Believe the hype...rion
Founded in 1981 with the prosaic name IMRS International, Hyperion Software originally specialized in corporate financial and analytic application software. The company soon proved invaluable to multinational organizations, as it developed multilingual programs for use in planning, budgeting, forecasting, data consolidation and business analysis. Specific products include MBA, a line of applications for business analysis, and Pillar, software for budgeting and planning.
Hyperion has been consistently praised for its dedication to the customer, and it was the only vendor in its market that used relational technology (applications that allow for the sharing of information between different brands of software). The company eventually enjoyed an 85 percent share in the financial reporting and consolidation market, largely because of its adoption of relational technology. In addition to its own marketing efforts, Hyperion benefited from alliances with the Big Five accounting firms, who frequently recommended its software to their clients. The company's client list of over 3,300 organizations included more than half of the Fortune 500, and 40 percent of The Financial Times European Top 100.
In April 1998, Hyperion announced an alliance with enterprise software maker JD Edwards to develop interfaces that would provide direct integration between both company's applications. Prior to this deal, Hyperion had made a similar alliance with The Baan Co. to facilitate the sharing of data between Hyperion's applications and Baan's enterprise-resource planning software suite. In both deals, Hyperion hopes to bring its technology beyond its existing customer base, to users of JD Edwards and Baan products.
Hyperion Solutions seeks solutions
Hyperion Software merged with data analysis firm Arbor Software to form Hyperion Solutions in a $579 million deal in August 1998. Hyperion and Arbor were among the top online analytical processing (OLAP) vendors in the country at the time. (OLAP products are used for management reporting, analysis, and planning; Arbor made the well-known "Essbase.") In mid-1999, Sapling Corporation, a provider of applications for performance analysis, joined the new Hyperion.
John Dillon, former chairman of Arbor, was initially named CEO and president of Hyperion Solutions. After poor results, however, Hyperion's board replaced him with Jeffrey Rodek, a former Ingram micro executive. Rodek has acted aggressively to counteract disappointing sales, securing business from several leading dot-com companies and allying with DataSage, DoubleClick, NetGravity and net.Genesis.
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