I just returned from the Oracle BI/EPM Partner Advisory Council meeting at Oracle HQ. It was great to meet many of the Hyperion partners and the Oracle marketing staff under Rich Clayton. Several Oracle presenters shared Oracle’s vision of where BI/EPM is heading. What I found most interesting is the amount of BI content in what I expected to be a Hyperion event. In fact the Oracle BI/EPM marketing folks don’t see the distinction. Whether BI encompasses EPM or EPM encompasses BI depends on the perspective of the speaker. But it’s clear that they are very related and inseparable. There was a lot of talk about how businesses need to have an ENTERPRISE-wide EPM (or BI) strategy.

It was very interesting to hear about the developments in the upcoming Essbase and Hyperion releases. There was a also a great deal of discussion about the upcoming OBI EE release and Hyperion reporting tools such as Web Analysis and Interactive Reporting. Stay tuned…