Inatech accelerates at UKOUG with scooter giveaway #ukoug_tebs

From today for the next three days UK OUG delegates to the Technology and e-Business Suite 2009 conference at the ICC in Birmingham UK will have the opportunity of winning the latest in electric vehicles. Inatech has presented its prize for this year's annual conference in the shape of a blue and white scooter.

Delegates must visit the stand and discover opportunity.accelerate the new speed offering from Inatech, the global Oracle specialist.

Inatech’s Michelle Maden will deliver her presentation entitled ‘Oracle Business Accelerators: Better and faster than an upgrade?’ at 10.55am on Monday 30th November. “There is a culture of anxiety over the risk and costs of upgrading to E-Business Suite Release 12, and many Oracle users have put off or abandoned upgrade projects,” said Michelle, who will discuss the advantages of reimplementation using Oracle Business Accelerators. She will also demonstrate how Oracle Business Accelerators automate, set up and enable a rapid CRP.

On the Tuesday at 1.00pm, Inatech’s Piyush Govil will deliver his presentation ‘Business Intelligence (BI) Applications: Do you buy or build?’ According to a 2009 Gartner report, over 35% of the world’s top 5,000 companies will fail to make insightful decisions due to a lack of sufficient BI; with this in mind, Piyush will explore the ‘Buy versus Build’ problem, looking into why 30% of Siebel users use BI applications, and why 70% decide not to buy.

Inatech to attend Siebel Oracle Open World

Inatech plans to take part in Siebel Oracle OpenWorld Highlights in Reading, UK this November.

The one-day conference will include sessions with Steve Austen and Ian Keleher of the Siebel committee; Steve Fearon of Oracle; and Anthony Jones of BA.

Discussions at the conference will cover topics such as how customers can use Siebel 8.1.1 to lower costs, drive operational performance to new levels, improve ROI and boost user productivity.

New developments with Siebel were hot topics at this year’s Oracle Openworld in October. Oracle senior vice president of CRM Anthony Lye told attendees of plans to allow users to run Siebel in Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes, in response to the high percentage of mobile Outlook users. On the topic of the new development, Lye said:

"We face the commoditization of our products. We have less and less value and are faced with a challenge; differentiate on price - never a really good strategy - or choose to differentiate on relationship. The relationship is the way that makes you different. Increasingly it's more important than the products you deliver."

Oracle's Business Intelligence and Performance Management Solutions Drive Leadership in Business Analytics

As part of Oracle OpenWorld 2009, Oracle announced that its Business Analytics family of products continue to lead the industry.

Oracle's strengthened its Business Analytics position as the industry leader in vendor share, growth, performance, partner ecosystem and developer communities through continued commitment to delivering innovative products.

Business Analytics. according to a major industry analyst firm, includes the following four primary segments: Analytic Applications, Business Intelligence Tools, Data Warehousing Platform Software, and Spatial Information Analysis Tools.

Rick Shultz, Oracle Vice President, Technology Marketing, said:

"Customer adoption of Oracle's Business Intelligence and Performance Management solutions continues to outpace the overall market sector.

"Organizations in both the private and public sectors are standardizing their BI and EPM initiatives on Oracle in order to help improve enterprise decision-making and increase financial and operational performance."

Oracle showcased the success of Business Analytics throughout the OpenWorld event. In the past year alone, Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) have maintained their status as first in Financial Performance Management, rated as leading products by industry analysis reports. In 2009, Oracle has delivered seven new category-leading products into the Business Analytics family, and completed the integration of BI tools, BI Applications and EPM Applications with all of its packaged Business Applications. Testament to these successes is the number of partners gained by Oracle this year; Oracle trained over 7,000 practitioners as partners on Oracle BI and EPM software in 2009 alone.

Final Day at the SharePoint Conference

Final day and many individuals arrive with fatigue for a very technical day of sessions and education. The key for me today is the focus on Search and Apply technology which is primarily been the domain of third party product providers as SharePoint has lacked greatly in this area. The tools are very varied from the simple ‘replicate and secure’ to Knowledge-Based surfacing of critical information.

