OOW2011 : Oracle BI Applications Futures

One of the sessions running at yesterday's Openworld was on the future of the Oracle BI Applications. You probably don't realize it, but the 11g release of the BI Apps has been "sort-of" available for the past few months, but as a controlled-availability release that you need to discuss with Oracle before implementing. Considering though that the only data source currently supported is the Fusion Applications, you're almost certainly going to be deep in discussion anyway because of the Fusion Apps, but it's interesting to note that there is something out there called 11g for the BI Apps.

So the session yesterday went through were we are now, and then started to talk about what will probably be the first generally available 11g BI Apps version, which is being called Oracle BI Applications 11.1.1.1.5.1, and will be accompanied by a patch release of OBIEE 11g (also 11.1.1.1.5.1) to support it and the Fusion Applications. Again, the Fusion Applications will be the only supported data source, and you'll install the BI Apps along with the Fusion Apps, as part of the same installation process.

BI Apps 11.1.1.5.1, as reported on this blog at last year's Openworld, will have two main data sources - an updated data warehouse schema that will eventually be back-ported to the applications unlimited data sources at some point in the next 12-18 months, and a real-time, transactional data source called "Oracle Transactional BI", which will report against the Fusion Applications database using the same ADF Business Component View Objects that the Fusion Apps uses. OTBI is coming in the 11.1.1.5.1 release and will allow you to create analyses against real-time transactional data as well as data stored and historized in the data warehouse.

Another couple of new features introduced for this release were a web-based configuration manager, for managing system-level settings for the BI Apps including currencies and domains, and a Functional Setup Manager, again web-based and this time used for managing the install and configuration tasks. Looking into the future, Oracle talked about various projects to reduce the TCO for BI Apps systems, mainly around the cost of upgrades and customizations, which we'll hear more of in the coming months and years.

No date was given for the 11.1.1.5.1 release of the BI Apps and the accompanying OBIEE 11g release, but my guess is probably before Christmas, with major innovations around the ETL process and customizations probably being in the 12-24 month timeline.