Oracle is buying Hyperion. SAP is buying Pilot. Cognos and Business Objects stand alone.
This is huge. I'm still overwhelmed by the implications.
I don't doubt anything this article says:
Hyperion and its popular Essbase product, has "almost no overlap" with existing Oracle products, Phillips said. But, there is overlap between the PeopleSoft's performance management products Oracle acquired in 2003 and Hyperion's products. The PeopleSoft products will become part of a new enterprise performance management division, Phillips said. Oracle has had a "small" performance management product that "wasn't that pervasive in the market," it considers Hyperion a complementary, best-of-breed vendor, he said.
Instead, Oracle has focused on building out the underlying infrastructure required for BI, he said, and the Hyperion acquisition will give it critical analytical applications to layer on top of its data management and BI technologies. Specifically, the acquisition gives Oracle an enterprise planning system, a financial consolidation product, a powerful OLAP engine and a "dedicated" field sales organization. It also believes the move will help it in its battle's with rival SAP. Many SAP customers use Hyperion, Phillips said, and Oracle is achieving "critical mass" within SAP accounts.
"Now Oracle's Hyperion software will be the lens through which SAP's most important customers view and analyze their underlying SAP ERP data," he said in an earlier statement.
From my perspective as a consultant it's all good. I'm confident that Hyperion's BPM apps are going to go through pretty much as is. It puts the Informatica OEM in a wobbly position, and it will probably delay integration of the more recent product acquisitions like Crystal Ball and Upstream. The integration of Hyperion MDM works technically but it will have to compete with Oracle's Customer Data Hub. I don't know how successful that product is. MDM hasn't sold well on the Hyperion side although everybody who gets it loves it.
There's basically no question that this is excellent news for us core Essbase folks and for those applications based on Essbase. The war between Essbase and Oracle's Express is ages old, and while performance wise, old hackers like myself and those on the Express side could get into lengthy debates, there was no question the Essbase was the more interoperable product. Now that it is plug-compatible with the new Yukon DTS, Oracle will have another way to kick MSFT around.
I say this is really bad news for Microstrategy. When the Oracle technical folks recognize what they'll be able to do with Oracle + Essbase, Microstrategy's whole high end BI story will crumble. In many ways this is a technical match made in heaven.
What's iffy is of course matters of marketing and product synergy. That is to say if I were a product marketing manager at Hyperion, I would get that resume out. Sullivan, in his letter to customers this morning declared in about as obvious as is possible to say that Hyperion sales reps have some security. So that whole organizational end of Hyperion is in jeopardy.
There have been a lot of us who have been worried about Hyperion development, ie without Gersten where would the engineering organization be. I think that Oracle would make a huge mistake to do anything but hang onto a lot of that engineering staff and keep them happy. Obviously System 9 integration will become a priority as product feature planning levels off. The good news is that there are not many major flaws in System 9.
Hyperion's tech support has taken a dive in recent years. The Oracle Developer Network will be a huge boost for that end of the business. If I were smart, I'd probably spin off a training business and start raking in dough for anybody out there who wants to become certified.
There's a lot more to think about, but on the whole there's
basically one thing to know. There is now a new gorilla in the BI and
BPM space.
What does this mean for Oracle BI and for Hyperion's toolset, especially Essbase? Given that Oracle already have their own OLAP tools, one wonders... I think this can only be a good thing for Microsoft - surely existing Essbase users will now be questioning its future and be looking for migration options, not necessarily from Oracle.
I say there's not much of a hidden agenda or big concern over MSAS. Hyperion and Microsoft are basically the only vendors which stuck it out and established MDX as the single OLAP equivalent of SQL. A universal API has been the desire of the industry forever. The announcement several months (and versions) ago that the new Yukon DTS will be plug compatible with Essbase and MSAS. This is really about making marting in DW environments with Essbase easy and was a good idea because this was done before the Hyperion - Informatica OEM deal. Hyperion also supports Teradata's Active Data Warehouse initiative and architecture.
There is no way that Oracle would think for a minute about trying to rip Hyperions BPM applications from Essbase. It would essentially destroy the product, and Hyperion knows that. Rodek made the strategic decision years ago to leverage everything onto Essbase which is essentially Hyperion's IP. Oracle will enough issues in migrating them to their own appserver tier. Essbase is safe in the apps.
What's up in the air is where Oracle will or will not build links into Peoplesoft and Siebel and bundle some analytics into those suites. Should they decide to do that it will be a huge distinguishing advantage. I can't you how many nVision users will be rescued by that move alone.
Getting Hyperion's Analyic Integration Server working with Warehouse Builder is the holy grail because Essbase already does Hybrid OLAP (MOLAP head on top of RDBMS Body).
The Wellington Fund talks about some financials:
Hyperion adds meaningful strength to Oracle
■ Our view is that Oracle’s acquisition of Hyperion instead of other BI vendors is driven by a number of key synergies: ability to push Oracle to the leadership position in the finance budgeting and planning application
markets; a new product suite that is gaining momentum in the BI market, a solid legacy base of Essbase customers and physical proximity to Oracle’s facilities. Our belief is that Hyperion’s work to turn around the Brio assets and build a credible BI suite is a key asset that Oracle should be able to leverage.
Recent Comments