Q+A with Hyperion CTO John Kopcke
"BI is at a Tipping Point"
By Robert Landon, July 2007
John Kopcke, Senior Vice President, Business Intelligence and Performance Management Global Business Unit, has more than 30 years of experience with decision support and business intelligence solutions. Previously CTO at Hyperion, Kopcke is the driving force and thought leader behind Oracle’s vision for performance management. In this role, he oversees product marketing, BI and performance management domain leads, and the Crystal Ball (predictive modeling and simulation) global business unit.
Q: What’s your background?
My professional career in software started the same year Oracle opened its doors. My entire, 30-plus year professional life has been focused on the space that we now call Business Intelligence (BI). In fact when I began, BI solutions were called decision support systems (DSS). I went on to work on client-sever and then Web-based BI solutions. I was also involved early on in the development of executive information systems (EIS) the precursor to modern day dashboards. I also helped deliver some of the very first OLAP technologies.
Q: What was your biggest challenge in your role as CTO of Hyperion?
When I joined Hyperion, the challenge was to move its offerings from a disparate set of tools and capabilities to a single, integrated system. In the process we built what's widely considered the premiere performance management solution, and at the same time we moved Hyperion into Gartner's leader's quadrant in Business Intelligence.
Q: What achievement are you most proud over the course of your career?
I've always been most proud when I see customers successfully using the technology that I've been lucky enough to work on. It began in the 1980s when Chrysler was on the verge of bankruptcy. The decision support system I worked on helped the company build the case for U.S. government bailout that kept the company's doors open. Seeing customers succeed is still what drives me today.
Q: What are the key competitive advantages of the Hyperion's approach to BI?
The answer to that question has changed dramatically in the last 18 months. A couple of years ago, prospects told me they had a hard time understanding what separated Hyperion from its competitors. But since we released Hyperion System 9, those questions have gone away. We introduced a single-system approach -- and one that dramatically simplifies things for the business user.
In addition, Hyperion’s analytics engine (Essbase) is recognized as the world's most powerful BI calculator. Our competition has nothing that compares to it. Oracle Data Relationship Management is also unique in its ability to synchronize BI master data: hierarchies, business dimensions, reporting structures, attributes, and business rules. Non-technical users can manage change in master data, but IT controls the process and enforces business rules.
Q: You've said you believe BI is at a tipping point in terms of adoption. Please explain why.
I've been in this space for 30 years, and this is the first time that I've seen BI at the top of CIOs' agendas. They understand that the technological infrastructure is now in place. Just 20 years ago, databases were in their infancy. I still remember when you would walk into an office and see a computer on a lazy Susan, because multiple users were sharing it. Now the BI infrastructure is there.
Rising business pressures have also aligned the stars for BI, including increasing global competition as well as increasing regulatory pressures. Organizations are looking to BI as a way to respond positively to these demands.
Maybe most important, BI is now finally able to deliver a context for business intelligence. Let me try to explain what that means. Having BI alone is like sitting in a car and staring at the gauges on the dashboard but finding you don't have any break or gas pedals. Our competitors focus on monitoring, analyzing and reporting, but not on planning and execution. The combination of Hyperion and Oracle takes insight and makes it actionable. We're not just answering the question, "What do we do next?" We're also answering the question, "How do we motivate people to do it and make sure it is successful?"
Q: Please give us your take on the favorite BI buzzword: 'pervasive BI.' Is it similar to 'information democracy'?
Basically they are two sides of the same coin. In a pervasive BI state, you have a single version of the truth, and you're able to deliver it out to the right people at any level of the organization or the extended organization i.e. customers, partners. If you have implemented pervasive BI, you are on your way to achieving information democracy -- the capacity to deliver information to anyone who needs it, when they need it, to make the right business decisions.
