Not Groundhog day, but ODTUG month

The hits keep coming from ODTUG.  And why not?  We are talking about the very best Oracle EPM conference, ever.  Yep, even better than last year’s and that was pretty darn good.

What do I mean?  

Take a look at the hands on training.  

There’s going to be some amazing content:

Day	Time	Presenter	Content
Monday	11 am to 1 pm	Adam Bloom, Oracle	Using Actions to Integrate Oracle BI EE with External Systems
	1:15 pm to 3:30 pm	123Olap	EPM Architect against Planning
	4:00 pm to 6:00 pm	Ron Moore, MTG	Essbase Studio:  The Basics and Beyond
Tuesday	8:30 am to 10:45 am	123Olap	HFM Consolidation Rules
	1:45 pm to 5:30 pm	John Booth, Emerging Solutions	Installing the 11.1.2 Release Efficiently
Wednesday	8:30 am to 10:45 am	Ratan Vakil, interRel Consulting	OBIEE on Essbase:  The Future of Ad-hoc Analysis
	1:45 pm to 5:15 pm	Rittman Mead	Oracle BI 11g Answers and Dashboards Hands-on Labs
Thursday	10:30 am to 12:45 pm	123Olap	An Intro to ODI in the Hyperion Environment

That is a tremendous amount of training.  Think about it – how much would that cost you if you went to each one of those classes separately at a training partner or Oracle?  Big, big, big bucks is how much.  A lot more money than the member (you are a member of ODTUG, aren’t you) Early Bird price of $1,400.

Running, not crawling

Did you read the bit about your lab server (and oh by the way, you are going to get your very own for the duration of the lab)?  No more woefully underpowered laptops.  You are going to be in the Cloud.  I hope you’re all a fan of Amazon, because it’s going to be Full360’s EPM Amazon Machine Image (and yes, OBIEE and ODI 11g will be in that cloud image as well) running on a nice big, fat, juicy 15 gigabyte server (Amazon is a little weird with the memory sizes) with four CPUs.  Feel the power.

Bring your laptop and even your Macintosh

You’re going to connect using Microsoft Terminal Services, aka Remote Desktop Connection, a standard part of Windows.  Just make sure you have it by going to Start->Run and typing in mstsc.exe.  If you see this you are good to go:

Macs need a download

Having owned a Macintosh since the 128k Thin Mac of 1984, I am thrilled to announce that Macs can also play in the Windows cloud.  Just make sure that you download and install Remote Desktop Connection Client 1.0.3 for Mac.

So what are you waiting for?

The registration page is right here.  Labs fill up quickly, as I have found to my sorrow when I dawdle.  Don’t be like me – sign up now and get that great value that is ODTUG Kscope 11.

A great deal for ODTUG members

Those of you who follow the insane rambling that is this Essbase blog (my mother reads it because I nag her about it and Glenn does it because he loves to heckle me and correct my manifold technical errors before I corrupt the world) know that I had a fun old time trying to run Oracle EPM 11.1.2 on my what-I-thought-was-quite-the-powerful-laptop.  Unfortunately, that dream assumed room temperature some time ago.

I ended up going with Full360 as they have the most complete Oracle EPM 11.1.2 product and their pricing model seemed to work best for me.

And now the deal gets better

I’ve been paying $99/month for the EPM 11.1.2 stack (I am a loyal ODTUG individual member so I get this low price) plus all of my Amazon Web Services costs.  It’s about $150/month and some of you may choke on that but if I were to compare it to buying that $14,000 laptop it really doesn’t seem bad at all.

But you don’t have to spend the way I do, and actually, even I don’t have to the way I do (huh?).  I am in the silent and vocal majority that likes to lower costs, and I suspect you are too.

Full360 has a limited time offer that will lower your monthly cost to…nothing.  

How do I (and you) save $350?

This is so easy.

1. Contact Full360 via the web or on email
2. Sign up for Amazon Web Services at http://aws.amazon.com.  Yes, that same id that you use to buy those awesome Tintin books can get you into the cloud and into 11.1.2 lickety-split.
3. Use this great tutorial to get your feet wet.
4. Pay a one-time setup fee of $49.99 and then until 30 May 2011, pay Full360 exactly…nothing.

Even I can do the math

My current Full360 charges

Number of months between February to May = 4
Current monthly cost = $99
Full360 charges = 4 * $99 = $396

And the future

Number of months between February to May = 4
Current monthly cost = $0
One time set up fee = $49.99
Full360 charges = (4 * $0) + $49.99  = $49.99

When I do the math, that’s $396 - $49.99 = $346.01.  Okay, I rounded up, but that’s still a lot of dosh and a pretty penny all at the same time.

What are you waiting for?

An invitation from the Queen?  You’ve got an invitation from a geek (that would be me, HRH is unfortunately unlikely to request and require your participation).  Go for it and dive deep into the goodness that is Oracle EPM 11.1.2.  The price and effort level is low.  What are you waiting for?

Shameless plug

And oh yes, come to my presentation at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2011 at Long Beach.  Rohit Amarnath of Full360 and I will walk you through the awesomeness that is EPM in the cloud if you haven’t already figured it out thanks to this great deal.

Top 10 Quotes for Coders

And now for something completely different

I have Dave Farnsworth to thank for a really funny link.  Yes, it is related to our beloved Essbase, at least tangentially.

Some of these are old saws; others are fresh to my ears.

The Spartan helmet is…odd.  But hey, this is an industry that attracts odd people.

You can either click on the embedded video below or here:   Larry The Rejected Spartan's Top 10 Quotes For Coders Countdown




What’s your favorite?  I am a particular fan of number six and they are words I conduct my life by.

Top 10