Upcoming Webcast on the Hyperion User Conferences

One of the questions I get asked the most often is, "Now that the Hyperion Solutions conference is sadly no longer [pause for moment of quiet reflection] which conference should I be attending?"  The answer is remarkably confusing since there is no longer one catch all conference.  While I've been answering this question in person and on this blog for close to two years now, this is still a major point of confusion in the user, partner, and Oracle communities.

So on March 3 at 11AM Central and March 5 at 1PM Central, I'm going to be hosting brief (30-45 minute) presentations on all the major conferences and who should attend which ones.  Normally, the weekly interRel webcasts are not open to our competitors, but for this one topic, we are opening it up to everyone.  While I normally don't like training my competition, in this case, I figure the more people who know where to go, the better.

I'll be featuring the OpenWorld, Collaborate, and Kaleidoscope conferences, but I'll also be speaking briefly about the local HUGs (Hyperion User Groups) and their replacements at OAUG, IOUG, and ODTUG.  I'll cover which type of users should go to which conferences (and user groups) and I'll give you an idea of the agendas for Hyperion/EPM attendees you're likely to see at each conference.

If you don't want to end up at the wrong conference in 2009 and beyond, try to carve out a few minutes to attend one of these talks I'll be doing.  Feel free to send a link over to your friends (those people you're connected to on Facebook and LinkedIn) so they can attend too.  Each webcast can handle up to 1,000 people, so the more, the merrier!  Here's the link and I'll see you on March 3 or 5th:

http://www.interrel.com/upcomingwebcasts.aspx

Hyperion Strategic Finance 11x is Finally Released

7 months (almost to the day) after Hyperion 11x was released, Hyperion Strategic Finance Fusion Edition (11.1.1.1.0) was finally announced on February 11, 2009.  The delayed release of HSF 11 made many speculate that the product was being discontinued though most believed that the delay was simply due to the difficulty in fully integrating Crystal Ball for predictive forecasting.

In addition to Crystal Ball integration, the new HSF 11 has better integration with Hyperion FDM (Financial Data Quality Management), Oracle Essbase, and Hyperion Planning.  There are also a number of user interface improvements.  Personally, I've seen the new UI, and it's much better than the System 9 version of HSF.  Check out http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/090211/aqw004.html for a list of the new features.

#1. Release of Oracle EPM, Fusion Edition (Hyperion 11x!)

In 2005, Hyperion System 9 was released, and the world was... not impressed.  While there were some neat centralizing of certain functionalities in System 9 like Workspace, Smart View, and Shared Services, the core applications were barely enhanced going into System 9.  Planning 4 looks a whole lot like 9.0 Planning.  Same goes for HFM.  Essbase 7.1.6 is almost identical to Essbase 9.0 though there are some important enhancements to Essbase ASO.

9.2 fixed a lot of the bugs in 9.0 and it did add some neat functionality, but again, nothing was revolutionary.  9.3 (and subsequently, 9.3.1) added a lot of functionality.  Frankly, it added more than the initial release of 9.0 did.

In July of 2008, almost exactly one year after Hyperion ceased operations as a separate company, Oracle released "EPM System, Fusion Edition" and the world was impressed.

Oracle EPM 11x was the most revolutionary version of Hyperion in many years.  While all the products have been extremely enhanced, Essbase in particular was substantially enhanced to include text & dates inside the cube, attributes that change over time, and the new Essbase Studio product.  Oracle even introduced a new application: Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management application.

Some expected Hyperion 11x to be bug-free, but with all the new functionally, there's no way it could have been.  There has since been a patch issued for it, and at interRel, we do have clients adopting it, but it's still not as stable as 9.3.x.  If a client bought Hyperion today, I'd definitely install 11.1.  If a client wanted to upgrade from 9.3.x, I'd make sure that they wanted some of the new 11x functionality.  If they didn't, I'd tell them to stay on the more stable 9.3.x platform.

Simply put, Hyperion 11.1 is the killer app that System 9 was supposed to be.  It makes a very compelling reason for those pre-System 9 holdouts to finally pay their enablement fee and upgrade to 11x.  If you haven't seen the list of new features, look on this blog and elsewhere, because you will be impressed.

Well, that brings to an end my Top 10 Oracle EPM (Hyperion) stories of 2008.  I'm curious what 2009 will bring, but since I'm writing this while on a cruise ship, I have to stop now.  Carnival's world famous "Men's Hairiest Chest Contest" starts at 3!

#2. Web Analysis, SQR Production Reporting, and maybe Interactive Reporting are dead

While it's great to hear that Financial Reporting, Smart View, and Workspace are continuing, judging by comments made publicly by Oracle people who would know (and previously documented on this blog), there are some products that are going away.  Okay, let me clarify that one.  Technically, Oracle will support every product they produce forever and ever and ever.  It's part of their Lifetime Support Policy: if you keep paying your maintenance fees, Oracle will keep cashing your checks to their support group.

