EPM Cloud / Dodeca Web Services

Wow, I can't believe it is Friday already; it seems like Tuesday to me. I guess time sure flies when you are having fun!

On Wednesday, I sat in on a webcast from the Hynote group about their EPMCloud offering. It was pretty interesting what they have. One participant on the webcast was a guy from Amazon Web Services which is the host for the EPM Cloud; it is the same host for the Full360 cloud offering. His slides talked about the web service oriented functionality of cloud applications. That is music to me as our Dodeca product is architected such that the client is delivered via a web service and all data and metadata, from Essbase or relational sources, is transmitted via a web service.

The web service architecture of Dodeca differs greatly from other offerings in the EPM world. Every other 'web' application that talks to Essbase delivers, more or less, the entire user interface everytime you need different data. Dodeca, on the other hand, separates the user interface elements from the data requests. This allows us to significantly reduce bandwidth requirements using a patent-pending process in Dodeca that transfers only the necessary data while caching user interface elements in a private storage area on the users computer.

We have already tested Dodeca on the Full360 cloud; we plan to test on the EPM Cloud offering shortly. My vision is that Dodeca will be packaged such that customers can add Dodeca to their cloud environment very easily.

One of the advantages of cloud computing is that customers pay for computing resources on an as-used basis. Unlike Essbase deployments today, you really don't need to spend as much effort determining how large your deployment is going to grow and then buy hardware large enough to accomodate what you might need. Rather, you can start small and your cloud can grow as you grow and you only pay for what you actually use. Oracle already offers an annual usage price for Essbase (instead of shelling out big bucks up front); I believe they will eventually have to introduce a monthly, per-user pricing model to keep up with the cloud concept. When that happens, the potential user base for Essbase will expand expotentially as smaller companies that consider Essbase out-of-reach will then be able to afford world class analytics. Dodeca is ready for that wave!

Finally, information about the EPM Cloud is available on their new website at EPMCloud.com.