Drill to Detail - Drill to Detail Ep.28 'Oracle Analytics, 12c and Data Visualization' with Special Guest Adrian Ward

Episode Date: May 30, 2017

Mark Rittman is joined in this episode by Independent Consultant Adrian Ward to talk about Oracle Business Analytics, Data Visualization, the BI Applications and his new book on Oracle Business Intelligence 12c.

So, my guest this week on the show is Adrian Wald. And Adrian was one of the first European experts in what was originally Siebel Analytics back in the late 90s, and then, of course, went on to become Oracle Business Intelligence, BI Apps and so on. So Adrian's worked on countless databases and project methodologies over the years, worked on lots and lots of different versions of OBI and various kind of takes on how that works but he still manages to find time outside of work to write two books on Oracle's BI tools, the most recent of which on Oracle BI 12c just had its second edition published recently. So Adrian, welcome on the show. Great to have you here. And why don't you introduce yourself properly and tell us kind of how you got here.

Well, thank you very much, Mark. And I'm really happy to be here. So how did I get here? Well, it's probably about 20 years of hard work and long nights and quite a hell of a lot of learning. But yeah, after all this time, I'm beginning to understand some of the system and the rest I Google. Okay, so Adrian, when I met you years and years and years ago, you were working with Siebel Business Analytics. And at that point, it was quite a kind of new technology

because obviously it came into Oracle via the Siebel acquisition. But it was a bit of an unknown quantity, really i mean what's your what's your history with siebel and how did you get into that particular kind of consulting market and you know what was what was your view on the technology then yeah so i was working for a bank i was working for um a bank called abn amro which i think uh was one of those that spectacularly crashed in 2008 and um they had a crm department and i happened to be working there and they were looking for new toys and they were talking to siebel a lot and um and although the siebel crm thing was good and i liked it i was actually more interested in the reporting side i I've always been sort of keen on Excel access and reporting. And so I took a good look at it, decided I liked it so much that I left ABN AMRO and put myself on the training course, the Seaboard Analytics training course

as it was back then, with a nice chap called Jerry, who a lot of people would have been taught by Jerry and and and he told me that I was the only person he'd ever could talk that some but put myself through privately on the trading everyone else was sort of company funded because if I remember rightly this was sort of night nearly 20 years ago and it was ten thousand pounds to to put put myself through the training luckily i had a nice payoff from from maybe another that paid for it but but that was a big scary move that's a big investment um in a quiet market at the time so i guess from what i understand about seba at the time and the way they kind of i suppose they they shared information i mean they basically didn't i mean it was there were no if you think about now when you've got blogs you've got online documentation you've got all that kind of stuff

it was was it the case there was very little information out there that you could unless it was out from siebel at the time yeah i let into a secret basically um somebody took pity at me on me at siebel and they gave me a whole bunch of the documentation that uh that i could use to uh to jenna but yeah otherwise you know have absolutely no idea there's there was no blogs I mean blogging was in his infancy there was there was nothing out there to help you just got the toys and and installed them yourself and and managed and got by yeah yeah so then there was the Oracle acquisition so at that point that was when obviously our worlds kind of like came together and and we met each other at that point but so so when when when oracle took over

siebel and took over siebel analytics you know what was your impression in that first kind of year or so really um i was hoping that that see would be bought by microsoft because i thought i thought the products better suited and suited the Microsoft way of doing business but actually in the end I was I was quite pleased with what Oracle did in the early days because what it what it especially did in in the first round the sort of the 11g round was was just bring a hell of a lot more customers to to the product so it was a niche product. It was very, very good, and it still is. It hasn't changed much, to be perfectly honest. But back in those days, it needed a little higher profile,

and that's what Oracle brought. And, of course, they brought a higher profile not in terms of customers but also in terms of consultancies and consultants. And so many more people understood that this product existed and had some sort of need to go and investigate it and install it and actually hopefully buy it. So they also brought, I mean, with the Oracle acquisition itself, it brought also Fusion Middleware, didn't it?

