In this presentation, we explore and debunk 9 misconceptions of Hyperion Performance Management that are keeping you from effectively managing your platform.
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Chuck Czajkowski, Solutions Architect
Over 20 years IT and Networking experience
On the support team at Hyperion Solutions in the early 2000’s working
as an Environmental Support Lead handling complex issues
Product Issues Manager for the Common Technology Group at Oracle
after acquisition
Worked closely with many dev teams (HFM, Planning, Essbase, FDM,
Workspace, Shared Services, Weblogic) to facilitate worldwide support
training for new releases, patches (PSEs/PSUs), and ensure overall
stability and functionality.
Joined the Accelatis team at the beginning of 2014 supporting all
customers currently running the platform.
At Datavail, works with the Sales and Marketing team to identify and
create solutions for new and existing customers
Presenter
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We are data
specialists:
Databases,
Analytics, and
Application
Data Integration
Largest data management firm in North America with
over 600 DBA’s and 200developers /
consultants delivered in an onshore/offshore, 24x7
model
13+ years delivering data services
300+ customers with average customer life
of 7 Years
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Our Range of Data Services
Health Checks &
Assessments
Upgrades Data Migration
OBIEE & Hyperion
Consulting
Development, Tuning,
Automation
Data Warehouse
Build & Optimize
DevOps (Deploy & Automate)
Project Services
Data Development Services
24x7 In-Office Coverage
Monitoring & Incident
Response w/ SLAs
Service Requests
(Patch, Modify, etc.)
Multi-factor Monitoring
Proactive Services
(Health, Tune)
Structured Service Review
Operational Managed Services
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Myth #1: Reactive management is the only way to uncover issues
Myth #2: Root Cause Analysis takes large teams and days
Myth #3: Rebooting = effective problem resolution
Myth #4: Performance testing is expensive and complex
Myth #5: You must be an EPM guru to manage an EPM system
Myth #6: Admins must spend time on the urgent vs. the important
Myth #7: Conflict between IT and Finance is unavoidable
Myth #8: Prod & non-prod environments are hard to keep in sync
Myth #9: SOX audit requests are time consuming
Presentation
Overview
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Debunking
the 9 Myths
Myth #1: Reactive management is the best way to uncover issues
Myth #2: Root Cause Analysis takes large teams and days
Myth #3: Rebooting = effective problem resolution
Myth #4: Performance testing is expensive and complex
Myth #5: You must be an EPM guru to manage an EPM system
Myth #6: Admins must spend time on the urgent vs. the important
Myth #7: Conflict between IT and Finance is unavoidable
Myth #8: Prod & non-prod environments are hard to keep in sync
Myth #9: SOX audit requests are time consuming
GOAL OF MEETING & AGENDA
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Hyperion Performance Management
Optimization Performance
Testing Suite
Support Desk User Experience
Monitoring
Comparative
Benchmarking
Management Performance
Monitoring
Log ManagementAuditingAutomation
Datavail’s Performance Management Platform
Reporting Alerting Provisioning Communication User Interface
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The Reason for the Myth
Few tools are truly proactive
Existing solutions alert after a problem
has occurred
Users typically discover the issue before
the Hyperion admin
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Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform offers:
Proactive alerting
Failure triggers
Performance optimization
Know what will happen before it happens.
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Case Study:
Manufacturing
Company
Large manufacturing company relied on user feedback
to identify when issues were happening
Time wasted resolving unexpected issues rather than
preventing them
Installed Datavail’s software with proactive alerting
Issues were discovered and addressed before they
reached users
Average MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery) went from
43 minutes to 8
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Hyperion has many moving parts across the
technical tiers to deliver business
functionality.
RCA is all about having the relevant
information in one place, however it’s
typically based on tribal knowledge with few
repeatable processes distributed across
multiple teams.
The Reason for the Myth
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Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform offers:
Capture of instrumentation data from
network, application, infrastructure
and database layers in one place
Purpose-built analytics interfaces
Individuals and small teams can assess
issue causes that would otherwise
require large teams.
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Case Study:
Mining Company
Large mining company with worldwide operations would
take days just to collect information needed for
troubleshooting
Deployed Datavail’s APM software and institutionalized
a repeatable RCA process
Now they experience faster issue resolution, improved
stability, and increased performance
“Remote User issues used to take up to 3 days and 24
hours just to gather relevant diagnostics. We get to
that same point now with 1 person in about an hour.”
