Oracle - Best Ability to Execute Among EPM Suites

Gartner has released their annual "Magic Quadrant" report on CPM (Corporate Performance Management also known as EPM) suites. To the shock of almost no one, there are only three vendors in the "Leaders" quadrant which means they have high ability to execute and completeness of vision. Those three are IBM (with the Cognos products), SAP (with the Business Objects and OutlookSoft products), and of course, Oracle (with the Hyperion products).

Oracle EPM scored higher in "ability to execute" than any other vendor although SAP did rank higher in terms of "completeness of vision." The "ability to execute" category is determined largely by a customer survey, and it's interesting to note that Oracle had the largest improvement in execution of any vendor Gartner surveyed.

One might wonder why Oracle didn't fare above IBM and SAP in terms of vision, considering those vendors seem unsure as to what they're doing with their long-term EPM strategies. A clue can be found in the comments at the end of the article where Gartner mentions that no major increases in functionality were released in 2009. Further:

...There has not been any major advancement in product vision during the same time frame, and Oracle needs to show evidence of thought leadership in CPM to maintain its position relative to other megavendors and some of the CPM specialists. Its IP functionality and planned financial-close functionality partly address this.

In other words, Oracle had better keep advancing (rather than focusing on just integrating Oracle EPM with the existing Oracle products) or risk falling significantly behind on the vision front. The release of 11.1.2 (Talleyrand) and hopefully, OBIEE 11g will surely help.