A great aspect of the new 2010 product is the Document Stores. In the past SharePoint has had document stores but the library is a more intimate and detailed presentation showing the library summary, who owns the library, how many documents posted, the categories for documents and the search criteria available. A key aspect of improved search is the ‘tagging’ and simplified metadata areas of SharePoint – this has been a poor feature of 2007 which is now an enterprise strength function available out-of-the-box.

I attended a special event (by invitation) with Colligo – desktop tooling for SharePoint Portals. This is another poor functional area which they addressed with their own tool kit. The lunch included three guest speakers: two from companies that have implemented and one partner (Quest Software). Although a little contrived on how the tool has delivered but the screen grabs and examples left me feeling this is still too basic.

My Summary: overall the showcase had many good ‘add-on-supplier’ products but I did not see any business solutions being offered. This is an opportunity for Calsoft. Las Vegas as a venue is a crazy but interesting place. The venue served everyone well and the food and entertainment has been first class. That’s it for another year.

David Gardiner

Day 3: The SharePoint Fairy to the rescue

After a couple of days looking at the new SharePoint technology it was time to turn to the question ‘how do we become better partners and win more business?’. The day started with an excellent presentation on using Story Telling to convey our strength and capability and to resonate with our prospects and clients. Bob McDowell, VP of Information Worker at Microsoft delivered a very passionate session with very good story telling examples. These will come in handy!

A great aspect of today was the continuous switch from selling technology to engaging with prospects and clients. Knowing more about your intended customers is a key to quick and positive engagement. It is no longer sensible or feasible just to be technology specialist but you must be able to talk the talk. Bob gave a great rendition of being asked ‘so what keeps you up at night?’ question – one which he loathes as it is still ‘sales speak’. He followed by suggesting ‘tell me about your current objectives and the challenges you are facing Mr Customer in reaching those objectives so I can determine how or if we can help you overcome them’; I know which would work best.

As it is a key requirement within our client base the ‘Proven Principles and Best Practices for Intranets’ session doubled a consultancy approach to the actual delivery for DelMonte foods (co-hosted by the Portal Manager involved from DelMonte). Much as what you would expect but sometimes the obvious is missed. This was followed by the ‘Building an enterprise knowledge management solution with SharePoint and Solving Information Chaos. The former was focused on 2010 and the road Microsoft themselves have been treading on building a better KM service. A key part of the information was how under 2007 they have over 350 different SharePoint sites all supposed to be providing knowledge. Under 2010 they will have a one-site-one-style environment which learns about the users and delivers the right information through tagging and meta data extraction – very cool and very powerful.

Having wandered the Showcase I must admit my surprise that there are NO application vendors on any stand. Everyone is selling a ‘SharePoint add-on or booster’. This must be an opportunity for Calsoft.

During my tour of the Showcase arena I came across the SharePoint Fairy – see picture. Believe it or not she is the Marketing Director for a sizable SharePoint services partner in the US – nice marketing tactics!

Dave Gardiner

Inatech to attend Oracle Partner Showcase, September 29, 2009

Inatech will be attending the Oracle Partner Showcase on 29 September 2009. The team will be represented by Keith Rock and Daniel Williams who have been on the road up and down and across the UK following the Oracle roadshows.

As specialists in integrated systems and IT managed services successfully achieving objectives for businesses in multiple sectors, Inatech will be demonstrating further achievements.

Keep reading the blog to find out about the latest developments as and when they happen.

UPK for Oracle and Non Oracle Applications

NCOAUG Training Day,
Being held at the Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois
Friday, August 21st.
This presentation is assigned to: Crystal 1 Room
10:10-10:50 AM

Presentation #1 Title UPK for Oracle and Non Oracle Applications
Abstract #1 The User Productivity Kit (UPK) is a comprehensive, cost-effective, customizable solution to create the critical documentation, training, and support materials to drive project team and user productivity throughout the life-cycle of your software. We shall demonstrate how to maximize the UPK investment for both Oracle and Non Oracle Applications.

We will be discussing this presentation in further detail over the next few weeks until the event. Further insight will be provided to shed light on opportunities available.

