquire Netezza for $1.7 billion.

Prediction: They’ll announce a release date for Fusion Apps, but it’ll be vague (as far as what apps will be included).

I get a B here. Larry was slightly vague about the date (GA in Q1 2011) but extremely explicit in listing the more than 100 apps that will be delivered. If the list is accurate, it’ll be a tremendously impressive release.

Prediction: They’ll also be vague about interaction with existing apps – there will be lots of platitudes about “Applications Unlimited” promising eternal support for the legacy applications coupled with more platitudes about “co-existence” and “gradual migration” and “SaaS architecture providing flexibility.”

Give me a C. Larry wasn’t vague. He was clear about interaction between Fusion Apps and the existing applications. Again, if he’s correct, the results will be impressive.

Prediction: In the end, lots of customers will leave still scratching their heads.

The jury is out here. Let’s wait until after Wednesday’s keynote to decide.

Prediction: [This one wasn’t from my blog – it was from a Tweet on Friday afternoon] Salesforce.com slams Oracle – selling ‘false cloud’; Benioff to speak at OOW. Fireworks coming?

A+ for that one. Ellison was extremely dismissive of Salesforce in his “cloud computing” discussion. Near the end, in the Fusion Apps section, he singled out Salesforce (along with a few other vendors) as a key competitor Oracle will be targeting.

There’s a lot more to come later in the week.

For now… I’ll leave you with this thought:

Sunday was a controlled message from Oracle, although Larry refused to be controlled – he went deep into geek mode, which lost much of his audience. Still, he was much more compelling than the HP string of presenters.