A few months back, I made a blog entry about the availability of the 'BI Challenge To Go', or BIC2G image that is available to Oracle partners from fellow Oracle partner Vlamis Software Solutions. We bought the 'Microsoft VHD Image with Evaluation License' edition of BIC2G and have been using it for several months. This edition of the BIC2G comes with a Windows evaluation license that expires after 30 days. My first concern was "What do I do after 3o days? Do I have to buy another image?". The answer to that is absolutely not. You can copy the evaluation version onto any number of computers and it doesn't violate the Vlamis, Oracle or Microsoft license agreements.
Our first use for BIC2G was to provide a base image for the Hyperion Hands-On Labs at Kaleidoscope 2009. This Using BIC2G, we were able to configure 25 laptops with the full Hyperion suite and sample applications in a matter of a few hours. Without the BIC2G image, it may have taken hundreds of hours to configure the laps for the class.
We are also now using the image internally to test our Dodeca product with the full Oracle suite of products. It has saved us, again, hundreds of hours of setup and configuration especially with the applications we don't use often.
Oracle is still restricting the BIC2G image to Oracle partners but I am continuing to lobby for this image to be made available to all customers.