And, you know, being candid, I mean, certainly the reaction of the kind of the ex-Siebel people or consultants to Fusion Middleware and the complexity there and the overhead and so on, particularly 11G. Was it 113, the first version? I mean, I think it's fair to say it was quite a kind of a bigger release, wasn't it, in that respect? Yeah, I mean, it was terrible. It wasn't Oracle's finest moment, I have to say. I mean, trying to do that. And it was a real shame because it distracted them

from a couple of years of properly developing Opie in its own right. And can I tell a secret as well? I can tell a secret. You were right as well. Because remember, you said the first release of 11G was terrible, and I said it was really good. And actually, in hindsight, you were right. Yeah. it was really good and actually and actually in hindsight you were right yeah it was it was a shame actually that was we were so desperate for it i mean because you and

i obviously were on the beta yeah and um it was about 2009 or something and it was terrible and and every night we were on calls to America about this product and and I couldn't believe that halfway through the beta they said we were releasing this this was you know we're releasing it next week warts and all and an actual fact that probably was the best thing to do just get it out there and just get the customers in front of it they we'd waited too long by that point the promises were were still being made and i we had customers i don't know if you remember deutsche bank um were desperate for for a better

front end for for a better web interface and uh and then that was being promised with the uh with the 11g product but the promises just kept on sort of well maybe tomorrow maybe tomorrow so so yeah i think fusion delayed it i think fusion distracted it and i think fusion actually undermined the product in in many ways but um it recovered it recovered very strongly i mean incredibly strongly because um you know eventually that it was the flavor of the year and and a hell of a lot of people were installing it and there were there are thousands and thousands of consultants and and projects and and uh people getting involved so so in the end it was a success even if it had a faltering start with oracle yes funny enough my my boss in my work at the moment is paul rodwick who of course was the uh head of

development for all that kind of stuff really so it's um right yeah it's interesting interesting conversations there as well i mean it's um yeah, it's interesting conversations there as well. I mean, it's, yeah, it was an interesting product. I think it was a product, I think, this is Oracle BI 11G, for anyone who didn't pick up on that. It was a product, I think, whose primary audience and personas and use cases are aiming for was Oracle. You know, and so it focused a huge amount on building BI

into the Fusion apps and so on. But I think the actual core BI part of BI LNG really didn't move on at all, did it really? And I think it was only really the 12C release that that has started to kind of happen, really. Although I guess we've had things like, you know, action framework and so on. But I remember you at the time, a lot of people actually were saying, you know, this is good, but there's a lot of overhead here. And yeah, interesting. But you wrote a book about it, didn't you? Your first book was on 11G.

Yeah. We actually waited and waited and waited until we felt that there was a stable enough platform. And I got together what I thought were some industry experts. Turned out they were. And we were just poised until we found a stable enough version of 11J before we could say, yes, we think we should be encouraging people to install this and buy it and use it.

And that was version 6 of the 11 release. And we spent a good three months just locked away in our rooms and just other weekends and then in the evenings and writing the book as fast as we could because we knew we'd waited a long time after the initial release and we launched it directly at the same time that oracle launched their business analytics marketing efforts and so when we launched i think we launched it pretty much the same sort of time as you launched your book which was a different book i mean yours was more more aimed at technicians I suppose and ours was was aimed at beginners well mine was mine was written in the opposite way to yours

I actually wrote it tried to write it for all the different versions so I started on 113 and then had to rewrite it three times it took me three years to write it so it was it was interesting you know I think it was it was a different type of book as you say but I think probably you know yours was dare I say it as probably a smarter kind of like a initiative really yeah i mean we looked at um trying to bring people into the game with some knowledge um you know we we knew what it was like when we first got in front of the products and had no support and no documentation and and uh no way of finding out and so that's why i wanted to be able to give to people something that that gave them the first sort of ways of installing and the first ways

of opening it up and using it um all the technical stuff all the advanced stuff i mean there's there's thousands of flavors of of systems out there and way people do business um we couldn't cover all of that so so let's um you know let's bring people to the product first and then the forums hopefully can fill in the rest of it that's brilliant i mean see the other the other part of i suppose bi of oracle bi that we haven't mentioned is the bi apps and that again is something that i i understand what i know came from siebel siebel about business analytics again what was your what was your what was your history with the BI applications and what why were customers implementing that really what was the kind of background to all that