OUG at Twickenham

Wednesday 24th and Thursday 25th June 2009 . The fourth OUG conference for 2009.

This week's main event focuses on a two day showcase of Hyperion and BI Products and Applications hosted at the “live Room” at Twickenham Stadium.

Like many of these events the interesting location transpires to be a large room with no windows and good air conditioning. So despite soaring temperatures and the hottest day of the summer so far..... the BI enthusiast got stuck in. The event kicked of with an inspirational Keynote speech from Oracle Senior Vice President, EPM Global Business Unit, John Kopcke. The event then the broke into a number of key streams focused on Consolidation & Reporting, Planning & Analytics, Integration & Infrastructure, General Business & education, and Business Intelligence & Essbase.

Inatech’s key offering at the event has been the broader awareness and education of the Oracle and Hyperion community on Oracle (ex Siebel) reporting tool of choice, OBIEE (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition).

Inatech has been successfully running hands on training sessions on a monthly basis for OBIEE at a number of locations over the past few months. The sessions aim to allow users to evaluate OBIEE in far greater detail and make a informed choice on the road ahead. Inatech will continue providing free OBIEE overview training sessions for the rest of 2009. If you would like to reserve a place email Sales@inatech.com

As for Twickenham Stadium, the weather looks fantastic but someone has taken the
Grass!


Regards,
Chris Baker
Global Sales & Marketing Director

Inateach attends UKOUG Scotland 2009

Inatech exhibited at the Radisson SAS in Glasgow yesterday, the venue of Scotland 2009; part of the UKOUG Conference Series.

The event was attended by over 200 delegates, exhibitors, speakers and staff with a keynote presentation given by Caroline Stuart, Business Development Director Scotland at Oracle. She used the example of Oracle’s own business as the key to controlling and managing costs downwards in these times of recession.

After the keynote addresses, delegates were treated to a choice of eBusiness, BI, Developer and DBA streams to get updates from Oracle on product direction and hear and compare how other organisations are taking advantage of technology to drive their businesses.

A new incentive rolled out at this OUG event; ‘Stamp Collection’ ensured a steady stream of interest at the Inatech stand, manned by Doug Toop and myself. There was a good balance of interest from the mix of Public Sector and Commercial organisations attending. The winner of the prize donated by Inatech was Ruth Davidson of South Lanarkshire Council, who walked away as the proud owner the latest iPod shuffle.

Tomorrow the Inatech exhibition moves South to Twickenham for the next event in the UKOUG Conference Series 2009, for BI and Hyperion.

Keith Rock, Sales Director

DAY ONE: Collaborate 2009

Day one kicked off with a keynote address from Oracle President, Charles Philips.

We will be attending to watch other Senior Oracle Executives who are scheduled to present later in the week including Duncan Angove, Bret Fuller, Cliff Godwin, John Kopcke, Anthony Lye, Steve Miranda and Jim Patrice.

On Sunday the Inatech Team landed in Orlando, Florida for the 10th OAUG Conference, the event runs from Sunday to Thursday at the Orange County Convention Center.

Florida, located in the southeastern region of the United States, is home to 18m people, and its infamous tourist destination Orlando receives over 50 million visitors a year attending the many attractions including the nearby Walt Disney World Resort, SeaWorld and Universal Orlando Resort. The Orange County Convention Center, the country's second largest in square footage makes Orlando a popular venue for business conferences.

Today, Wednesday 6th April, at 3.15pm (EST) in Room 109A, Piyush Govil will be delivering a presentation on the Inatech approach to “Accurate historical reporting in BI Applications”.

Piyush Govil is the Global Head of Information Management Solutions at Calsoft. Piyush sold International Innovations, a company that focused on Business Intelligence, Rules Engines and Enterprise Search, to Calsoft in March 2008. With over 17 years of successful experience in product development and solutions delivery with Fortune 500 companies. He has held multiple leadership roles ranging from engineering to product management, sales, professional services, operations and marketing.
Inatech joins OAUG 2009 as a ‘Rising Star’ Partner
As part of the prestigious Oracle Application User Group Star Partner Program, Inatech can now provide new and enhanced ways of bringing our corporate message to the OAUG membership throughout the year.

