The I.T. Side

The Rumor mill

11.1.2.2 is rumored to come out some time in early April.  This is in-line with the rest of the release schedules that Oracle has launched with this product.

Since the Oracle Acquisition, Oracle has launched 4 major releases…

Currently there are an estimated 6,000 Oracle EPM and BI customers

Themes in 11.1.2.2

1. Integrated Planning
2. Time to Value
3. Speed of Business and Planning

One of the coolest new enhancements rumored is Hyperion Strategic Finance access within Smartview.  This is proof that Smartview continues to be the strategic direction for the End User Experience.  So Far Smartivew is our one-stop shop for MS office direct access to Essbase, Planning, HFM, OBIEE, and now HSF.  I expect to see more integration in future versions.

Also, we are seeing Oracle continue to add to the growing family of Built-in Planning Modules… getting bigger and getting more toward quick start apps.  Currently there are modules for CapEX, Workforce Force Planning, Public Sector etc.  Coming soon are additional enhancements and modules:

• Predictive planning an crystal ball built in to planning
• Project Financial Planning Module (Not a Project TRACKING module.. a project PLANNING module)
• Health Care Starter Kit
• PS&B
• Balance Sheet Planning for Banks

Of course there are additional pushes for Exaylitics that enable some wiz bang things like Virtual Close, and very fast predictive planning.  However know these rumors about Exalytics before you get all excited:

1. It is a SUN machine running Unix. (Not going to be fun for Windows shops)
2. It will only support OBIEE and Essbase.  Planning and the reporting modules are not yet on this thing.
3. No price or licensing information has been released so no one candetermine ROI at this point.
4. This is not an Exadata, there is no internal Infiniband structure.  It will be just a big machine (1 TB of Mem) that will allow us to run pretty much all of Essbase and OBIEE in memory for fast performance using the Times Ten technology.

I see a very small customer set that Exalytics will be appropriate for.  And hearing all of the stability issues with the first releases of Exadata, I would wait for the early adopters to shake it out.

More New Features and Enhancements in 11.1.2:

• ADF based UI based on Web 2.0 (fusion standard)  This is getting EPM more and more towards true Fusion by converting the Web Interface to Web 2.0.  This ensures that all the Fusion applications will have a similar look and feel.
• Project Financial Planning
• HSF Smartview integration
• Decision Packages (Public Sector)
• PSFT Commitment control integration
• HPCM Micro Costing
• Health Care Starter kit
• Data Forms and Charts in one view
• Work flow enhancements
• Seamless Rolling Forecast setup and usage as part of the UI web forms.
• Cell enhancements with Change History.  There will be an option to “show change history” that shows every change and who did it.
• Bread Crumb Navigation… so we can easily how we got the screen we are on and an easier way to track back.

For the Project Financial Planning Module it will have three types of projects

• Contract Project
• Capital Project
• Indirect Project (generic Capital or Expense project)

It will have integrated Workforce as well.

For FDM, I believe we will have full direct integration with JD Edwards now.  However I think we will still have to wait for full integration with EBS, SAP BW, etc.

From an Infrastructure perspective I am expecting the version will support Internet Explorer 9 and Oracle Database 12. I also assume will incorporate the new Smartview patch that levels the playing field between the Excel Add-in and Smartview.

I also heard rumors that the FR print server is going away at some point.  Apparently they are stealing the print server constructs from OBIEE so that PDF generation can happen without all the moving parts.  This is great news for Unix Shops as this has always been a windows-only component.  We will see if that makes 11.1.2.2

~ by Eric Helmer on February 25, 2012.

Posted in Uncategorized, upgrade
Tags: EPM 11.1.2.2, Hyperion 11.1.2.2, Rumors, upgrade