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Thursday, March 08, 2007

Oracle’s $3B acquisition of Hyperion: 'A rough road ahead?'

Oracle’s planned purchase of Hyperion may result in software that allows government customers to more easily merge their strategic plans with their operational data, though industry observers also worry about integration issues with the acquisition.

Hyperion CEO Godfrey Sullivan noted in a press release that the field of performance management is converging with that of business intelligence. Folding Hyperion software into Oracle’s Business Intelligence suite would offer customers the ability to align operational data with their strategic goals.

In the government space, performance management software is often used by agencies to track how well departments are meeting the President’s Management Agenda. Such software could also be used to see how an agency is meeting its goals. According to Hyperion’s Web site, the Army Recruiting Command has used the Hyperion Performance Suite to produce reports and executive summaries. The Agriculture Department’s Farm Service Agency also has used that software to prepare financial reports and budgets, according to Hyperion’s site.

While Hyperion users who run Oracle middleware and enterprise resource planning tools may enjoy greater interoperability in the years to come, those that use non-Oracle platforms may experience “a rough road ahead,” speculated Alyssa Farrell, SAS’ government industry marketing manager. SAS also features performance management functionality within its own SAS 9 software.

“We don’t know if Oracle will continue to develop Hyperion software or if it will attempt to transfer the functionality to Oracle’s own solutions suite,” she said.

-Joab Jackson, WashingtonTechnology.com

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