yeah because obviously in the early days when it was Enquire the products was a standalone reporting tool it didn't have any allegiances in any particular way but Tom Siebel saw some something in this product that could boost his own product, which I think was using Actuate at the time. So he effectively replaced Actuate with the Enquire product. Now, this meant that he was trying to bolster his e-business competitor, his Sewell system. And so he integrated it. he called it Siebel Analytics, and tried to make sure that it actually worked as closely as possible with the Siebel system. And that meant that he had to figure out how to get the data out of the Siebel system into the warehouse that what was then Siebel 96 was going to report against.

So he decided to build the integration piece himself, as in Siebel build it, which was actually quite an inspired move because it meant that it standardized on all sorts of things in terms of naming conventions and and the etl process and and so on and because of that um it meant that you could go to one project after another and effectively know how the tools were going to be working and and and how you could help out yeah i mean, I think certainly when I first met you again, when I first came across the Siebel Analytics world, it was as much about that business warehouse, wasn't it, or the Siebel warehouse, as it was about the BI tool. And certainly knowing that and knowing the table names and the sources and the ETL routines and the DAC,

that was a big part of it, wasn't it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, I've been working in OBIE for nearly 20 years and the majority of that time actually we're working on the warehouse. It's about the warehouse, it's about populating that warehouse and tuning it and making it work. And then you can nearly always put most reporting tools over the top of it and not to worry about it. But obviously, OB has a special way of dealing with a worldwide audience of tens of thousands of users, which is better than any other platform I've seen. But having said that, you can have the best platform in the world, but you still need a really good database to work against. And that's where Tom Siebel actually managed to get it right.

And it looks as if Oracle followed that or had a similar idea because, of course, they adopted that whole approach when they bought Siebel. And they obviously called it part of the Fusion apps. But essentially, it's the same thing. It's the same standard warehouse and the same standard technologies to build it. The problem is, of course, is that Oracle have had to look internally for its products because it couldn't be seen to be supporting other vendors like Informatica. So eventually, they've had to turn off the Informatica parts of the system

and turn on, in replacement replacement Oracle Data Integrator instead um which is not I mean I haven't had too much experience with it to be perfectly honest because um maybe they did it a little bit late in the in the in the day but but most of the products that or most of the projects i've been involved with had already implemented it so they're already a an informatica house if you like but but that doesn't that doesn't mean to say it's over time people are going to have to upgrade and therefore those projects will come along i mean in the meantime we've been using odi in an independent warehouse just to make sure that we're fully ready for uh when that does happen okay so let's go on to 12c so obi 12c came out a couple two or three years ago now i mean so what what's what's what was your first impression then of that and what what what's

your thoughts compared to say 11 and what are the things you like about obi 12c yeah so the best thing about 12c was it installed it just installed you didn't have to worry about it um i don't know whether mike had anything to do with that but uh yeah but yeah for some for some reason that just stuck in my mind that this was going to be a nightmare to install and it just worked and it worked really well actually um is that because of the is that because the way it separates out parts of it or because it doesn't use kind of like fusion middleware i mean what what why is that do you think then um the installer is better there's no doubt about that yeah um and and and so it does half the stuff for you it probably explains itself a little bit better as it goes along as well um before you had to

figure it all out and the oracle documentation isn't great at giving you the big picture. It's getting better. But this helps to sort of figure it out for you. So, funnily enough, the installation chapters in the new book are fairly straightforward and simple to follow because the install is simple to follow. I mean, obviously, it still uses the database as part of the installation process. It still uses WebLogic. So it's still Fusion, if you like.

But it still has its own internal C++ systems. But actually, all of those things just actually happened far better than they did before. I guess my biggest disappointment is that we're still not able to easily install this into an IIS environment.

And of course they've narrowed down the options in terms of the database you can install the repository into as well, which in theory you weren't supposed to be able to do it before in XE, for example. But it was technically possible, and so people did that in test environments. So I think I would prefer it if they had a little bit more integration on the Microsoft side, just to help those houses along that still want to do Microsoft as much as possible.

