At the OBIEE 11g Launch in London

Today was the launch of OBIEE 11g at Old Billingsgate, in London. I guess most readers of this blog, along with us, having been looking forward to this release for months, if not years, and so it was good to finally have the product announced and for customers to get a look at the new features in more detail.

The morning started off for us around 8.30am, as Rittman Mead had a partner booth in the main exhibition area. There were around ten or so partners exhibiting, and around six hundred or so attendees, including a lot of people from the States as their event isn't until later in July. The main session itself started at 10am with an introduction by Oracle's Andrew Sutherland and David Callaghan, and then Charles Phillips came on to set the scene.

The main detail of the launch came with Thomas Kurian's session, where we were given a tour of the technology and thinking behind 11g, with the main themes being integration, enterprise, storage-to-scorecard and leveraging of technologies such as Essbase and Exadata.

To be honest, as long-term beta testers none of this was news to us, but it's good to see the product finally launched and to hear the positive feedback from the attendees. Particularly impressive were the demos all performed by Paul Rodwick, as there was a lot of technology to show, a lot of demo steps to memorize, and (apart from a small glitch with BI Publisher) all going perfectly to plan. Well done to the Oracle team, and to Paul, for everything running smoothly.

After the main sessions were a number of breakout sessions around OLAP integration, systems management, scorecard and so on. I went to the OLAP one but then went back to the booth to speak to some people, but then went back at the end for the partner-only session where I was on the panel with Roger Cressey (Qubix, Hyperion) and Mike Pell (Oracle).

So, we're now at the point where OBIEE 11g is launched, but it'll be several weeks before the software is available for download on OTN. In the meantime, starting from tomorrow we'll be posting a number of articles on the blog going into more detail on some of the key features, including enhancements to the RPD, the role of WebLogic, better support for Essbase and other features.

We're also launching a number of new services, training courses and upgrade offers around the OBIEE 11g launch. We'll be posting more details soon, but in the meantime be sure to bookmark our OBIEE 11g Resource Centre page, and also take a look at our two datasheets on OBIEE 11g services and our new updated OBIEE 11g course catalogue.

If you're interested in more details from Oracle, check out the Oracle BIEE 11g launch microsite, where you'll find additional collateral and white papers, a webcast of the event, demos, and a video featuring our own Borkur Steingrimsson talking about the systems management features in 11g.

Finally, keep an eye on this site for an announcement next week around our upcoming OBIEE 11g Training Days event in the UK and USA, where we'll be taking you, fresh from the beta, through hands-on sessions on 11g led by myself and our team. This will be a highly-technical session for those already skilled in the 10g release of OBIEE, with limited availability (no more than 30 attendees at each session), and if you're interested and want to register your interest in advance, drop me an email at mark.rittman@rittmanmead.com.