Your Hyperion Future: 3 Reasons to Move to 11.2 and 3 More Reasons to Choose the Cloud

When using your enterprise software on a day-to-day basis, dealing with mundane glitches and frustrations, it’s easy to forget that you also have to think long-term. Staying on top of your enterprise software licenses and expiration dates is crucial—especially when it comes to mission-critical applications like Oracle Hyperion EPM.

With the end of support date coming up at the end of 2021, it’s time to make the call between upgrading to Hyperion 11.2 and moving to the Oracle EPM SaaS cloud.

Since there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, we’ve put together a quick list of the three main reasons some of our clients choose to stay on-prem and upgrade, and three reasons some of our clients choose to move to Oracle EPM Cloud.

3 Reasons to Upgrade to EPM 11.2

While many organizations continue to move more and more of their IT ecosystem into the cloud, others retain a sizable on-premises footprint. Because Oracle has guaranteed support for Hyperion 11.2 on-premises through at least 2030, companies using 11.1.x may decide that an upgrade to the latest version makes the most sense.

The main three reasons for an on-premises upgrade include:

1. Monolithic on-premises legacy technologies that make the prospect of a cloud migration challenging.
2. Very large data volumes that would be costly to store in the cloud. In addition, applications that work with on-premises data should also run on-premises if performance is a concern.
3. Regulatory and compliance issues that require an air-gapped system on-premises for extremely sensitive data.

Datavail helped one of our clients, a U.S. telecommunications company, tweak and optimize their Hyperion environment during their upgrade to EPM 11.2 on-premises, achieving noticeable performance improvements. The benefits they experienced from upgrading to EPM 11.2 included:

• Remaining in compliance with Oracle support timelines, letting you enjoy new updates, security patches, and technical support.
• New features and functionality, such as a streamlined reporting infrastructure and third-party certifications for Microsoft SQL Server and Google Chrome.
• Oracle also plans future updates such as Linux support, various performance improvements, and changes to Hyperion Financial Management and Hyperion Planning.
• Providing access to Oracle’s “Continuous Innovation” release model for Hyperion. This new model lets you install application updates without needing to upgrade middleware technology as well.
• The option to move their applications from their own data center to an Infrastructure as a Service cloud solution at a future date.

If these reasons resonate with you, then simply upgrading to 11.2 either in your own data center or in an IaaS cloud platform might be the best path forward.

3 Reasons to Migrate to SaaS Cloud

Although staying on-premises remains a viable option, many Hyperion customers choose to migrate to Oracle EPM Cloud.

The three main reasons to move to the cloud are:

1. Ease of access: Oracle EPM Cloud makes it easy for users to log on and use the software from anywhere, at any time—which is especially valuable as telecommuting becomes more and more widespread.
2. Faster updates: Oracle cloud software receives new feature updates and bug fixes monthly; what’s more, this functionality rolls out to cloud users well before it reaches on-premises. Cloud software can leverage cutting-edge techniques and technologies like AI, the Internet of Things, automation, and the blockchain.
3. Cost-effectiveness: Most Oracle customers find that the cloud is more cost-effective than remaining on-premises. The recurring subscription-based payment model is also more attractive than the large capital expenses involved in maintaining on-premises infrastructure.

If these are the benefits your organization is looking for, moving to Oracle EPM Cloud might be the way to go.

Thinking Outside the Box

Of course, moving on-prem or migrating to the cloud aren’t the only two choices. Some of Datavail’s clients have chosen an “app-by-app” cloud migration strategy: uplifting some applications to the cloud before others, based on their priority to the client (or the urgency of the migration). We also support clients who prefer a long-term hybrid cloud strategy: moving part of their Oracle ecosystem to the cloud while keeping other applications on-premises (at least for the time being).