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The Reason for the Myth
When the prospect of retrieving enough
data to determine the source of a problem
is slim, the fastest way to get the system
online is to do a holistic reboot (and cross
your fingers).
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Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform offers:
Detailed RCA capabilities enabling a
repeatable process
Better pinpointing of issues by
monitoring and analyzing data on
multiple tiers
Automated diagnostics that
immediately rule out classes of issues
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Case Study:
Healthcare
Organization
Client would start system-wide reboot for many different
symptoms
With Datavail software, we were able to connect
symptoms of slow reports to the FR sub-system service
restarts preventing full reboots
Downtime went from 45 minute, 3-4 times a week to
5-10 minutes, 3-4 times a week but for a fraction of
the users.
Total users affected by outages during reboots were
greatly reduced in the process.
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The Reason for the Myth
Performance testing typically requires
highly skilled resources and lots of time.
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Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform offers:
Pre-recorded scripts for all versions of EPM
Performance testing can get started in
matter of hours instead of days
Focus on actionable data
Design that can be leveraged by
professional performance testers as well as
business users
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Case Study:
International
Bank
Client’s business group relied on weekly and monthly
regression testing
3rd party LoadRunner team owned scripts
All requests for changes would take 2 weeks to get into
production
After implementation of Datavail software, the business
user took ownership of performance testing
Able to run tests on the fly
Capabilities included regression testing and point testing
for Rules and Metadata changes.
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The Reason for the Myth
Each product in EPM has its own
administration console and log formats
creating complexity and the need for
training on each product.
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Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform offers:
Property management, log access,
and application management for
products available in single console
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Case Study:
Financial
Institution
Client had to request time from separate Essbase,
Planning, and HFM experts to retrieve logs whenever
troubleshooting was required
With Datavail’s platform, a single person on the support
desk can pull the respective logs for the given timeframe
Information can then be passed along to the experts
who can analyze the problems
Additionally a summary report of all configuration
settings across products (HFM, Essbase, Planning,
HSS, etc…) is now created in a single request.
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The Reason for the Myth
Admins are constantly putting out fires
Most tasks are manual
Automation isn’t available
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Debunking the Myth
With Datavail’s platform:
Proactive Monitoring is in place
Manual tasks are automated
Root cause analysis is streamlined
Admins spend time on tasks they were
hired to do rather than putting out fires
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Case Study:
Auto Parts
Manufacturer
Client was spending 40 person hours of a CPA’s time
monthly performing a 5 year consolidation in HFM
The time was spent unlocking periods, running consols
and waiting for them to finish and then locking periods
With Datavail’s platform, the entire process was
automated and scheduled
Zero manual effort was required going forward
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The Reason for the Myth
Finance Admins understand their
business and IT Professionals
understand the infrastructure.
The opposite is not always the case
Teams are dependent on each other
without clear mechanisms or vehicles for
collaborating on system design and
troubleshooting
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Debunking the Myth
With Datavail’s platform:
A single set of environmental data and
tools can be used by both teams
Broad monitoring bridges the gap
between Finance and IT (Sharing data
instead of requesting data)
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Case Study:
Global Banking
Company
Whenever business processes would fail, client would
complain about SLA turnaround from IT, Network and
DBA teams
With Datavail, the communication mechanism changed
from requesting information to providing information and
requesting a discussion
SLA turnaround times improved significantly
Finger pointing reduced dramatically as well
39. Myth #8:
Prod & non-prod
environments are hard
to keep in sync
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The Reason for the Myth
Out of sync servers within an
environment as well as across
environments are some of the most
difficult issues to track down
Very time consuming to document and
compare settings
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Debunking the Myth
Datavail’s platform can complete out-of-
the-box:
Auto-documentation
Server synchronization
Environment synchronization
Automated change history
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Case Study:
Marketing
Firm
Client could not determine why groups of production
reports were slower than in QA
Both environments had same hardware and application
data
Datavail’s platform found the solution quickly: our
environment comparison found that the reports no
longer matched and that someone had been adding
member lists to the FR definition (about 5 reports out of
1000).
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Case Study:
Technology
Company
Client spent an entire week per quarter preparing start
of quarter to end of quarter report to compare:
Rules
Metadata
Report definitions
Report included logs showing load activities
With Datavail’s software, all changes were automatically
detected and snapshots captured
The Change Report was then generated automatically
every quarter
Time savings = 100%
Also very helpful for rolling back unwanted changes