When Cognos originally purchased Applix a few years back the ultimate question was, what is the future of Cognos Planning? Cognos Planning formally known as Adaytum when it was acquired 10 years ago has been the centerpiece of the Performance Management software that Cognos offers. However, with the passing of time technologies change and advance; unfortunately for Cognos Planning its technology is starting to become outdated with the large amounts of data that companies now requiring their planning applications to process. If you are a current user of Cognos Planning hope is not lost, Cognos is continuing to support Cognos Planning and they have laid out a road map to upgrade to IBM Cognos TM1.
Trade-in Promotion
With the latest release of IBM Cognos TM1 9.5, IBM provided TM1 users with a familiar piece of the Cognos Planning application called Contributor. With releasing Contributor in TM1 9.5 companies can now enjoy the scalability and workflow management over the web that Cognos Planning users have grown to love. Additionally, with this integration IBM is now offering companies with Cognos Planning Contributor licensees the equivalent Cognos TM1 Contributor licensees with the purchase of the IBM Cognos Analytic Server and one TM1 modeler role. This is the first step in providing clients a clear migration path to Cognos TM1.
Advantages of Migrating to Cognos TM1
Common pain points clients will face with Cognos Planning are the inability to handle large amounts of data, no built in reporting, requirement to always publish data for reporting, and complexity to maintain models:
Large Amounts of Data - Cognos TM1 is a multi-dimensionsal OLAP planning, financial consolidation, and reporting application. Simply put, Cognos TM1 is designed to store data in RAM on the application server versus reading/writing data to a database. What this means for you is that Cognos TM1 runs quicker than Cognos Planning when loading data and has the ability to manage much larger amounts of data.
Built in Reporting - With Executive Viewer and Cognos TM1's web technology reports can be accessed over the web directly in the TM1 application. There is no requirement to report your data out of Cognos BI if you don't require that extensive reporting functionality.
Publishing Data - The built in reporting that comes with Cognos TM1 reads directly off of the data in the TM1 cubes. There is no need to publish the data out first. Additionally, Cognos TM1 cubes can be selected directly as data sources in Framework Manager providing closer to real-time reporting that all end users desire.
Model Complexity - With the advantage of being able to process more data, gone are the days of having to build multiple models and linking them together through admin links or system links. Cubes can store and process more data and instantly link data to your final reporting cubes.
Steps to Upgrade
If you are interested in upgrading to Cognos TM1 please Contact Thoughtstream Consulting and we can perform a free TM1 Migration evaluation to see if Cognos TM1 makes sense for your company.
