Oracle Essbase Reviews

The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define the dimension types. You keep working with the business to have all the dimensions migrated and everything they want in Oracle Essbase.

Apart from that, the only difficult thing is if finance is not clear on the final result they want, it will be really difficult to have Oracle Essbase provide added value to the business. Finance needs to be clear on the final result, and you need to have a space for pricing analysis, so let's get the data from your CRM or from other management modules.

However, it's a big investment for pricing alone, and I don't recommend anyone to use Oracle Essbase for only one thing. You can do everything in terms of finance in Oracle Essbase as long as you know what you want and expect clear outcomes because in Oracle Essbase, you have to develop everything manually, unlike in EPM where modules are already developed.

What I appreciate most about Oracle Essbase is my comprehensive knowledge of all its features, although my UNIX knowledge is limited, requiring assistance for server installations. I have worked with finance in defining calculation scripts, which is the most complex aspect, and also worked on transformation processes.

While Oracle Essbase has evolved into EPM, my knowledge of Oracle Essbase translates directly to understanding EPM.

The benefits of using Oracle Essbase include avoiding data silos, as previously, Finance had data scattered across different sources such as CRM, ERP, and other satellite sources. With Oracle Essbase, everything is centralized in a comprehensive financial statement analysis. This centralization allows for complete management of budget, actuals analysis, and forecast.

A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't include the financial consolidation module that is available in EPM.

While you can analyze market trends, track expenses, and compare actual expenses against budget and forecast, currency variances can be handled in both Oracle Essbase and Excel.

You can maintain aggregation values of all your accounts in finance within Oracle Essbase. Period-end balances and monthly transactions can be included, though it's primarily designed for aggregation values. Different cubes in Oracle Essbase can contain all necessary data, eliminating the need to source data from multiple reports for financial analysis, which can be accomplished through the data integrator.

The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define the dimension types. You keep working with the business to have all the dimensions migrated and everything they want in Oracle Essbase.

The pricing functionality in Oracle Essbase is handled through the model you develop, where each cube can be customized with members and dimensions for pricing and entities. You can implement any functionality, but everything needs to be developed within Oracle Essbase.

Based on comprehensive knowledge of Oracle Essbase, I rate it seven out of ten. I recommend companies evaluate not just Oracle Essbase, but also Oracle EPM since it includes Oracle Essbase with predefined functionalities. In EPM, features such as actuals analysis cube and planning modules are pre-built, though customization options remain available. If EPM didn't exist, Oracle Essbase would deserve a nine, but its evolution to EPM justifies the seven-out-of-ten rating to using only the Essbase legacy platform or Cloud service.

We have projects where application development is supported. We are using Oracle Essbase as as a backend for sorting data, queries, functions, and procedures.

I have found the most valuable aspect is the user-friendly environment and current features.

Sometimes, the current program is slow. We have tried to do what we can from our part of the equation to optimize certain queries. They should review the storage and the RAM so that whatever application will behave at that speed and whatever queries have been performing at a good rate. Sometimes it depends on the hardware also, how your application runs. They may have to consider the storage and the RAM, increasing the speed and performing the queries at a faster speed. I would also like to see an integration with application performance management and a version control management tool. Whatever data has been saved, should be centralized. This will make it easy to manage rather than putting on different software. We need to make sure we are able to manage and have the proper configuration of whatever database-related components are needed.

I have been working with Oracle Essbase for the past one to two years.

Oracle Essbase is stable.

The current environment is sufficient for us and we are not required to scale at this point. We currently have between thirty and forty individuals in the organization.

We have been using SQL and we switched to Oracle Essbase. Both programs are operating and depending on the client's needs. We move between both platforms. However, the primary solution is Oracle Essbase. Depending on how we need to provide the solution because they have already something on the Azure server in that case, we need to use Azure servers. Now we have a solution that tackles both the database needs. It is my opinion, it is more comfortable in Oracle rather than a SQL server.

There were some difficulties migrating from the older version to Oracle nineteen, but we were able to manage.

I believe the licensing is on a monthly base.

I would rate Oracle Essbase a seven on a scale of one to ten.

The solution is used for banking services and E-discovery services. 

The solution is quite scalable, which is the most useful aspect for us. 

The solution is stable and reliable. 

The features are good. We haven't found it lacking in any way.

The solution is hard to set up for new users. 

It's an expensive product to use. 

The solution is a bit complex. 

We've used the solution for five to six years. 

The stability has been fine. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It is a scalable, easy-to-expand product. If a company needs to scale up, it's no problem.

We have more than one million customers on the product right now. We do plan to increase usage as well. 

We've never reached out to technical support. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

We did previously use a different product. We used PostgreSQL. We wanted an update of features and found that open-source databases don't have the maintenance tools we required. Also, using them was risky in general. 

If you are an expert user of Oracle, you won't have any issues with the initial setup. It's easy for knowledgeable users. However, for beginners or those with no prior Oracle experience, it will be a difficult deployment. 

The process and how long it takes to deploy depend on the design of the database. For example, is the architecture centralized or distributed? In the case of centralized databases, it's easy to configure. If it is decentralized, the time and complexity depend upon how many locations you have to configure.

We have a team of six or seven people that can handle deployment tasks. 

Sometimes we do use a consultant or integrator to assist with the deployment process. 

The licensing costs are too high. The licensing costs also increase sometimes. They should offer different tiers for customers to choose from.

We use both cloud and on-premises deployments of the product.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. We've been happy with the product overall. 

The solution is a multidimensional database that's used by a lot of different products.

