I have been at Hyperion's Solution 2007 conference over the last couple of days, i have had a great time, As with most things in life i like a few things and there were others that i didn't not enjoy as much. But in all a pretty good conference.

My biggest takeaway from the conference is the love the business user or the financial community has for the Hyperion suite of products, they really like this stuff. And as could be expected were VERY worried about how things are going to go with the Oracle acquisition. Quite a few of these customers seem to have SAP as their ERP and were worried about how things would pan out. Quite understandably.

One of the keynotes were by Tomas Kurien from Oracle trying to explain what the future will be like, but the presentation was pretty generic. Below are some of the topics covered:

1. Common customer base of 4000 customers

2. Shared vision for the future of Performance management

3. Smoothest transition

4. Vision of EPM - Enterprise Performance Management - ERP / transaction system, Operation BI & Financial Performance Management systems.

5. Oracle+ Hyperion Joint Mission - Insight to Action

6. Objective - Product - Stage in Management lifecycle

Set Financial and Operation Strategy - Crystal Ball - Set Goal

Model Financial Objectives - Strategic Finance + Performance Scorecard - Set Goal

Define Financial & Operating Plan - Planning - Plan

Align Plan with Operation information - Planning + ORCL ERP + ORCL BI Apps - Plan

Monitor Financial and Operation Execution - ORCL BI + Alerts + Search - Monitor

Integrated financial + Operation Analytics - ORCL + HYP BI - Analyze

Integrated financial + Operation Analytics  - ORCL Data Integration + Quality - Analyze

Integrated financial + Operation Analytics  - HYP MDM - Analyze

Consolidate Financial Information - HFM + MDM + Financial Data Quality - Report

Generate Reports - Analytical Services + ORCL BI Publish - Report

Compare Financial and Operation Plans - Performance Scorecard + BI Tools - Align

Present in Executive Portal - System9 Workspace - align

7. System 9 Momenum continues - Catalyst for performance management, 1700 customers, 9.3version & is going to be extended to EPM

8. Don't worry SAP customer we are going to continue support, We are staying open source system

9. Check out widgets and R&D Central.

those were the key takeaways, more later.

On the lighter side, the first signs of change are the

1. The Orange from the Hyperion Site has been replaced by Oracle Red

2. The always used Hyperion Management Cycle Chart has now got the ORACLE Red

Prashanth Rai