Okay, so what about, I mean, I'll get on to DV in a second, because that's obviously a big sort of like a tentpole feature of 12c, you know. But what about the way the repositories are handled in this release? Because that's quite different, isn't it? And last last time i looked it was sort of half done wasn't it i mean what still is do you want to explain kind of again if anyone doesn't understand that do you want to explain what i'm talking about really and what the limitation is there yeah so so from a repositories perspective it was it's one file and um or or actually actually what they tried to do in this instance is give you the opportunity of of having several files but it's still effectively one file that is generated.

Now I think we were all expecting quite some time ago that this would just move into the database you wouldn't have a file anymore you'd have tables and and so on especially when you look at the way that the other products um are configured then that exact same way um yeah everything that oracle does seems to work against the database in this instance they haven't done that now there may be technical reasons for that i don't know but um so that was that was a surprise. But at the same time, it's still easy to handle in terms of one file. We still copy it around, no problem. I guess we're still up against the fact that you have to handle the source code control in the same way that you would do any other source code control,

except that because it's one file, it's really difficult to have lots and lots of people working on it at the same time. I know, I know. I've been working with a tool called Looker a lot recently, and that is light years ahead, really, in terms of everything being stored as files and so on, really. But what about upgrades? I mean, have you been involved in any upgrades from 11 to 12?

Have they gone kind of straightforward? I know Mike Durham was involved in those as well. Yeah, yes, it can be done. And I didn't see any major issues with that myself. I'm not a huge fan of doing a straightforward upgrade because I like to take the opportunity when we're on a project to to put an improvement in um you know there's an awful lot of things that you when you build at

the time because of speed or whatever you you think oh it'd be nice to revisit that at some point well you know take the opportunity when you're doing 11g uh 12c uh implementation to to revisit how you've done things and and to reassess um yes you still need to keep the old dashboards working and so on but uh but why don't you take the opportunity to make it even better for your users okay okay what about data visualization then i mean that was the big new feature in in 12 have you seen that being if you played around with it so far i mean is it is it a good tool or what yeah i mean we bought some licenses um we tend to find that this is a little bit buggy still um i'm i'm very impressed with the way that's that's kevin mcginley has been demonstrating on the in his database daily

um and it does actually make it look a very impressive tool if you spend enough time on it. I don't think I've spent enough time on it because when we give our users the choice between the DV or the answers, they tend to pick answers, and I don't know why. Yeah, they tend to find that easier and more intuitive to use. But we do give them a choice um and uh and say how do you want to go about this i guess you've just got to get over the learning hurdle um uh you know and i've given users who've never seen ob at all the choice of two of them and they went for answers

after trying both i suppose they're different tools aren't they i mean i suppose one's data discovery one's more structured reporting and so on really i mean it depends on the use case and who's using it really doesn't it yeah i mean she was doing data discovery in in answers um and yeah you can you obviously maybe maybe there you can compartmentalize them but i would i would turn around and say that with answers you can you can ask your questions and you get the answers just as much as you can with DV. Yes, you can right-click and do some cool stuff with DV, so why not?

But you can do that when you put the data on the dashboard as well. So I don't see any major reason to go for DV at the moment. And the reason for that is because we have thousands of users, I mean tens of thousands of users, and they want to know that the information they're getting up on the screen is consistent and the same and so on. And if they all had a sort of a free forum tool to play with um you know they may not get anything else done they might just enjoy that

too much and and not get get on with the job so i think probably your your more pragmatic approach view of this is probably you know quite a reflection of the fact you've always been you know largely been a contractor haven't you and you've worked longer i remember i remember a conversation we had years ago and you said one of the things about being a contractor is you're there for longer you get to see what doesn't work what does work it's a bit more kind of realistic i mean would you say that being a contractor is a different perspective on this and a more realistic one yeah i mean you're you're it's easy to be jaded by by anything isn't it and it's easy to see the negative in anything but um but so i'm like i'm a great believer now um yeah exactly there's there's too much negativity in

