Greetings,

I work for the University of Nebraska system, and we have been using FOCUS for about 20 years (mainframe, then WebFOCUS since version 4.35). We have gone through more upgrades than I care to remember, some of them painful, some of them relatively easy.

About 18 months ago, we learned of the roadmap for the new version of WebFOCUS, dubbed version 8. We leaned that a complete overhaul of the MRE security model would be forthcoming, highly granular, etc. We also learned of the changes to the BI Dashboard, now dubbed BI Portal, and the Web 2.0-ish user interface and highly configurable options planned.

At Summit 2010, there were some presentations on WebFOCUS 8, and quite frankly I was surprised that it was not released on the marketing rollup to last year's Summit. From a customer perspective, we much prefer to have major software releases one or two months in advance of Summit so that we can take advantage of the excellent training/expertise available, with real-life questions born out of our hands-on testing....not just go to Summit to learn about features available in future releases.

So, here we are a year later, and I am surprised to see that WebFOCUS 8 has yet to be released. I have done searches on FOCALPOINT, within the IBI techsupport and developer areas, pulled up current webinars and old webinars and previewed the agenda for Summit 2011, with specific respect to BI Portal and WebFOCUS 8. My interest is motivated from a migration standpoint....i.e. how much pain it is going to be to move to the new environment with our MR users/groups/domains and how much is going to change from the BID to the BIP.

It would seem that there are issues getting this released kicked out the door? Our institution has no desire to be on the bleeding edge, but we do have responsibilities for strategic planning and migration windows to be mindful of. The release originally was quoted as being in the first half of 2010, but that didn't happen, and now it's getting close to Summit 2011 and I see more effort being put into 7.7 than I would expect for just an "interim architecture" until version 8.

Thus I come to the temple of knowledge and discussion, the excellent Focalpoint forums -- where customers and product developers can mingle, and everyone from the CEO of Information Builders to the newbie using Report Painter for the first time can pose questions and discuss answers.

When exactly is WebFOCUS 8 going to be released? What are the migration challenges and what tools will be provided to make the transition in architecture? If you're in the beta program, can you speak (without violating NDAs) to some of the problems that are being encountered which are delaying the rollout?

Though I find each new product offering interesting like "BI mobile" and "InfoMini", I need details on the core system, the bread-and-butter product, (WebFOCUS 8), in order to do adequate planning and dedicating resources in that tough decision-making process whether to stay put on 7.6.x or to upgrade.

Thank You,

-- Dan at UNO

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Rigel7,

Your IBI Rep should give you a Guestimate.

We were told, from memory, 3rd ot 4th Quarter this year, but that was quite a long time ago.

Thanks Waz for the advice.

I must be REALLY out of the loop on this. We were first exposed to the product roadmap for BI Portal and WF 8 at a user group meeting in Omaha with an initial release target of 2010. As a matter of fact, in the Sept 30,2009 "WebFOCUS Business Intelligence Portal" focalpoint web seminar on http://forums.informationbuild...1057331/m/9581045042 , the second slide clearly indicates a target release date of first half of 2010.

Here's my problem: We ignored installing/upgrading to 7.7 in 2010 because 1) we were coming up live on Peoplesoft and 2) 7.7 didn't have much of a perceived shelf-life, at least architecturally, because all the rah-rah was WebFOCUS 8 -- addressing long standing issues with a whole new security model and BI dashboard replacement. So it wasn't feasible for me to go to Summit 2010. Many of my colleagues went and relayed some of the sessions with the new features/architecture available in WF 8. Currently we have several colleges/campuses in different states of deployment with 7.6.11 and I have to weigh whether it is likely we would upgrade to version 8 "soon" and subsequently whether I should attend Summit 2011. In doing my research, I haven't seen much talk about something that seemed, at least on the surface, quite "imminent" 12 months ago.

Obviously, I haven't hob-nobbed with my customer rep to get the updated facts.

I'll start there. (Still, comparing notes with other colleagues on Focalpoint is a good thing.)

-- Dan at UNO