Collaborate offers in-depth education and exclusive networking opportunities created by The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) and Quest International Users Group (Quest). The global community of technology and applications professionals and experts come together to exchange of ideas and best practices. It\’s an ideal event for those wishing to learn what works — and what will work best for you.

There are hundreds of user-led sessions arranged by OAUG for Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Retail, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Oracle Communications, MetaSolv, Hyperion and the rest of the growing family of Oracle Applications, so there’s a lot of useful information here.

We’ve looked through the schedule so we can attend as many of the events, seminars and panel discussions as possible.

The rest of the team will be meeting prospective clients on stand 4341 all week if you would like to meet them.

Inatech to tackle Oracle BI Applications at OAUG next month

Ahead of the Oracle Applications User Group in Orlando, Florida next month, Inatech is busy preparing for its presentation on dynamic hierarchies.

The OAUG is set to be one of the most important conferences for businesses working with Oracle applications, and Inatech is to bring its own take on business intelligence to the fore.

The presentation, entitled “Dynamic hierarchies for ‘as is’ and ‘as was’ reporting”, will explore how historical information can be accessed in the right context in order to make the best possible decisions. This, Inatech believes, is what Business Intelligence is all about.

Oracle Pre-Built BI applications access information using built-in hierarchies which do not allow historical data to be viewed by the hierarchy as it existed at that point in time, meaning that a real sense of context is difficult to achieve.

Inatech’s presentation will demonstrate their Dynamic Hierarchies solution, which allows Oracle users to tackle the issue of dynamic hierarchies, and illustrates Inatech’s position as a thought leader in BI consulting and end-to-end implications.

The session will cover the need for Dynamic Hierarchies as businesses change frequently; how customers can implement slowly changing dimensions hierarchies across their pre-built BI applications; and how implementing Dynamic Hierarchies will reflect results more consistently.
The session runs at 3.15pm on 6th May at the AOUG Forum, Orange County Convention Centre, Orlando. To register, please visit http://oaug.collaborate09.com/reg/.

Inatech’s presence at Collaborate 2009 is not restricted to the Dynamic Hierarchies; it will also be exhibiting at the Partner Pavilion, showcasing its serves, solutions and client success stories. On top of that, Inatech will be running a fantastic competition where you can win a Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player.

Dhow Palace Hotel – Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Today, April 1^st 2009 saw the opening of the first Oracle User Group show in the Middle East Region, OAUG Connection Point 2009. Inatech is proud to be an inaugural sponsor and exhibitor of this event.

The Inatech team arrived early to prepare. The event kicked off sharply at 8.30am, with an internal team of presenters gathered from the strongest Oracle teams across the world.

The Inatech team enjoyed the Keynote Session which was given by Oracle's most senior executive in the Middle East & African (MEA) region, Husam Dajani, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, MEA, Oracle Corporation. Husam was extremely enthusiastic in his opening address as this is the first time the OUG event has been held in the region, over the 22 years that Oracle has been present driving and pioneering Enterprise IT applications in this part of the world.

Husam Dajani has been with Oracle for more than 20 years, during which time the company has become the number one provider of technology and e-business solutions in the Middle East and Africa. Oracle's industry-leading technology solutions are so ingrained into the region's technology infrastructure that it is not possible to spend a day without interacting with an Oracle system in some way or other, whether it is a bank system, the immigration system at the airport or an electricity and water bill.

With a customer count in the thousands, Oracle caters to almost every government in the region, as well as industries from oil and gas to aviation to banking and businesses from auto dealers to department stores. It is hard to find an industry or business that is not using Oracle applications, database or technology. Inatech is delighted to be supporting many customers representing a large number of industries in this region. Inatech is particularly pleased to announce the successful completion of a complex Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade project at Dubai Bank.

