Essbase On-Prem to Oracle Analytics Cloud - How, When, and Why

Editor's Notes

• #8: Take a poll here:   How many of you have Essbase in some form? On-prem? Stand-alone 11g, or maybe as part of BI Foundation Suite (12c) In the cloud already (OAC-Essbase)? Or maybe you have OAC but just haven't instantiated an Essbase instance yet? How about Planning? How many of you use Essbase in Planning? On-prem? PBCS/EPBCS? Is there anyone here just wondering "what the heck is Essbase?" ************************************************************************** There’s a very good reason that Essbase is one of the most popular software applications for finance departments. More than 10,000 companies are using Essbase to gain valuable insights, including many Fortune 100 and 500 companies. ************************************************************************** Essbase was first branded as an Oracle product after Oracle’s acquisition of Hyperion in 2007. But Oracle Essbase’s history goes all the way back to pre-Hyperion days with the company that created it in 1992, Arbor Software. This means that the most loyal Essbase customers have been using the software for more than two decades! **************************************************************************
• #9: Essbase has a great history, for fantastic technology 2005 -- Top 10 influential technology innovation: It's in pretty good company there -- sharing that honor with innovations like Netscape, Blackberry, Google, Virtualization, VOIP, Linux, XML, the Pentium processor, and ADSL. By the time Oracle acquired Hyperion, Essbase had become known as the multi-dimensional database technology that put online analytical processing (OLAP) on the business intelligence map. It has spurred the creation of scores of rival OLAP products – and billions of OLAP cubes! So you made the right choice when you selected and implemented Essbase! We’ve seen plenty of confusion around name changes: Hyperion tried giving Essbase an official name of Hyperion System 9 BI+ Analytic Services. But we largely ignored that and finally Oracle just settled on “Essbase”.
• #10: The next 10 years brought a lot of change too. 11g OBIEE incorporates Essbase (as BIFS) Fusion picks up Essbase BICS becomes OAC and adds Essbase Cloud offering All of the sudden Essbase is in and part of everything And now – Essbase 19c
• #11: All throughout that time Essbase continued to improve and increase in functionality. But at it’s core, its Features and Benefits have largely remained the same… Again, you can see you made the right choice when you selected Essbase So let’s look at how to leverage that decision for the future.
• #12: Much of the change is thanks to shifting attitudes among finance executives: 73% of CFOs now trust the cloud with their financial data, as compared with only 33% in 2014.
• #13: ************************************************************************** so what was revealed?? ************************************************************************** Essbase will not be a part of Oracle Analytics going forward ************************************************************************** After a long battle with a 10-year identity crisis, and some very confusing decisions by Oracle -- Essbase is a database again! And while it's always been a database, now it will be acknowledged by Oracle as one and be a stand-alone database again. ************************************************************************** Next Essbase version will be Essbase 19c (follows the Database nomenclature and versioning) By the way, ever wonder what the version numbers and letters mean? There's actually rhyme and reason behind them.
• #14: The only functional diff between OAC Essbase 12c and 19c is the “hardening” of the hybrid code.  Much deeper dependency analysis, freeing memory constraints that previously would arise. Sandboxing and Scenario Management: = lightweight Scenario management with workflow Sandboxing has a built-in approval process. Save your cubes in sandboxes for testing and moving to production later. Scenario Management allows you to create workflows and control ownership
• #15: huge clean-up is connections/Datasources Previously drill-thru, partitions, security filters, build rules all had some unique way of hooking in to external sources.  DT required Studio and some schema, rul files are binary and not easy to edit, security filters required custom API program, partition to relational wasn’t possible; partition to other essbase had its own file/way of capturing connection info.  It was a cludge.   Now with connection + datasource(s), you can have all that functionality native to the platform.    This enables things like multi-cell drill thru,… <next slide> …efficient filters using datasourcelookup, new rul editor, and federated partitions.  All except new rul editor have a technical gallery template you could reference
• #16: …efficient filters using datasourcelookup, new rul editor, and federated partitions.  Federated Partitions Leverage source systems by accessing data directly from the source system with near realtime access to the data Essbase benefits are zero footprint (no data stored), using rich semantics for aggregation and calculation Faster outline restructure This is the foundation for Essbase on Autonomous Database Push computation to where it is done best All these features except new rul editor have a technical gallery template with a readme you could reference using Cube Designer in Excel. Note: If you just build the template using import from the JET UI, you don’t get the readme for what to do.
