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Kepion Solution vs. The RestA Comparison White Paper

In the Business Intelligence industry, Kepion competes everyday with BI vendors such as IBMCognos, Oracle Hyperion and SAP BusinessObjects. At first look, it would seem that companies today can use either Kepion Solution or any other BI vendor to support their planning,budgeting and forecasting needs. However throughout implementation and maintenance ofBI applications, companies are realizing through experience, the significant differences in BIcapabilities between Kepion and the less robust and less integrated BI technologies from IBM,Oracle and SAP.Kepion’s software architecture is completely organically grown to deliver superior performance, scalability, usability, efficiency and reliability, all of which impacts the total cost ofownership, user adoption, and ultimately the success of the BI project. This documentdiscusses in detail the key differences between Kepion Solution and the rest.1. Deliver More BI with Less IT EffortKepion technology requires far fewer IT personnel for a given BI project due to its reusablemetadata which allows easier maintenance and less redundancy of the environment. Endusers are empowered with more self-service capabilities to offload the work from the IT staffby providing an entirely web-enabled suite of administrative tools that business users canmanage.The metadata within IBM Cognos, Oracle Hyperion and SAP Business Objects platforms cannotbe reused across forms & reports, which cause unnecessary maintenance. End users of thesesystems have limited self-service capabilities and are heavily dependent on IT, requiring moreIT administrators and developers. Administrators have fewer tools to manage the BI applications, thus requiring more administrators per number of end users.Minimized Deployment EffortSelf-Guided Form & Report Authoring Experienceempowers the business user.Automatic cell-level data security that reduces ITadministration effort.Central Administration EnvironmentReusable business logic across the entire platformreduces redundancy of metadata.Browser Agnostic with zero-footprint Web eliminates client installation costs.Single web-interface and application environmentfor administration and deployments.

2. All users on a Single PlatformKepion enables a “single version of the truth” by unifying all BI functions on a singleplatform. Kepion users will able to access their information through the Web, MicrosoftOffice and Enterprise Portals.Common with large vendors such as IBM, Oracle and SAP is a series of acquisitions forestablishing a BI platform that results in multiple stand alone “Studios” and platforms foreach style of BI. This complicates usability, integration and administration, which leads to“multiple versions of the truth”.Unified BI ArchitectureSingle point of installation and upgrades. KepionSolution requires minimal configuration steps andno desktop client install. A single server with fewermoving parts and processes translates into lessdowntime.Truly self-service web interfaceKepion allows business users to rapidly create,manipulate, format, and analyze any form or reportthemselves.Individual columns and rows on a grid can beselected quickly and users can easily format, drill,and perform other tasks on-the-fly.Seamless integration withMicrosoft Office andSharePoint 2010Users are able to access forms and reports throughthe web and Microsoft Office applications. Reportsand charts are interactive through view of SharePoint and other Enterprise portal environments.

3. Fast and Intuitive User ExperienceKepion’s web user interface adopts many familiar paradigms for most Microsoft Excel users. Kepion provides the only true online spreadsheet environment for users to work in. Kepion’s web interface is built entirely in MicrosoftSilverlight where processing is shifted from the Web server to the Webbrowser, making for a more responsive web interface that increases userproductivity and improves user adoption.Kepion is powered byMicrosoft SilverlightTechnology to bringrich functionalities ofExcel to the web.Users will have afamiliar spreadsheetworkspace for themto effectively complete their tasks.Users of IBM Cognos, Oracle Hyperion and SAP Business Objects are forced tolearn different end user tool interfaces which lack consistency in functionalparadigms. Inconsistent user interfaces increase training requirements anddecrease user adoption for BI applications that require a combination of BI styles.User Friendly InterfaceFamiliar Excel-like environment enables quickadoption of the solution. Kepion's spreadsheetenvironment enables more productivity over theweb.Kepion enables collaboration via comments thatcan be added to each form or workflow process toprovide instructions to other users of the system.Instant Response to User ActionsWith smart-search filtering, users navigate to theirforms and reports quicker with minimal clickthrough.Dynamic Form/Report PersonalizationKepion allows each user excel-like formattingcapabilities to save custom styles and additions tothe row & column headers.

