As the product is now mature, Oracle will not be providing any further functionality enhancements and support for the product will cease at the end of 2010 (Note 365197.1 Oracle Financial Analyzer (OFA) 6.4 - link requires Metalink login).
We don't think that means the end of the road for OFA just yet. As a GL reporting tool there is still a lot to be said for OFA - the free GL link tool makes it easy to configure and deploy a GL reporting solution. Typically this can be achieved with only a few days effort with little or no coding required to deploy an easily managed interface. OFA can add considerable value to a GL implementation - using your defined hierarchies to provide a powerful, flexible user driven reporting tool.
OFA also performs extremely well. Oracle Express is still one of the best performing OLAP engines with powerful facilities for managing sparsity and controlling the amount of pre-calculation of summary data that is carried out.
Flexible access to your data is simple with OFA 11i - as standard you get a full windows client, web access and easy Excel integration to keep the Finance department happy. With all of these facilites it is easy to provide pervasive access to your 'single source of truth' - the Oracle GL data.
The maturity of the OFA product can be seen as a strength rather than a weakness. There are very few problems left to find with the product now. We have raised very few service requests with Oracle over the past couple of years.
There are still some green field OFA implementations these days where clients recognise the need for a flexible reporting tool and budget modelling with tight GL integration. We believe that as long as requirements are met without extensive customisations this is still a valid option.
For people with existing implementations there are a couple of options - extend the life of the OFA implementation or migrate to another tool.
Extending the life of OFA can be a best value way of extending the life of your reporting tool. There is a lot of flux in the BI market at the moment and it may not be a good time to bet the farm on any option.
To extend the life of OFA it is important to upgrade to the latest patch release (currently OFA 11i (version 6.3.4) patched to patch set 7). The challenge is then to reduce the maintenance and support costs with OFA skills becoming increasingly rare. We take a two pronged approach by firstly 'hardening' your OFA system and then offering a range of cost effective support options.
To harden your OFA system we take the following steps:
- review your data structures to ensure they are optimal;
- ensure your code base is robust to reduce failures;
- implement a comprehensive jobs schedule to reduce manual intervention; and
- establish a maintenance schedule to keep your database in good working order.
After this we can offer a number of support options to suit your requiremetns - from a set number of days on site, to remote access support only and any combination in between. We believe our knowledge of OFA will enable you to run your systems significantly past the 2010 Oracle support deadline.
Migration from OFA to another tool can represent the best way forward where requirements demand extensive modification of the OFA system, where you already have a large installed base of another OLAP system such as Oracle 10G with the OLAP option or where the desupport notice for OFA is a large problem for your organisation.
To upgrade a reporting system we would recommend migrating to Oracle 10G OLAP with Oracle Discoverer reporting.
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