• #20: Maybe you’ve already been eyeing an upgrade for your Essbase on-premises deployment—so why not move to the cloud as well while you’re at it? Completing an on-premises Essbase upgrade is no easy feat: you’ll need a team of infrastructure experts with specialized skills, a sizable timeline and budget, and a strong collaboration effort between all parties involved. Businesses are usually able to reduce their costs for upgrading and post-upgrade maintenance by moving to the cloud. When you use platform as a service (PaaS) cloud software, the cloud provider (in this case Oracle) is responsible for operating system upgrades, infrastructure, and maintenance, which ensures that the application runs on stable and cutting-edge hardware. A cloud migration also allows you to move from capital IT expenses to operating IT expenses. When you run software on-premises, you need to purchase the licenses and infrastructure yourself, as well as handling any support and maintenance. Meanwhile, the cloud runs on an operating expenses model, in which you pay a monthly or annual fee in order to retain access to cloud services. Many businesses find this latter option more convenient, especially those without a large amount of capital to invest upfront. But then there is also the elephant in the room for many of you: Support for Essbase 11g is going away (December 31, 2021) And support for OAC-Essbase ends as your contract expires Everyone should come to Essbase 19c
• #21: Unless you’re already in the IT business, fixing technical problems and issues isn’t your primary objective as a company. Still, you might think that this is a necessary evil in order to get the financial insights you need to excel. The cloud massively reduces your IT support requirements and footprints so that you can get back to what you do best. Moving to the cloud will also reduce the cost and effort you need to invest to deploy, manage, and maintain your analytics solution. In other words, you don’t need to have a team of infrastructure experts tasked with maintaining the servers, operating systems, hardware, and networking. When you’re in the cloud, all these activities are handled by Oracle, freeing you from your IT obligations. This also means that you don’t have to worry about whether you can keep up-to-date with all your software and hardware during your annual budget cycle. Oracle is entirely responsible for the hardware, and you remain in control of updates to the application software during a planned upgrade period.
• #22: The requirements to run enterprise analytics workloads are getting higher and higher every year. Investing in and maintaining the cutting-edge hardware needed to power today’s business intelligence, reporting, and analytics is a quite expensive endeavor. Oracle’s Exalytics Era transformed Essbase and allowed us to fully leverage huge boxes Engineered systems led to massive scalability improvements Transactions throughput in a database Parallel "everything" (rest, export, import, calc) Exceptional use of memory (hybrid mode, dynamic calcs, etc) Oracle has this powerful new hardware at its fingertips that spins up quickly, scales across the enterprise, and adjusts according to business changes and growth. Migrating to Oracle’s new Essbase 19c Cloud platform will lower your total cost of ownership by removing the massive hardware needed to provide scalable and reliable systems from the cost equation.
• #23: If you’ve been paying attention to recent goings-on, it’s clear that Oracle is now a “cloud-first” company. Oracle now operates more than 600 SaaS (software as a service) applications, and it’s clear that the company eventually plans to offer all of its on-premises products in the cloud. This strategic direction has one important implication: most new features for Oracle products will first be rolled out in the cloud before they reach the on-premise versions of the same software. As it stands now, Oracle’s development of the latest and greatest new features is geared toward the cloud. The same functionality typically only arrives in the on-premises version as time permits, which could be up to 24 months. Meanwhile, the equivalent cloud software is updated roughly every two to three months with new features and bug fixes. The Essbase product team doesn’t necessarily follow corporate norms quite so literally. The initial offerings of Essbase 19c on-premise versions will have full parity with the cloud. The Essbase team is striving to have one main codeline and have everybody using it + or – a couple of patches. It’s not hard to understand why Oracle might prefer developing new features for the cloud. Because Oracle runs cloud software on their own servers, they have greater control over the operating environment and can roll out updates more quickly. Ultimately, Oracle has stated that it aims to release new updates and functionality for its cloud software every month.
