TDWI A Decade of Excellence: Education, Research and Community

Analysis: Behind Oracle's $3.3 Billion Bid for Hyperion

Hyperion gives Oracle a best-of-breed OLAP engine, which it already has. Hyperion also gives Oracle strong operational and multidimensional reporting capabilities, which it doesn't necessarily already have, but toward which it has been striving. If there's so much overlap, why did Oracle pull the trigger on this acquisition? Because there's at least one segment where there isn't much overlap: BPM. Add in a chance to steal market share from rival SAP, and you've got the makings of a $3.3 billion splurge. [more]

Microsoft Unveils Revamped Budgeting, Planning Tool

Microsoft this week plans to unveil Microsoft Forecaster 7.0, a budgeting, planning, and forecasting tool. What's that, you ask? You didn't know there was a Forecaster 6.0, let alone a Forecaster 6.7 (the current release)? You're probably not alone: since its acquisition from Great Plains half-a-decade ago, Forecaster hasn't carried an explicit Microsoft brand. That's changing: Microsoft officials expect to fold Forecaster into the same Office Business Applications group that develops Performance Point Server, Redmond's long-awaited performance management tool. [more]

LucidEra Touts Rip-and-Don't-Replace Outsourced BI

Why go through the hassle of researching, RFP-ing, selecting, implementing, overcoming implementation SNAFUs as they crop up, and managing your own in-house business intelligence (BI) infrastructure when you can effectively outsource it lock, stock, and smoking data warehouse appliance? That's the answer-begging question posed by LucidEra, which last week unveiled its SaaS BI outfrastructure, complete with integrated ETL, data quality, OLAP, and other BI niceties. [more]

SWOT: Oracle to Acquire Hyperion Solutions

Though many industry watchers expressed something less than shock at Oracle's announced intention to acquire Hyperion Solutions, nonetheless the list of questions runs long as to what it all means. Industry analyst Mike Schiff takes a look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats posed by this latest consolidation in the information management industry. [more]

TDWI Webinar: The Ins and Outs of DW Appliances

With a $1M+ entry-level price, traditional terabyte-scale data warehouse platforms are beyond the budgetary reach of many user organizations. No wonder these users are turning their attention to the latest generation of data warehouse appliances and similar hardware/software bundles, which sell for considerably less than the price of older data warehouse platforms. Furthermore, appliances are pre-integrated to reduce the time and cost of system integration. However, some technical users are turned off by the proprietary pieces built into appliances and the problems of re-integrating a bundle when it needs expansion. Are the benefits worth the problems? Register for this TDWI Webinar to hear our own Philip Russom outline the pros and cons, the ins and outs of data warehouse appliances. [more]

Applix TM1 by Applix Inc. achieves accelerated performance time by storing multidimensional data models in memory.