the world for for you know just to join in so let's let's just be positive about what you can do and what you can bring to it and so you you take the limitations you you you you understand what the system can do you you take your clients um limitations and and their requests and you just try and do the the best possible job you can and and don't don't bullshit your way into uh into a corner where where you're promising stuff you can't deliver the product can't deliver yeah so so when you deliver i mean your role is typically your kind of lead on a project and so on i mean so how do you i mean in terms of methodologies i mean you must have seen talking of kind of crazy things things i've talked about in the past with the kind of extreme bi and agile methodologies and so on what's the kind of adrian

walled um sort of path to success really when it comes to delivering a bi project um the first thing you need to do is make sure there's no project manager just get rid of project managers and they're just kind of waste people's time so let's forget project management um that's that's not worthwhile um don't worry too much about the design don't don't you know get over excited about um the design up front because you'll learn stuff as as time goes on you'll you'll never get from the client up front all the information you need to be able to do the job and and if you if you try to sort of secure from them a requirement document which they sign in blood and in triplicate um yeah you may possibly meet that but but rarely will you meet it and rarely will you exceed

their expectations so so i think i i tend to throw away all the rule books no project management no requirements up front and and um although you'll do some data discovery um actually roll up your sleeves get stuck in and talk to them on a daily basis sit in their office with you know with the end users none of this sort of um can't talk to the end users you you've got to be with them constantly and and bring them on the journey with you so make them experts make them understand the system make them use a system and and be involved as much as you possibly can um and then you'll both produce something that you'll both be really happy with good good excellent so let's talk let's talk through the new book then so you you've you've had this is your second edition of the 12c book i mean again tell us a bit about the motivation

behind doing it and and what what's the kind of theme of the book and how is it structured and so on well um we were thinking about doing a second book but but but we weren't particularly um sort of key on the idea given how much hard work it is but packet came to us and and and described the last book as a as a blockbuster and or bestseller if you like um i'm not sure they're talking the millions of of copies but but in in their terms that they thought it was a great success we want we wanted to try and update it for 12c but also try and um respond to some of the feedback i mean most of the feedback we got from the previous book was very very positive. There were literally one person would have preferred a slightly different layout, and actually I agreed with them. And so I've taken some of the theoretical chapters and moved those to the back and got people hands on with the products really early on in the book and

effectively make sure that they are focusing on what the book is intended for which is um get a system up and running practice and play with it um and then do your theory and do the understanding um later on when you've got some time okay so how do you find time to do it i mean i know with myself i find it very hard to find time for this how do you how do you get this the discipline and the time to write a book well I limit my hours that I work to the client to 12 hours a day so I don't do more than 12 hours a day so that I've got another 12 to write the book I mean motivation I mean how do you how I guess once you've got I mean once you've got a publisher and a deadline and so on there but But to go and do a second book as well, it's fantastic, isn't it really?

Yeah, there was a huge sense of achievement with the first one. I mean, we were proud as punch when it came out and when we got our hands on it. It just fills you with joy. We went to the open world that year with the uh the business analytics themed open world um the book was on the shelves there in in the uh in the bookshop and and just to sort of go up to the bookshop and see my book there was just amazing really was the sad thing is that they sold out within the next in the first 10 minutes yeah i mean 50 copies yeah i mean i think i worked out that i think i would have earned more money working the pub than actually if i got royalties for my one but

i think in terms of the perfect calling card perfect calling card it was it was it was great and it's great going into a client site and seeing your book there um yes and and so on really so i mean well done for that and that's so so and that's that you'd find that on amazon that's on amazon and unusual places that sort of thing yeah exactly that one thing that annoyed me the other day of course i went to another part of our our organization and um they had your book on the shelf well there you go unopened probably excellent so what's it what's it so what's it called again your book just just for anyone who's listening oracle business intelligence enterprise edition 12c okay so that's good um so let's kind of so So before we kind of finish,

I want to go through a few kind of things because I know we're going to kind of get you talking really. So a few things from in terms of kind of the product, where it's going, and just get your views on it really and that sort of thing. So the packaged BI apps, we talked earlier on about BI apps and you said that it was generally a good thing.