• #24: Oracle Smart View for Office (or just Smart View) is a Microsoft Office interface designed for use with Oracle’s enterprise performance management products (such as Essbase). Smart View provides more advanced analytics, as well as additional visualizations and reporting capabilities. The good news for Smart View fans is that Oracle continues to invest in the product, and has exciting new functionality in store as it pertains to Essbase 19c. Businesses that move to the cloud with Essbase will be able to continue using Smart View in the way that they’re most familiar with. This helps you make a more seamless cloud transition—and every little bit helps, of course.
• #25: Because Oracle wants to incentivize customers to move to the cloud, new cloud users may have some leverage during negotiations for licensing. Cloud migrations are particularly affordable for small and medium-size organizations: you can save money by licensing only the number of users you need.
• #26:   Breakthrough technology to do all of what the baby vendors do without giving up any Essbase MOLAP stuff. Fully hardened memory utilization optimized for performance Brings power of BSO Procedural calculations and power of ASO dynamic aggregation and calculation to a single engine Unified query processor for BSO and ASO Size of database shrinks exponentially Restructuring time reduces dramatically Reduced time for procedural activities like data copy, data clear, data export, etc. Provides a declarative way of building Essbase cubes
• #27: When you run software on-premises, the hardware it runs on needs to be capable of meeting the maximum capacity that the software will require. This means that you may need to purchase hardware that is far more powerful than you need for most use cases—for expected future growth or just to accommodate the rare occasions when you need that extra power. The cloud totally flips this concept on its head. You start with the appropriate resources for your current needs, and you can increase these as time goes by and your business grows. You can also scale your resource usage up and down during times of peak demand.
• #28: Some clients have already implemented Oracle EPM with software such as Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS), which has limited reporting capabilities. Thanks to the flexibility of Essbase Cloud, it can integrate with not only your existing EPM implementations but also with on-premise/cloud databases, OAC, DVCS, and many other investments. So now that choice you made when you selected and implemented Essbase can be made into an even smarter choice by augmenting your existing investments.
• #29: Essbase in the cloud should be very similar to what you are used to with Essbase on-premises, which is a highly underrated advantage that’s not always obvious when considering a cloud migration. Using Essbase 19c Cloud allows you to keep using the same people with the same Essbase expertise and familiarity with functionality like Smart View, calculation scripting, and Essbase cube technology. No costly retooling of your workforce is required as would be the case when moving to a different technology, Essbase 19c Cloud leverages the knowledge and skills of your existing workforce.
• #30: Initial Feature parity with 19c Cloud
• #31: Let’s talk about how you are going to the cloud. Maybe in the form of questions you might already be asking in your head right now. Because there are actually a lot versions of Essbase out there. PBCS: That's good, but know that internally you have 11g Essbase -- informally it is 11.1.2.5. Likely 6 months behind. However, EPM Enterprise Cloud will support what Oracle is calling Free Form Planning Which is a pretty cool feature-add for EPM You can now build 'open definition' models quickly No required dimensions Import Essbase OTLs Can be Hybrid BSO or ASO Access through Web or Smart View Can be Large Scale models even Large # of dimensions Large # of members This also does give you some additional UI options using EPM over stand-alone Essbase In addition to Excel… Data forms Approvals Planning security Editable dashboards Comes with Narrative Reporting Does have limited OAC BI/DV (works but some limitations IRL) And since it's SaaS, it's all Oracle managed with Backups & Patches being done for you.   On the roadmap (Safe Harbor) features Import Essbase LCM Build models from Excel (DBX Workbook) Multi-cube And EPM Cloud platform full features ******************************************************************************** BIFS…. OAC-Essbase….