Inatech has a strong representation at this first OUG event which is represented by some of the most prestigious names in Oracles 2500 E-Business Suite customers in the region. International Key speakers for Day one include from Oracle, Cliff Godwin, Dr. Nadia Bendjedou,

Brian O’Neil & Roopa Dhanalal. The final speech of the day will be delivered by Cliff Godwin the Senior Vice President of Applications Technology at Oracle Corporation who will be providing an insight and road map into the future of oracle E-Business Suite. Cliff Godwin runs the Applications Technology Group and is responsible for ensuring that Oracle Applications effectively leverage Oracle's systems technologies, and for building the common objects and services used throughout Oracle Applications. Specific areas of responsibility include applications architecture, standards, performance, installation, and the Oracle Application Object Library, Oracle Workflow, Oracle XML Gateway and Oracle Alert products.

The Inatech Team are looking forward to the Dinner Cruise on Dubai Creek at the end of what will be a long day.............

Inatech gears up for Reg:Connection Point Dubai

Inatech gears up for Reg:Connection Point Dubai

Inatech has announced its itinerary for Reg:Connection Point, taking place at the Dhow Palace Hotel, Dubai, on April 1st-2nd.

The event is expected to attract around 70 attendees and offers a number of presentations.

Oracle’s Cliff Godwin will update attendees on Oracle E-Business Suite; Jim Bistis of Core Services will present on outsourced hosting; Oracle’s Omar Tahoub will give a speech on financial management solutions; and many more.

Other seminars and presentations will discuss upgrade best practices, SOA, Fusion Middleware, and government, retail and airline industry software uses.

Inatech will make case studies of its own work available, on topics such as integration/service orientated architecture and identity management.

There will also be a quiz and a raffle with prizes for attendees.

Passes for the event are priced at $450 for the full conference, or $300 for a one day pass.

Oracle March 5th

We've just returned from a well attended Oracle event, with over 400+ registrations, Inatech was of around 10 partners who had a stand. Inatech received a mixture of of traffic from DBA techies through to Architects across a broad range of industries.

We also seemed to have had more than our fair share of Industry Analysts coming past – definitely three to my knowledge which surprised me. I guess there is a lot of close monitoring being paid to the IT industry during this economic situation.

The mix of attendees was truly international, I had meetings with visitors from the UK, Europe, US and Libya.

Keith Rock, Sales Director

Inatech to attend Oracle Day 2009

Inatech will be attending this year’s Oracle Day at the Chancery Court Hotel, London, on 5th March.

The day will see a number of seminars and exhibitions of the Oracle Technology stack, including Database and Middleware, SOA, Enterprise 2.0, Business Intelligence and Security. IT professionals will come together to tackle such challenges as cost-cutting, innovation and consolidation.

Inatech plans to use the event as a platform to showcase its latest achievements, such as its nomination for best Emerging Business in Applications at the Oracle Partner Awards, its selection as Oracle UK’s FY09 ISV partner, and its status as Oracle partner of choice for Retail Integration in EMEA.

Inatech will also use the occasion to demonstrate its tried-and-tested strengths and accolades. It is formally recognised by Oracle as a leader in the implementation of Application selection and evaluation of Oracle Release 12, and its leadership team are Oracle veterans who all held positions in Oracle’s senior management in EMEA, USA and India.

Further, Inatech has the chance to display some of its most impressive products and services, such as is iDBA and iBIZ modular programmes, and Business Consulting, its practice of using expert business and IT strategy assessment to plan applications and technology.

OUG UK 2008 comes to a close

The 25th OUG conference ended yesterday afternoon, and the stands – including Inatech’s – disappeared back into the large fleet of vehicles at the back of the Birmingham International Conference Centre almost as quickly as they arrived. Thirty minutes after the exhibition closed most of the exhibitors and the contents of their stands had been removed.

The Inatech led the final presentation of the day. Hosted Piyush Govil and assisted by Balaji Perumal: Integrating Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) with Application Express (APEX) for MultiFormat Reports.

The presentation involved a live demonstration of application express and turned into a working session for the remaining interested delegates.

Further information on this presentation can be obtained from sales@inatech.com.

Today we are all back in the office tidying away the exhibition props for another year. So goodbye and Merry Christmas to Birmingham for another year........P.S we have already booked our stand for 2009!