Blog: Colin White

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Hyperion Joins the BI Suite Battle

Hyperion yesterday announced Hyperion System 9, which was made generally available at the end of September. Like its main competitors, Cognos and Business Objects, the objective of System 9 is to provide a single set of tools for business performance management and business intelligence. What is interesting about System 9 is that this toolset not only contains business intelligence tools (System 9 BI+), but also financial management and business planning tools. This gives Hyperion a key advantage. In this respect Cognos is the main competitor.

Other key aspects of System 9 include a new user interface that provides a single user interface to the Hyperion toolset. Like other vendors, Hyperion realizes the importance of Microsoft Office integration. This integration is provided by a SmartView Office add-in. In the announcement Hyperion also placed strong emphasis on its integration with the SAP environment, which could provide a significant revenue base for Hyperion.

One product that has received less attention to date is Hyperion's Master Data Management, which it acquired from Razza Solutions. This product is gaining a lot of attention from customers and could become a key distinguishing feature of System 9 against the competition.

Over the last few weeks we have seen announcements from three key BI vendors, and this raises the stakes in the battle of suites. Next up is Microsoft SQL Server 2005 at the beginning of November.

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