IBM's Agreement With ShowCase Underscores the Dominance of Hyperion Essbase for Enterprise OLAP And Data Warehousing

Business Wire, Feb 11, 1999

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 9, 1999--

IBM to Resell AS/400 Versions of Hyperion Essbase OLAP

Server and Hyperion Wired for OLAP Worldwide

Hyperion Solutions Corporation (Nasdaq:HYSL), the leading provider of analytic application software for reporting, analysis, modeling and planning, today solidified its lead in enterprise OLAP (online analytical processing) and data warehousing through a reseller and licensing agreement announced separately today by IBM and ShowCase Corporation.

As part of the agreement, IBM will resell ShowCase STRATEGY, the market-leading AS/400 data warehousing solution, within IBM's core business intelligence offerings worldwide. ShowCase STRATEGY is a comprehensive business intelligence data warehouse solution, which includes both Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server and Hyperion Wired for OLAP. The announcement dramatically expands the worldwide distribution of Hyperion's products in the AS/400 market.

"The announcement between IBM, the unquestioned leader in business intelligence on the AS/400, and ShowCase delivers a significant endorsement for Hyperion's products which provide critical components for every company's data warehousing strategy," said John Dillon, president & CEO of Hyperion Solutions. "AS/400 customers can leverage the analytical power, performance and scalability of Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server to deliver a wide range of analytic applications as part of ShowCase's comprehensive data warehousing solution on the AS/400 platform."

The AS/400 market provides a major opportunity for Hyperion, IBM and ShowCase to expand the distribution of OLAP and data warehousing solutions. Leading market analysts estimate the AS/400 market has an installed base of 500,000 systems, and predict triple-digit growth for business intelligence solutions on the AS/400. IBM's agreement with Showcase will further enhance the position of Essbase/400 as the dominant OLAP server in the AS/400 marketplace.

ShowCase STRATEGY includes Essbase/400, the high-performance, 64-bit AS/400 version of Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server and ShowCase Analyzer, which is based upon Hyperion Wired for OLAP, an award-winning suite of OLAP-centric presentation, analysis and reporting tools. In less than two years as a Hyperion Alliance Partner, ShowCase has licensed ShowCase STRATEGY to more than 250 customers worldwide.

ShowCase will also develop a native AS/400 version of IBM DB2 OLAP Server, IBM's strategic OLAP platform that integrates the Hyperion Essbase OLAP engine with IBM DB2 Universal Database. This agreement extends a distribution agreement announced last year between IBM and Hyperion Solutions, under which IBM also resells Hyperion Essbase, Hyperion Wired and other Hyperion products within its worldwide business intelligence offering.

"The agreement to resell these solutions worldwide and to deliver DB2 OLAP Server for the AS/400 draws on IBM's proven technology, broad portfolio, worldwide resources and leadership in data warehousing to leverage this growing lucrative AS/400 market and deliver value to our mutual customers," said Janet Perna, general manager, data management, IBM Software Solutions. "As the OLAP platform for our business intelligence and data warehousing solutions worldwide, Hyperion Essbase and IBM DB2 OLAP Server deliver the enterprise-class scalability, performance and analytical power to meet the business intelligence needs of thousands of our customers."

"Our partnership with Hyperion Solutions has helped to springboard ShowCase's lead in business intelligence technology on the AS/400," said Ken Holec, president and CEO of ShowCase Corporation. "The IBM partnership will dramatically accelerate the penetration of ShowCase STRATEGY in the AS/400 market."

About ShowCase STRATEGY

STRATEGY is the only integrated and scalable AS/400 business intelligence system which provides staged implementation options for enterprise-wide business intelligence. It offers data warehouse building and management, PC and Web reporting and analysis, on-line analytical processing and deployment accelerators, and an architecture proven to accommodate growing and ever changing needs.

About Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server

Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server is a strategic analytical platform optimized for enterprise management reporting, analysis and planning applications. It supports multi-user read/write access, large-scale data capacity, robust analytical calculations, and sophisticated OLAP queries. Hyperion Essbase provides intuitive multidimensional data navigation and consistent, rapid response times in network-centric computing environments. The world record holder for the fastest performance in the industry standard APB-1 OLAP benchmark, Hyperion Essbase delivers speed of thought response time to thousands of users analyzing hundreds of gigabytes of information.

Hyperion Essbase allows corporations to deliver analytic applications directly from operational systems or within an overall enterprise data warehousing architecture. Analytic applications commonly implemented with Hyperion Essbase include sales, marketing, and profitability analysis; EIS and reporting systems; balanced scorecards and performance management applications, and budgeting, planning, and forecasting systems. Hyperion Essbase operates on Windows '95, Windows NT, OS/2, AS/400, and Unix servers across all major networks connected to Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX clients, Web browsers and network computers.