Tag Archive for: Financial Performance Management

There is a plethora of content available on utilizing the various TM1 functions, but what happens when these functions do not work as expected? What do you do when a rule does not return the expected value, a TI process does not load the values you had hoped for, or a cube’s performance is below acceptable levels? This article will cover some techniques for debugging TM1 that you can use to resolve issues with rules, TI processes, and cube performance. Read more

As a follow-up to the TM1 Performance Modeler Webinar that we hosted on April 15th, Ironside presented an advanced version for more experienced users on June 10th . This webinar focused on some of the additional advanced new features in TM1 Performance Modeler. These exciting new features require more business knowledge than technical ability and can be performed by TM1 administrators at any technical level. Read more

IBM Vision 2014, the premier global conference for finance, risk management, and sales compensation professionals, took place in Orlando, Florida from May 18-21. There were over 1,500 Business Analytics users, clients, developers, and others in attendance. This was my first time at the conference, and there was excitement of all kinds in the atmosphere. Current and prospective clients learned how organizations and individuals solve their strategic and everyday problems using analytics. Technical sellers and implementers like me were excited to swap stories and learn what is in store for the amazing tools we use today and will use tomorrow. Sales people were glad to see their clients sharing their success stories and build new opportunities for customers. Read more

There are various approaches available to enhance the performance of your TM1 application. One such approach is to leverage Stargate Views.

Stargate Views are different from traditional view objects and represent cached subsections of cubes that get created through user experience. As users browse cubes via the Cube Viewer or consume cube data via Cognos BI reports and analyses, these subsections get stored according to the current title elements/context and row and column subsets being requested. Read more

Award-winning IBM Partner celebrating 15 years re-launches as comprehensive business-focused analytics solution provider

Lexington, MA (May 16, 2014) – The Ironside Group, the award-winning North American business analytics consultancy founded in 1999, today re-launched their organization as simply Ironside. This change is both a reflection of their celebrated 15 year history, as well as a representation of their shift towards providing comprehensive solutions for organizations that are seeking to fundamentally improve performance by harnessing the power of information. The new Ironside will move toward being a one-stop shop for end-to-end analytics solutions, supporting clients from the planning phases all the way through full-scale implementations. Read more

IBM is encouraging developers to use Performance Modeler as the main tool for creating and maintaining TM1 server objects. Performance Modeler offers many features that Architect simply does not provide. The push toward Performance Modeler is evident in IBM’s documentation, presentations, and rapid update releases for the tool. For now, Architect will still exist and will continue to serve as a development tool. As future releases of Performance Modeler provide more and more functionality, Architect will likely only be used to maintain older TM1 versions going forward. Read more

On April 15th, Ironside hosted a TM1 Performance Modeler vs. Architect Comparison webinar covering the different features of these powerful development tools. This webinar focused on how TM1 Performance Modeler’s tools and wizards help non-technical contributors develop and maintain their own TM1 servers with minimal support from the IT department. Read more

Join us on The Road to IBM Vision as we prepare for IBM’s premier global conference for finance, risk management, and sales compensation professionals coming to Orlando, Florida from May 18-21! In preparation for Vision, we will be hosting two exciting webinars: TM1 Performance Modeler and Architect Comparison and Introduction to IBM Cognos Disclosure Management. Read more

At first glance, IBM Cognos TM1 and Cognos Planning have similar features. They both leverage a multicube architecture and support complex, cross-cube calculations.

The primary differentiating feature of IBM Cognos TM1 can be found in its efficient calculation engine and its method for storing data. When users enter data into most other planning applications, a read/write procedure is performed to reflect the change in a database stored on a hard disk. In contrast, IBM Cognos TM1 calculations and data storage happens in memory/RAM. This allows entered data to be immediately updated within the cube and retrieved. As a result, data is available real-time, which greatly enhances both the performance of queries and ability to perform what-if analytics. Read more

Since TM1 is a memory-based OLAP engine, one of the most important considerations in developing  efficient planning models is to utilize the least amount of memory that is available on the server. As time goes on the model will likely grow in size and consume more resources. This usually happens when you add additional elements the cube’s dimensions and archive fewer elements . As the cube reaches its memory limit, users may experience issues like poor application performance, longer server start times, crashes, and other similar problems. Also, adding new elements can multiply memory use further because rules may act upon the elements added and take up even more of the server’s available resources. Read more