4. High Performance on any scaleKepion’s high performance at any scale is possible given its intelligent use of bothMOLAP and ROLAP architecture which leverages the database for much of its processing.Data joins and analytics calculations are processed in the database whenever possible.Kepion’s proactive caching allows quick response time when conducting what-if analysison planning and forecast data.Most of the top 3 vendor solutions (IBM, Oracle, SAP) do not have scalable ROLAP acrossthe product set, therefore forces many calculations to be performed on the desktop oron the middle-tier server resulting in poor performance. The inability to leverage thedatabase to the fullest extent results in unnecessary network and hardware resourceutilization.Quick Response TimeSQL-level Business Rules allow for high performingcalculations to be performed without overburdening the middle-tier servers.Pro-active Caching of data enables quick what-ifanalysis for users to view upon each change.High Performance ROLAP EngineScalable to multiple OLAP servers to maintainoptimal performance, thus handling large numberof concurrent user access.5. Flexible technology for Departmental to Enterprise BIKepion’s metadata reusability and workflow management tools, such as Kepion Modeler,enable departments to incrementally migrate their business logic into a consolidatedenterprise BI environment.Cognos, Hyperion or BusinessObjects do not have an effective tool equivalent to KepionModeler to aid in consolidating and reconciling disparate departmental BI applications intoenterprise BI.Seamless Migration from Departmental to Enterprise BIKepion Modeler can consolidate disparate departmental BI applications while reconciling all overlapsor conflicts that may arise.Kepion’s models, rules, forms/reports and dimensions can be quickly migrated into a consolidated BIenvironment with automated extractors & loaders.Built on the stabilityand enterprise-levelsecurity of MicrosoftSQL Server 2008 andAnalysis Server. Fullyscalable enterprisesolution that letscompanies start witha small deploymentbefore scaling tohundreds or thousands of users.

6. Quick to implement and deploy, easy to maintain and administerKepion provides organizations a platform that is quick to implement and deploy, easy tomaintain and administer and fueled by a single code base that offers the advantage of reusable business logic across the entire platform. Kepion’s single BI server provides efficient,centralized administration for IT and fewer moving parts which translate into less downtime.Due to the nature of disparate source codes of large vendor solutions (IBM, Oracle, SAP), theroadmap for integration between each component is still in progress. These vendor solutionsdo not provide equivalent tools such as the Kepion Modeler to help manage and fine-tune BIapplications from a single and centralized point of administration.Enterprise-Caliber AdministrationKepion’s centralized administration provides asingle console for real-time user and system management. Consistent and guided web-interfacealso enables business users to be less reliable of ITfor form authoring, publishing and administrationtasks.Reusable and Rich Metadata LayerKepion’s single code base offers reusable businesslogic across the entire platform from managementreports to planning forms.Industrial-Strength Multi-levelSecurityKepion provides a zero-footprint Web interface tomanage reusable setup for platform-wide cell-leveldata security. Same form/report can yield differentviews of information based on user profile. Userprofile determines appropriate level of functionality.

Kepion Solution – Industrial-Strength TechnologyKepion is a next generation solution that allows companies to support all types of BIapplications with one technology. The Kepion solution is built to extend the boundariesof performance, scalability and efficiency of enterprise BI. At the same time, Kepionbrings that same caliber of BI technology to smaller departmental initiatives. Kepionprovides a smooth migration path from departmental BI into a cohesive and consistententerprise-wide framework.Unlike BI suites offered by other vendors, Kepion offers the only organically grown BIarchitecture. All of the Kepion Solution components were expressly built to work within aunified architecture and not as separate standalone products or acquired technologiesthat were subsequently joined together. This caliber of BI technology is now beingsought after by companies, not solely just for their most demanding BI applications, butfor the purpose of hosting all of their BI applications. Today, companies can standardizeall BI onto a single, highly-functional, and efficient architecture, and reap significanteconomies of scale and enterprise-wide consistency.

About KepionHeadquarted in Seattle, WA, Kepion (www.kepion.com) is the leading provider of nextgeneration planning, budgeting and forecast solutions for mid to large size enterprises.Kepion is built on the Microsoft BI platform powered by SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services.Kepion provides an entirely web-based planning solution founded on the principle "SimplyFlexible: Providing simple access & navigation to your needed information, combined with afully flexible platform to build solutions that fit around your key business functions". 2009-2010 Kepion Corporation. All rights reserved. Kepion Planning Solution is either registered trademarks ortrademarks of Kepion Corporation. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be thetrademarks of their respective owners.

The metadata within IBM Cognos, Oracle Hyperion and SAP Business Objects platforms cannot be reused across forms & reports, which cause unnecessary maintenance. End users of these systems have limited self-service capabilities and are heavily dependent on IT, requiring more IT administrators and developers. Administrators have fewer tools to manage the BI applica-tions, thus requiring more .