But do you think in hindsight or going forward packaged apps are the way to go or or do that are they too much of a kind of one-size-fits-all what's your take on that um so i know that there are some people in the industry will hate me for saying this but i'm not a believer in in bi apps um in in a huge um number of clients. But in some clients, it's the absolutely perfect thing to do. So here's why. So you can buy, for quite a lot of money, a out-of-the-box BI system, BI app system that you install,

and it takes the data out of your e-business system and puts it into your API system and that's great and that's really good. Providing of course it does exactly what you want to do and how you want to run your business and works first time and no focus and so on. If that's not the case then you're to have to bring some consultancy in to help you configure it to your needs. So the theory is that you buy off the shelf for a certain amount of money. Oracle's done all the investment in the products. They've made it work exactly how you need it to.

And you'll save money because you don't have to go and buy the consultants unfortunately in practice you still have to buy some consultancy um and um and yes you'll you'll get some benefit from it and yes it gives you the platform as i mentioned earlier it gives you the standard platform in terms of your database and your etl structures and and it even gives you the starting point for some of your database and your etl structures and and it even gives you the starting point for some dashboards but i have been into clients and they have been sold the bi app system and uh for quite a lot we're talking millions and and then um you you you ask them what they actually want to do and how they operate their business and it turns out that what they bought isn't anything like what they needed to do no and we've thrown away literally millions of pounds worth of products and started again from scratch because

i think you know trying to trying to customize the things as they stand i mean if you if you go in there it was it's an interesting kind of thing isn't it really and it's yeah so it's interesting you say that and i mean the bi apps effectively kind of end of life now really aren't they i don't know i don't i don't know if if if oracle are going to still um proceed down that route or that or whether they'll they'll they'll do what they um uh they'll move on to a cloud-based um bi apps type solution and in which case they yeah they don move on to a cloud-based BI apps type solution, in which case they don't want to support any sort of in-your-own-office installations. I don't know what they're going to do on that. I haven't followed that closely, quite simply because there isn't as much work for us in that field nowadays as there used to be. And I quite frankly prefer to start with what the customer wants

and build that first. Using the Oracle tool set, using the Oracle methodology, but not necessarily using what they've already pre-built. Yeah, okay. I guess maybe it might have a rebirth maybe with the cloud. I think once you start to more standardize the applications and the uses. But like you say, I think in the end, you ended up using consultancy anyway. And that consultancy became overcomplicated because you were building on this kind of framework that was complicated in the first place, really.

So, yeah, I think they suffer. I think Oracle suffered from the fact that over the years it started out um seawall building it um obviously some of the offshore um development took place then they developed it in a different country so maybe it could be in poland could be in india could be um could be anywhere in the world and at each time they were building into this bi apps they were building it in a very slightly different way slightly different approach to life um and and you can see how how it's evolved and none of those were wrong it's just that it made it made it quite difficult when you're picking up as a consultant to try and understand what's going on when different parts of it worked in completely different ways okay okay so we touched on cloud there and obviously oracle have got a few products in the cloud oracle analytics cloud

there's bics there's whatever and i think you know a lot of organizations i think your one as well are looking at things like private cloud as well where do you see cloud having a sort of value for customers when it comes to bi and where's the successes do you think at the moment so the success will be in those people that are able to securely move their data around right right now as a small consultancy we spend all of our time trying to move data whether it's out of sales force or out of out of some other CRM system around into another system to be able to do the reporting side. So obviously, OBIE is an interesting product to try and put into the cloud. And I think that they are, because Oracle are having to do this, they are improving their OB products for everybody.

And I think that that will work pretty well. What I do think, though, is that just with all these products, it's about getting your data and your database correct in the cloud area, obviously secure. I mean, we've seen the cyber attacks that have been going on this week, and it just frightens the hell out of us. I work in a military organization, and there's absolutely no way we're going to move any data into the cloud um and not not into a public cloud or shared cloud or anything like

that that's not going to happen um and and for obviously for the security reasons but also from practical perspective um some of our operations cannot communicate over networks, whether they be in the middle of a desert or up in the air somewhere or in the water in a submarine. You work with ISIS then, are you? Yeah, not that one, no. A different military organization. So yeah, there's absolutely no way that cloud is an option. So we have to solve the data problem using sort of internal networks. Okay, so a more sort of general question.

