Oracle Announce the Release of new Hyperion EPM Solution

12th May 2010

We are all very excited here at M-Power, yes we’re that sad, to finally get our hands on the latest release of the Oracle Hyperion Performance Management suite v11.1.2. This is the 1^st major release for nearly a year and half, which is a long time to wait in anyone’s book, and thankfully it’s been worth the wait.  v11.1.2 has many of functionality improvements and new applications we have been promised and waiting for. We’ve taken an initial look and put down some of the key highlights and lowlights as we see them so far.  There will be more to follow over the coming months as we do more work in the new version so watch this space.

The first thing that hits you when you access this version is the new look and feel.  It gives you the immediate impression that this is going to be a significant new release!

   Fig 1: New look and feel of the Home Page                                                               

Organisations that have been considering a move to Windows 7 and / or Internet Explorer 8 will be pleased to hear that v11.1.2 now fully supports the latest releases from Microsoft.

Hyperion Planning (HP)

For HP customers this represents the most significant product improvement since Oracle acquired Hyperion in 2007, the key changes include:-

1. Workflow - This component of HP has had a major overhaul. The changes provide much needed additional flexibility, most of our clients having not previously been able to take full advantage of this functionality. These include the ability to use more than one dimension to define the “Planning Unit.”
2. Validation rules for data entry - Much requested by many of our clients, validation rules can now be applied to data entry forms to improve the quality of data capture. For example maximum and minimum values can be defined with messages and / or colour coding for users if these rules are breached.

   

               Fig 2: Validation rules have been improved

3. A number of other data entry form presentation improvements including
   1. A drag and drop style to form creation
   2. The ability to add formula rows or columns including blank rows.

Interestingly for government organisation there is also the addition of an entirely new HP module called “Public Sector Budgeting” delivering a purpose built solution for central, state and local government agencies.  While it is based on a US model they assure us that it will work equally well for any country, we will tell you our thoughts as we delve into the content a bit more.

Hyperion Essbase

The key improvements are centred on the ongoing development of Aggregate Storage databases as well as several administrative items. No major changes.

Smartview

There has been a major overhaul of Smartview in this release.  The Microsoft interface that replaces and extends the capabilities of the Essbase add in has now reached virtual parity with the web interface.  This means that clients who prefer working with the Microsoft tools can now do so without having to jump into the web interface for certain elements. For Office 2007 users, which is hopefully all of you, further enhancements have been made to the ribbons continuing to improve the user experience.

Hyperion Financial Management (HFM)

The excitement is not just limited to HP customers; those of you with HFM will be delighted to hear that Oracle has released two brand new applications, Hyperion Financial Close Management and Hyperion Disclosure Management. 

• Hyperion Financial Close Management - centralises task management and delivers a web based management dashboard for the end-to-end financial close process that typically spans ERP, BI and EPM systems as well as manual tasks, delivering improved visibility and predictability. 
• Hyperion Disclosure Management - helps organisations ensure the completeness and accuracy of external and statutory financial reports.

The interesting thing about these two applications is that they are not reliant on an HFM deployment, they operate independently of HFM.  This is exciting for a couple of reasons; one it builds on Oracle’s promise of open technology which means all customers can use these products. And two; Oracle has named them in the Hyperion fold which means they see the value the Hyperion name has in the market, which means will continue to see real focus from Oracle in this space going forward.

So what’s the downside!!!!

Well it can’t all be good news, and the downside with this release is unfortunately a lot bigger than any of us would like.  Amazingly v11.1.2 is for new installs only; it is not supported as a migration from an existing release!! 

The good news, if you can call it that, is the 1^st service pack which is due sometime between July and September will have support for migrations.  We think it’s a bit of a shame to have the new release dangling in front of our noses for that long without being able to do anything about it, I’m sure many of you will think so too.

Additionally for those lucky new customers who can deploy v11.1.2 the only supported Web Application Server supported in this release is currently Oracle Web Logic Server (specifically v10.3.2).  That said Oracle has been good enough to provide a limited use version of Web Logic with all EPM products that need a web server.  Again this issue will be addressed in the 1^st service pack! 

Our thoughts...

As you would imagine we’re already using the latest version in our development environment and it looks great so far.  We’ll continue to provide updates in subsequent newsletters and demo’s at our next round of user groups.

Our initial thoughts/recommendations are; for new customers we’d stick with 11.1.1.3, we know it’s stable and it works because we’ve found most of the bugs, so we would advise you to wait for service pack 1 before going with v11.1.2.  For existing customers role on service pack 1 so that we can all start to benefit from the latest improvements!!!

If you would like more information on v11.1.2 give any of us a ring and have a look at the associated information on the Oracle website to get you excited about August and service pack 1, links below.

HP: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/hp_new_features.pdf

Essbase: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/esb_new_features.pdf

HFM: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/hfm_new_features.pdf

Smartview: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/sv_new_features.pdf

Oracle Press Release: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/066183