We Don't Make Essbase, We Make Essbase Better!

We have always claimed that Essbase was better with Dodeca, but until now we had only anecdotal evidence about how our customers get more return on their Essbase investment using Dodeca.  Now we have something a bit more concrete.  Recently, the annual BI Survey, which bills itself as the “world's largest vendor-independent survey of Business Intelligence and Performance Management users”, published the results of their annual survey, The BI Survey 12.  As in past years, we asked our customers to participate in the survey and, as a result, we earned a mention in the survey.  More importantly, we are thrilled by how we were mentioned.

One particular question in the survey asks customers how well they achieved their goals with their selected product.  In the past, Essbase has not scored well on this metric but, this year, for the first time ever, Essbase attained the highest score in goal achievement among all the products in the BI Survey.

• Better than Microsoft Analysis Services?  Yes!  
• Better than SAP BW?  Yes!  
• Better than Cognos?  Yes!   
• Better than Microstrategy?  Yes!  
• Better than TM1 / Tableau / QlikTech???   Yes! Yes! Yes!   
• Even better than OBIEE?   Yep!  

The analysis provided in the survey provides clues as to why the Goal Achievement Index for Essbase was the highest of all 25 products reviewed:

"This year for the first time we have a BI Giant with the highest goal achievement level. Oracle Essbase which has had quite low goal achievement scores in previous years, performs very well this year.  The sample includes more answers this year from companies that use Essbase in conjunction with front-end tools like Dodeca. These seem to increase the ratings for Essbase compared to ratings from users that only use the Excel Add-in."

That’s right.  Dodeca appears to be the reason that more customers achieve their goals with Essbase than with any other product.  If you are still using one of the Excel add-ins as your interface to Essbase, what are you missing?  Contact us today to learn more about how you can make Essbase better at your company using Dodeca and don't forget to ask about our no-cost evaluation program!

We have just released some exciting innovations in our most recent release.  Click here to read about the newest innovations inside the Dodeca Spreadsheet Management System.

We finally got out and did something here in the beautiful city of Sydney.  Yesterday, Darlene and I did the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb with Mark Rittman and Stuart Bryson from Rittman Mead along with Stuart's wife Pamela.  Here is a shot from the top of the bridge.

After the climb, we met up with Ash Beauman from Rittman Mead Australia for a few beers and even some late night clubbing around The Rocks area of Sydney.  Of course, we had plenty of time to discuss OBIEE and how Essbase fits into the picture; I guess we are all true geeks.

Later, I pulled an all-nighter to go on-line and watch my Michigan Wolverines play Iowa; I didn't like the result.  Today, it is off to Manly Beach to explore another part of Sydney.

More Evidence That Oracle Loves Essbase

Since the Oracle merger, it seems the developments concerning OBIEE and Essbase have been really exciting for traditional OBIEE people and less exciting for Essbase practitioners. The focus seems to have been on providing Essbase as another data source at the physical storage layer of OBIEE. There are advantages to that approach in that OBIEE made federated queries possible. Federated queries combine data from both Essbase and relational data sources into a single semantic layer and basically made the source of the data invisible to the end user. As implemented, the concept is fantastic for dashboards but for those of us raised on the interactivity of the classic Excel add-in, it was not really that exciting.

Flash forward to last week when I was on a demo of an upcoming product with a couple of old Hyperion friends who have recently returned to Oracle. The product, the Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (“OBIA”) Essbase Integrator, turns the OBIEE/Essbase development effort to date on its head. The purpose of the product is open the data in the pre-packaged OBIA products, such as Oracle Financial Analytics and Oracle Spend and Procurement Analytics, to Essbase. At its heart, the Essbase Integrator will take data from those applications, which is currently available in OBIEE, and spin off Essbase cubes from them. The new product will maintain bi-directional metadata on both the OBIA side and the Essbase side to minimize maintenance efforts.

Obviously, the benefit for Essbase focused people is that this product has the potential to greatly expand the footprint of Essbase throughout the Oracle customer base. The benefit for OBI customers is that they can extend the capabilities of their applications to add some of the things that Essbase does very well. Some of those capabilities include:

• What-if and scenario modeling
• Allocations
• Multiple hierarchy rollups

Let me emphasize again, this product is not yet available and Oracle is traditionally tight-lipped about shipment dates. I do know, however, that Oracle is planning a beta test cycle for the spring. If you are an OBIA customer and are interested in providing feedback during the beta cycle, send me email at timtow at appliedolap dot com with the subject line ‘Essbase Integrator’ and I will pass your information to the right people at Oracle.