The new BI... Hyperion and EPM

Last year OBIEE was the only Oracle BI offering. With the acquisition of Hyperion there is a whole new product suite and toolset that Oracle is now part of the Oracle ecosystem. There is overlapping functionality between these major product suites and this has caused the BI space to become less clear.

The Enterprise Performance Workspace (a Hyperion product) may eventually replace the OBIEE dashboard functionality. The SmartView offering in this same space is intriguing as it provides integration with MS Office products. Expect more confusion before the dust settles in this area.

The Essbase database appears to be the clear front runner in the OLAP space. It will eventually become the tool of choice for OLAP processing and OLAP based applications.