EPM Themes of OpenWorld
Themes of Openworld
First of all, I’d like to start out by saying that Oracle’s yearly conference in San Fran is called OpenWorld…. NOT Oracle World. It’s amazing how many people call this conference Oracle World… even high-level presidents within Oracle at Keynotes.
With that aside…
Balaji Yelamanchili of Oracle was clear via many sessions in Openworld that there are some clear directions from Oracle in the EPM world.
This comes from the continued success that Oracle has had with their EPM products. Once again, oracle continues to tout how EPM Gartner surveys continue to show BI Analytics top of list for business leaders as the most needed strategic initiative, and of course, how Oracle as the 4 quadrant leader.
From a business standpoint the themes are:
- Establish a standard process
- Forecast accurately
- Manage risk
- Respond quicker
- Keep cost low
- Expand outside the walls of finance
From a technical standpoint the theme is clearly:
- Optimization and support for all products on Exalytics
- Mobile
- Cloud and Oracle’s offering of their service as a SAAS model.
Exalytics:
- New heftier box, flash storage, and now uses Solaris!
- HFM /FDM Profitability support
- Cloud
Mobile:
- Using Financial Reporting on mobile devices supported
- OBIEE visualizations
- Mobile apps on the horizon for personalized approvals on the go
- App developer toolkit
- Roadmap to get planning mobile friendly including data entry.
This may be a surprise to some of you – But Oracle semi quietly released a BI mobile app designer in August. This tool is to allow people to create specialized custom apps for any mobile device. Designers do not need to know the underlying operating system – IOS or Android and can design for all mobile devices in on please with an easy interface. It’s actually intended for business users, not programmers. I believe they are offing a free trail version as well. Additional Mobile browser support Smartview with Win 8 PRO (Windows surface tablet), and since the IPHONE is supported, Safari must as well I assume.
Cloud:
- Oracle introduced Financial Reporting on the Cloud coming soon along with their intended Planning and Budgeting in the Cloud service.
- Support for Planning modules – CAPEX, WFP
- OBIEE in the Cloud
- Oracles huge investment in cloud over 12 data centers around the world.
For additional direction themes, in general we see focus on more operational and financial data linkage as EPM meets predictive modeling BI. The natural combination of EPM and BI are natural and necessary tools for business analytics.
Investment in current products:
- Continued focus on the “bolt-on” products and modules.
- 98% of HSF functionality is now in smartview.
- 11.1.2.2 extended for 3 more years of support.
The I.T. Side 