If you look at Oracle particularly, and I suppose a lot of vendors are moving their products and their customers and their platforms into the cloud. Is there still a consulting market there is there still a market for doing consulting work on premise building systems and so on or is is it changing what's your take on that so um one one thing that is interesting is that over the years companies see the latest shiny product and and they go oh look shiny new product and they they latch onto it and they think it will solve their problems but funny enough each time they install the very latest technology the very latest product it roughly turns out the same way that they installed the last one so although they're changing the product they're not necessarily changing the way that they approach to life and and and products so um i don't see the cloud being any different to that i just see that

if if they if they put um too many controls too many issues um in in the creative process then then they won't get the value out of it that they're looking for. And I'm passionate about making sure that IT is a creative process. Yes, it's full of nerdy geeks and not the most extroverted people, but that doesn't mean to say you can't be creative and you can't actually try and wow the customer you know don't don't just turn up for a nine to five job just make make sure that you could develop something good that's the difference as not not whether your product's in the cloud or whether it's the latest version or whatever it is so how much did the gartner report last year um sort of um affect

you at all i mean the gartner magic quadrant for anyone who didn't hear that at all uh you know basically pushed oracle out the magic quadrant and was focusing on on desktop self-service bi sorry business business kind of purchased bi tools how did that affect you at the time what were you thinking at the time um it's it's strange actually because we were really happy when the market was relatively small. I mean, still a lot of customers, but relatively small. We were happy when the market went mad and went all into Oracle BI. And we're just as happy now that it's settled down. So it doesn't make any difference to us. What I do think is that people have missed the point in that the Oracle BI platform is global.

It can handle, at any one time, it could handle 10,000 users on the system at the same time. And all those 10,000 users are getting access to the same information now that that's that's a big deal nowadays and um you know everyone's looking for the one version of the truth in their organizations well it you can you can keep looking for the latest products but it sits there right in front of you already it's all called oracle bi and and it will it will satisfy the data scientists it will satisfy the the people who are reporting up to the board it will also satisfy every every one of your single of employees as well if you wanted to excellent so okay just to round off then adrian you got i mean you have a lot of interests outside of work as well i mean you know where do you what's

the adrian wall plan for five years time from now do you want to be still be doing this or do you want to be sailing off or where do you want to try and get to really no i love this um i've been doing it for like i say nearly 20 years and and i i am told by my wife that i have to keep going for another 20 years so this is what i'm going to be doing and and yes the market will move on um but i'm hoping to be like those old cobalt programmers with the sandals and the beards you know well you call them in uh you know when they um they're they're on the beach somewhere enjoying themselves and you call them in for a lot of money excellent excellent so and just to finish off are you speaking at any events soon you k-scope that sort of thing unfortunately next week i have to get to bermuda um for uh for a month um and going over to watch

the america's cup um so uh so yeah i won't be um i won't be able to go over to texas um so i'll miss that which is a shame um i've just started my um extract submission for the uk oug tech 17 conference coming up in december so um i'm just i'm actually looking for ideas as to what i want to present i was really pleased with last year's but i think i need to do something new okay good and one last question does f space work in obi now is it finally working uh don't get me started on on airspace yes that was uh yeah brilliant that was i think it's i think it's there now actually i don't know i think it's there five ten years on from when we uh first used it it was uh that was certainly interesting wasn't it i think that kept us in business for a while actually but it was certainly a quite a long

late few late nights yeah you need to uh you need to talk to christian berg about that he loves it i am not a fan excellent okay so just one last thing adrian so the book itself what publisher what's the name again where can people find it so it's packed so p-a-c-k-t yeah um so that's packed.com and you can buy a hard copy from them or from Amazon globally, and you can also buy their online system and read it online as well, which works just as well. I mean, I don't mind. I love the sort of the – you can hear the big, weighty volumes here,

but I don't mind reading online as well. Excellent, excellent. So, well, thanks, Adrian. It's been good to have you on the show. And take care. Thank you very much.