Oracle / Hyperion Forum - 17th October 2007
So did the event "Change Business Forever"... probably not, but it was very interesting to see how Oracle have integrated (or not as the case may be) Hyperion products into Oracle's plethora of products. A number of the presentations for the event are now available here. Possibly the most interesting one is called "Business Performance Measurement State of the Art" presented by Andy Neely (Cranfield University), who presented a very interesting set of survey results on the current Performance Management market, with results gathered from over 220 large organisations. To briefly summarise what was mentioned (there was a lot of percentages, and facts, so I will try and highlight the most interesting ones):
- Over 54% of those surveyed have adopted a balance scorecard approach
- Over 61% believe that improved company performance is attributed to Business Performance Measurement
- Over 63% (average) believe that their current BPM helps them make Strategic Decisions, Operation decisions and positively affects KPI's
- However, it is noted that over 50% believe that their BPM does not provide insight.
- Nearly 40% have concerns of their data quality
- By a huge margin (Over 70%), Spreadsheets are the tool of choice, compared to custom built software, ERP software, BPM software and nothing at all!
- A massive 74.6% of companies developed their BPM inhouse
- Over 64% do not visualise the links in their BPM
There are many more results in the presentation that are well worth a read.
As for the rest of the day, it was very interesting to see what Oracle and Hyperion have to offer, and they do not seem to have integrated Hyperion and the base Oracle suite that well, although it is promised to be coming. Without being from an Oracle background, and therefore seeing a lot of this as new, there seems to be a lot of overlapping applications, and so many parts to the framework that it is very difficult to see the wood for the trees. Saying they Hyperion Essbase is remaining, and as yet has not been renamed. The Oracle suite makes Microsoft look very coherent and easy to understand, and judging by Oracle's candidness to answer cost questions, still a lot cheaper. In fact Oracle are approaching the reduction in cost by adding more functionality and built in functions to make it quicker out of the box, and not reducing the product price. One last thing worth noting is their push to integrate with Microsoft Office, we all know the Essbase Excel Add-In was, and arguably still is best in class, and Oracle fully intend to continue with these Office integration efforts. However to be blunt, will they ever be able to integrate with Office as well as Microsoft can?
All in all certainly an interesting day, however I can not see Oracle slowing down Microsoft with their currently offerings!