Its multidimensional analysis is great. Unlike relational, where you're linking together multiple tables, with Essbase, you basically define what the dimensions are beforehand, and you define the hierarchy, and then load the data. This allows you to do a pretty sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data. If you see a problem somewhere, you can drill in and discover more about it. If you're seeing problems at the state level, for example, you could drill into the city, down to any of the cities easily.

It's not a very scalable solution.

Essbase has a programming language, and it has a couple of functions to do forecasting, however, their feature set for that is not that good. What they had for doing the forecasting was another program from another company. They bought the program, then you could actually do the forecasting in Excel, rather than actually doing it in the Hyperion program. 

I can't think of any missing features or areas of improvement. Overall, it's a pretty decent product.

The level of stability is basically the same as what you would expect as Hyperion. It all falls under the same umbrella.

I wouldn't say the product is extremely scalable. 

I can't recall looking into any ROI details. 

While the product can be used both on the cloud and on-premises, I have not tried the cloud version.

I would advise new users to make sure they do very thorough design sessions beforehand instead of just jumping into it. Planning is important in terms of success.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We've been pretty happy with its capabilities. 

I'm used to integrating BitLocker with AI. With new solutions, integration for analyzing quick commerce adapters should provide businesses with customer analysis.

The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool.

I have been using Oracle Essbase as an implementor.

I'm familiar with Microsoft's SQL Server and its scalability, but other solutions have emerged. MySQL is a better solution for small businesses; it's simpler and more efficient.

Oracle Essbase is a crucial tool. While expenses may not seem problematic every year.

I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We use the product in the production environment. It can be used in the government sector. We use it in a few branches in the banking sector. It can also be used in the healthcare sector in units that manufacture medicines.

The solution is scalable.

The initial setup is pretty complex.

I am using the solution currently. I am using the latest version of the solution.

The product is stable so far.

Our customers have more than 100 users. Most customers plan on increasing their usage based on the growth of their business.

The technical support is good.

The time taken for deployment depends upon the use cases. It takes a long time to deploy the tool in a large environment. It takes more than a month to deploy the tool in a small environment. To deploy the product, we consider the customers' requirements and provide them with a solution.

The customers review the solution we have designed for them. Once they approve, we start installing the product. We install the data center, hardware, connectivity, front-end, and back-end platforms like application environments. Later, the database team and experts take care of the software architecture. We need four to five technical personnel to deploy and maintain the solution.

The solution is expensive.

Users and investors calculate their ROI based on their investment plan. They know how many years it will take to get a return on their investment. I would recommend the product to others. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for the solution is focused on big systems, and we deploy the solution on-premises.

The solution can handle a large volume of data.

The solution could be cheaper. It is costly, and the initial setup could be simplified.

We have been using the solution for approximately two years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. Approximately 30 users are utilizing the solution in our organization, and we eventually intend to increase the usage.

I rate customer service and support a six out of ten.

Neutral

We previously used MySQL and switched to Oracle Essbase. It is scalable with many features.

The initial setup is complex.

The solution was implemented in-house.

The pricing could be cheaper.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but it could be cheaper. I recommend the solution to other users.

Very large and complexes environments implementation, 10000+ users with 24x7 global operation and multiple EPM tools working in sync.

It provides for faster and more assertive forecast cycles. It enables businesses to improve their process since with this tool, you can do things easily and quicker as the business can create more complex models than were possible before.

It's very flexible and powerful and can do almost anything you want if you use a bit of imagination and knowledge.

Everybody uses it for financial purposes, but it can also be used for other analytic purposes, such as mathematical models, statistical models, and so on.

• It needs a faster way to extract data.
• It needs better documentation, as there's a lot of undocumented commands.
• It needs a better API.

More than 12 years.

There were issues mainly because of a Java memory leak and abnormal shutdowns that sometimes corrupt the cube.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

The technical support for EPM is bad. I don't remember anytime that the service support helped me in something. The problem is bigger when you have an environment with more than one product like Hyperion Planning and ODI.

This happens because the products have different owners within Oracle and then different supports and, because of this, if you open a trouble ticket of loading data to planning and you say the words ODI, you'll be push around the two separate support teams indefinitely.

Even if your company has an Oracle support director just for you.

Neutral

I've always used the same tools.

EPM is an enterprise suit that is made of some independent tools and to have all of them working together makes it complex no matter your level of knowledge. The bigger the environment, the bigger the challenge is you need to face. Maybe one day Oracle will integrate all their tools. It'll be easier, and the good thing is that I saw a lot of improvements through the years.

Always talk with a Oracle representative and negotiate a discount. I already saw 99% of discounts and a free licence once.

Some times is cheaper if you get a hardware together (helps to negotiate a discount)

I'm a consultant and my only evaluation was on the database. I decided on Oracle because of the database and, during my career, their other tools are starting to come naturally.

Because Oracle products are development frameworks, your final results is as good as the people who implemented them. Make sure that your implementation team is the best it can be, at least for the first implementation. If something is implemented incorrectly at the start, it'll cost you a lot more to fix than to build a new system from scratch. Sometimes it can be so badly designed that it is impossible to fix.

I've been working on implementation for 20 years and I have seen bad implementations everywhere. In fact, I have seen the same tools implemented in the same team by two different people, with one being a success and the other a failure. In the same company, one department says that the tool does not work for them and another says that the tool is the best. The only difference was the implementer. Make sure you get a good team to implement it. The tool has its flaws, but most of time (99%) it is the implementer's fault that you have a bad or slow model.