Dashboards, Reporting & Business Intelligence

Since quitting Oracle, I have been doing lots of presentations on my product InfoCaptor

I got this greate opportunity to present InfoCaptor at Australia OUG conference held on 3rd November in Melbourne. I was representing my company RudraSoft. It was a total new and different experience, met quite a few entrepreneurs and got great opportunity for networking. It was different in the sense that this was the first time I was doing at a new level and was actively seeking for the opportunity to talk to anybody in the conference and present my tool. Earlier with Oracle, I never had to spend anything from my pocket whereas now onwards I have to be careful at how and where I spend.
Since returning to India, I have been doing presentations individually to executives at various companies and the response is really encouraging and positive.
So what is InfoCaptor?

InfoCaptor is an ad-hoc dashboard designer. It is ad-hoc in the true sense that it just requires SQL queries to create portlet windows, cascading parameters and wiring portlets to the parameters. There is no additional database objects nor complicated server side configurations. You can find more details at http://www.InfoCaptor.com

The beauty of this product is that all the dashboards created using this tool are truly plug and play. It stores the dashboard definition in a serialized object file with extension of *.icv. It supports connection to all the major databases in the market and one of the most unique feature is that a single dashboard page has the ability to display information from multiple databases. For e.g. one portlet window can show information from Oracle database, second portlet can connect to DB2 and third can connect to MySQL or SQL server. You can drill from one portlet to another and all of this is done within the dashboard designer.

Apart from this, my team has designed some very useful dashboards for Oracle Application modules. You can download these plug and play dashboards for GL, AR, PA, System administration, Database administration and Discoverer Analytics.

These dashboards can be easily customized or enhanced by changing the underlying queries.

Your company or organization may have already invested in dashboard tools from big vendors such as Oracle (Siebel Analytics), BO, Cognos but there are quite a handful of reasons you may atleast wanna try this tool and see for yourself the benefits and the savings in time and resources.
So what is my plan?

For marketing InfoCaptor, most of it would be web-based and the remaining would be through workshops and presentations. I am currently focusing only in the small and medium sized segments in addition to niche areas like Oracle Application pluggable dashboards, Discoverer and EPB monitoring.

I have a very long term vision and plan for my company with lots of products to come. In the mean while I will keep doing some consulting work to meet the expenses. I have set up partnership with one consulting firm in USA and forming more in India. I am currently in Mumbai and if you need a personal demo of InfoCaptor or need more information please feel free and drop me a line at contact@infocaptor.com

It has taken a lot of time preparing for this day and I have a long way to go. I am learning lot of new things and changed quite a lot, for e.g I was by nature very introvert and modest but now I feel that I have become quite extrovert and l boast a lot atleast about my company and product. This is a very significant change in my personality which is a necessity. This blog has been very useful for me in my above transition. The other significant change is fearlessness. I don’t find any hesitations approaching CEOs, CFOs and CTOs. I can talk to any executive in the same manner as I speak to my friends. I think of this as a very important transition and I couldn’t have acheived this level without quitting my job. Quitting my job has automatically created a mind shift in which every act comes with a responsibility.
I plan to share most of the details of my new adventure and this blog is going to be a great assistant and facilitator.

I will wait for your feedback on InfoCaptor…

Yes, its been already 10 days since I quit my job with Oracle. It was wonderful working with the largest Enterprise Software Maker of the world. I met lot of wonderful and talented people, lots of clients, lots of travel and in the process gained some weight

Since quitting Oracle, in the past 10 days I have traveled across the whole world (almost!). From Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, from Pittsburgh to Mumbai (India) and from Mumbai to Australia (via Singapore). It has been so hectic and tiring these past 10 days that I couldn’t even figure out which jet-lag I was suffering

There are lots of updates on my personal and professional side.

On the professional side, I have started my own software business. I was doing very well at Oracle as a BI consultant and I could have carried on for years eventually joining the 10 year and 15 year Oracle veteran’s league. But then thinking about where I want to be and knowing that I have so much energy and potential within myself, I kept feeling that I need something different in my life. This decision to quit my job and start on my own is more spiritual than any other reasons I can think of.

I believe, every soul that incarnates on this planet has a purpose, every soul decides for itself what it wants to do in order to gain experience, the purpose of this life is to grow our soul’s experience in order to move to the next level. Increasing our soul’s experience increases the spirituality of it. If there is no new learning, there is no new experience gained and hence the spirituality stagnates. I am kind of a very restless person, possibly a common trait of any Sagittarian. I constantly like to explore new things even though I may be a little chicken initially. It is just a matter of time to get a hang of it. Once you are there for a while, you eventually become a pro in what you do. Then it is just matter of making a conscious decision whether you want to improvise it further if there is more room or simply switch.

In my case I have simply decided to switch and try something totally new. The beauty of this important decision is that I was the only person resisting it initially. My wife was little worried initially but her confidence in me overcame the butterflies in the stomach. Everybody, including my friends and relatives are supportive of this decision. I couldn’t have asked for a better timing and situation than this. I believe there is no specific age to take risks, especially calculated risks.

Infact I feel that the decision to not switch and keep doing what I was doing would have been more risky. Isn’t it blind faith to devote your precious years in doing something without knowing what is on the other side? The more I think of this the more I feel sure about my decision. I also believe that things don’t happen unless you are ready. I couldn’t have done this 1 year ago or say 6 months ago, simply because I was not mentally ready. I allowed the idea to dissipate fully so that I am left with only a singular choice of no return.
On the personal side, I am currently in Mumbai (India) and will be here for 2 months. I am attending my brother’s marriage and will be celebrating my son’s 1st birthday. My parents are ecstatic seeing their grandson and his pranks. I have become a lazy bum and enjoying my partial vacation.

I will update soon on what are my next plans, venture and what I was doing in Australia?