OBIEE vs EssBase

Is the wave of the future OBIEE vs EssBase?

It is indeed possible, depending on the sentiments and skills of the Oracle sales force that this product could kill EssBase. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that if anyone can do it, Oracle engineers can reverse engineer the repositories and multi-dimensional models behind the Hyperion Applications. Clearly HFM is already there. But why go technically inferior to please sales guys? (That's a rhetorical question. If Oracle kills Essbase, there is NO technical competition.)

From a technical perspective, it seems strange that substituting any other product besides Essbase under the covers is going to give any better performance, especially the 64-bit stuff. The catch is that the product stream of Hyperion finapps really are not so very demanding in the main, on Essbase. The real strength of Essbase - where it has yet to be beat, is pure datamart applications.

Essbase could become a specialty reporting engine sold through System 9 portals and that OBIEE (whatever exactly it is) becomes the database of record within Oracle's finapps. This would throw the market into another small paroxysm but enable another class of consultants into the fray. The difficulty is that everybody is going to have to ramp up the OBIEE skills - that means another 2 years before successful implementations are going to be easy to be had.

The really intriguing question is ASO functionality at a standstill? There are some that do not appreciate the BI n-tier (for n>2) platform. There are some infrastructure mechanics that will not cry if they don’t have to install and certify Planning, HFM, et al. So maybe OBIEE adds to the confusion, or maybe it simplifies things by getting Essbase out of the way.

Either way, the future of BI is getting more and more interesting every day.