But there's a big difference between "Sustaining Support" of a product and a product being the strategic direction.  If a product is the strategic direction for a given area, then Oracle will be enhancing, expanding, and adding functionality for that product as they devote substantial R&D to that product.  If a product is not on the strategic path, then feel free to continue to use it, but realize that it will only be supported with limited enhancements.

And so we bid a fond farewell to Web Analysis and SQR Production Reporting.  In SQR's case, the strategic direction for relational reporting is OBIEE Publisher, and for Web Analysis, the strategic direction is OBIEE ANswers+.  Make sure you send a nice condolence card and some flowers to the Hyperion family as they mourn the losses of W.A. and SQR.

So what about Interactive Reporting?  Depends on who you ask and who's publicly talking.  I've heard that it's being "replaced" (remember that nothing ever goes away at Oracle) by a combination of Answers and Dashboards.  I've also heard that there are clients out there (some as large as Fortune 5 and no, not 500, but five) pushing for Oracle to continue enhancing and improving the product.  There seem to be a lot more people saying that it's dead versus that it will continue to fight on.  If I had to guess, I'd say that Interactive Reporting is going away, so we'll send a nice "Get Well Soon" card but we'll begin writing the obituary just in case.

#3. Financial Reporting, Smart View, and Workspace Live on!

I'm writing this entry from a Carnival cruise ship in the Caribbean.  This demonstrates that 1)I am amazingly dedicated to my job; and 2) I have no idea how to relax.  (Is it strange to find blogging enjoyable?  Discuss.)

I am known as a betting man.  This is mostly because I regularly make fearless predictions and am normally willing to back them up either with my reputation or more commonly, with money.  If someone asked me at in the summer of 2007 to predict the Hyperion products that would not be long for this world now that Oracle was in charge, I would have said:

• Hyperion Pillar, because it's an antiquated product that Hyperion had already all but replaced with Hyperion Planning.
• Smart View, because Oracle already had their own Office add-ins.
• Workspace, because Oracle already had their own BI portal front-ends.
• Financial Reporting, because it's fundamentally an "End User Driven Report Writer" and Oracle had a ton of report writers that better fit with Oracle's philosophy that reports should be IT created.

And I would have been wrong on 3 of the 4 counts.  Based on public comments by Oracle in 2008, we now know that 3 of those products are Oracle's strategic direction (which is a polite way of saying that they're going to continue enhancing them and not just let them wither on the vine).

Smart View

Back in olden timey days, Hyperion had an Excel add-in for everything: Essbase, Planning, HFM, Reports, Analyzer, heck, Enterprise even had two.  With the release of System 9, they decided to combine to a single add-in: Smart View.  When Oracle and Hyperion joined, Oracle's BI products also had their separate Excel clients.

So the story goes, when the Oracle execs saw Smart View, they reliazed it had two strong things going for it.  1) It was designed to plug-in additional products making it easy to add things like OBIEE into Smart View.  2) it worked across all Office products, not just Excel.  Next thing we knew, not only was Smart View not going away, but it became the strategic direction for an Office add-in for all BI/EPM products.

Workspace

Prior to System 9, web front-ends for Hyperion were like Excel add-ins: every product had a different front-end.  Hyperion came up with the great idea of a web-based "portal" (and I do use that term loosely) that would easily enable developers to plug in additional products.  Oracle, like pre-System 9 Hyperion, was in a similar boat: while their different products had similar web looks-and-feels, each one was really a separately coded front-end.

Like Smart View, Oracle realized that the product that was more extensible, Hyperion Workspace, was the best go-forward front-end, and thus Hyperion Workspace became Oracle EPM Workspace.

Financial Reporting

When Oracle development first saw the user interface for Financial Reporting (FR), they actually laughed out loud.  This looks like stripped down version of Excel, they cried in between their howling cackles of cruel laughter.  Hyperion defended themselves: but financial users like Excel; they know it, love it, and want more of it!  Oracle countered by pointing out that users don't write reports, IT developers do, so what the users wanted was irrelevant.

Well, at least that's the way I heard the story and so the rumor began circulating that Financial Reporting was not going to be further enhanced and the strategic direction was OBIEE+ Publisher... until someone realized that there was one major, major difference between Publisher and FR.  Publisher is meant for banded reports whereas FR was designed for detailed, line-by-line, formatting.  At first, some questioned the need for this until it was correctly pointed out that financial-minded reports (and many other types, to be honest) were line formatted and specified.

While I don't want to take the time to explain what all that means (suffice to say that individual rows need individually different formatting in many financially minded reports), suffice to say that once everyone at Oracle realized the value, Financial Reporting was suddenly here to stay.

Disclaimer

Of course, all of the above is subject to change by Oracle, and Oracle probably will.  For the moment, though, I take comfort in knowing that Financial Reporting, Smart View, and Work Space are not only still here, they being embraced into the Oracle fold.