Oracle + Hyperion = Gorilla

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.

Comments

[Nick]

Do you think Oracle will keep Hyperion MDM or we they proceed with their Customer Data Hub mdm instead of?

[Cobb]

I haven't heard anything definitive on that. It is clear at the moment that the majority of Oracle application sales reps are not yet on top of the BI game, so I would expect that no product decisions should be made pre-emptively. Oracle should get its sales strategy working comprehensively and then see what sells better.

As for product capabilities, I couldn't say one way or another which deserves to live or die.