John O’Rourke is Vice President of Product Marketing at OneStream Software. With a background in accounting and finance, John has over 30 years of experience in the software industry, including 20 years of experience in product marketing at Hyperion Solutions, Oracle and Host Analytics. He has worked with many customers and partners on financial reporting and planning initiatives and has spoken and written on many topics in corporate performance management. John has also held positions in strategic marketing and product marketing at Dun & Bradstreet Software, Kenan Systems and Decisyon.
With Oracle shifting its R&D investment from on-premise to cloud-based applications, organizations using Oracle Hyperion Planning may be considering a move to Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service. If so, this would be a good time to consider and evaluate alternative solutions. But what are the viable alternatives in the market? How do they compare to Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud?
In a recent webinar, OneStream’s Craig Colby and Phillip Parker of Holland Parker Consulting, compared and discussed the key differences between OneStream XF and Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud (PBCS). Their discussion covered architecture, cloud platform, functionality, data integration, ease of use and administration. Here are the highlights from the webinar.
Markets Shifting from Point Solutions to Platforms
Craig Colby, Chief Revenue Office of OneStream, led off with a discussion about the shift in the technology market from point solutions to platforms. One example was the mobile phone market, where the market has shifted from limited-purpose devices like the Blackberry – to Smart Phones such as the iPhone platform and its Apps Store which includes literally thousands of apps that have been developed for the platform.
The same thing is now happening in the corporate performance management (CPM) market, where many companies are replacing legacy products (such as Oracle Hyperion) with platforms such as OneStream XF SmartCPMTM and its marketplace of downloadable solutions.
He then provided a quick overview of OneStream as a company, and the capabilities provided by the OneStream XF platform which unifies financial consolidation, reporting, planning, analytics and data quality in a single application. The OneStream XF MarketPlace includes over 40 solutions including productivity tools, specialty planning solutions, as well as financial close and reporting solutions.
Comparing OneStream to Oracle PBCS
Phillip Parker, Managing Director of Holland Parker Consulting then joined the discussion to help contrast the capabilities of OneStream to Oracle PBCS. This included a brief history of Oracle PBCS, which originated from Hyperion Planning, an on-premise budgeting and planning application that was introduced in 2001.
In 2014 the product was moved to the Oracle Cloud. As a cloud application Oracle Budgeting Software has segmented databases per customer, and shared application servers, which can sometimes impact performance. With poor customer support, the product really hasn’t changed that much since being moved to the cloud, and most customers select it mainly to eliminate their IT infrastructure requirements.
He then contrasted that to OneStream, which was developed by the original architects of Hyperion Financial Management and Hyperion FDM, on a 100% 
Microsoft technology stack, running on Microsoft’s Azure Cloud. With a single-tenant architecture, OneStream customers never have to worry about the impact of other customers on their performance, and they have the ability to increase or decrease MS Azure resources as needed.
Mr. Parker commented that what’s unique about OneStream is that multiple solutions (consolidation, reporting, planning, analysis, data quality) live together in a single application. And he spoke about how OneStream’s customer support is fanatical, and 100% customer satisfaction is a key mission for the company.
The speakers then went on to discuss other key differences between OneStream and Oracle PBCS. This includes the following:
Version Upgrades: Oracle drives that on their schedule, within a daily maintenance window. OneStream customers upgrade when they are ready, and when it doesn’t disrupt their planning or reporting cycles.
Corporate vs. Operational Requirements: Oracle PBCS has standard capabilities such as smart lists and valid intersections, but these don’t really address the problem. Multiple instances of the application are often required to support corporate vs. operational requirements. OneStream handles this very easily through its Extensible Dimensionality®.
Data Model – With Oracle Budgeting Software, everything goes into physical Essbase cubes, which limits scalability. OneStream supports Relational Blending, with dynamic, detailed data stored in relational tables, then summarized into virtual cubes for calculations, data entry, reporting and analysis.
Data Integration – Oracle PBCS is limited to flat files, and only supports direct connection through FDMEE on-premise software. OneStream can integrate files in any format, Excel spreadsheets, or direct connect to any system, on-premise or cloud.
Drill Back – In Oracle PBCS this is limited, via a URL link to source systems. In OneStream, drill back is available to any system it has a direct connection to, keeping the data in context.
Reporting – Oracle PBCS offers static reports, Excel-based reporting, or dashboard access via another Oracle tool. OneStream leverages reusable row and column sets that generate multiple output formats: including reports, forms, Excel add-in, built-in spreadsheet, and dashboards.
Learn More
The speakers encouraged attendees who are considering Oracle PBCS to consider their alternatives and ensure the solution they select moves them forward, not backwards, with new capabilities and the performance and scalability they will need for the future.
To learn more, watch the replay of the webinar.
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