Can TM1 work for 50000 users? 500 concurrent users?

[milind_chavan]

Dear TM1 Experts,

Has anyone worked on TM1 solution deployed to thousands of users? 5000 or 10000 or 50000 or may be more?

IBM has successfully load tested a solution with 1750 users. In its whitepapers, it says that solution is scalable to 'thousands' of users.

However I didn't find any case study with more than 1750 users.

TM1 supports 64 bit technology, but Is TM1 architecture robust and scalable?


Any pointers on this?

Thanks & Regards
Milind

[lotsaram]

I have seen that you have posted this question on numerous forums with not a great deal of takers.

In terms of data volume TM1 certainly is scalable, certainly more so than any other MOLAP cubing architecture.

For number of users it is not the user count that matters but the number of concurrent users (also give consideration to the number of groups and complexity of the security model.) As with any system performance will depend on model design and the expertise of the implementers. In terms of the numbers you have mentioned I don't think there would currently be a system in production with 50,000 users (on a single server that is. There might well be a few corporates with distributed TM1 environments with those sorts of numbers spread over several or many geographically distinct servers) but in terms of 500 concurrent users that is certainly feasible on a 9.4 or 9.5 server. I have seen planning systems with a 1000 - 2000 users and a 100 - 200 concurrent users with very good performance. For a read only environment it would be reasonable to expect significantly more concurrent users with no drop in performance as it is then possible to take advantage of pre-calculation and view caching.

[milind_chavan]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. Yes I posted it on lot of forums as there is not much TM1 expertise available.

Your suggestion says that TM1 is scalable and you have seen systems with 2000 users. This is close to the 1750 users' case study mentioned in proven practices.
Any case study for more than 5000 users? Lets say 500 Active and 50 concurrent users?

I am asking this because I couldn't find any case study on web. Also IBM has come up with a new product called as Cognos Express that uses TM1. This is targeted at SMB(less than 1000 users) and NOT the large enterprises.

Does IBM have any plans to enhance its architecture to make it more scalable?

Thanks & Regards
Milind Chavan

[kpk]

Also IBM has come up with a new product called as Cognos Express that uses TM1. This is targeted at SMB(less than 1000 users) and NOT the large enterprises.

the limit is 100 users

[milind_chavan]

Thanks Peter for the update,

It further raises questions about the TM1 scalability.

Thanks & Regards
Milind Chavan

[Michel Zijlema]

Hi,

Cognos Express is targeted at SMB, which is defined as companies with less than 1000 employees. Cognos Express as a product is limited to 100 users per module (Xcelerator, Advisor, Reporter). This is a license restriction, not a technical restriction, so this has nothing to do with scalability.

Michel

[Alan Kirk]

Thanks for your reply. Yes I posted it on lot of forums as there is not much TM1 expertise available.

Oh, that's so true. I mean if you take only the site admins and the MVPs on this site, pretty much all of whom have at least 10 years under their belts, you couldn't be looking at more than, oh, say, one to two centuries of practical experience in any range of different environments. Throw in the occasional posters with 5 to 10 years experience each... no, couldn't be more than a few hundred years, at most.

Your suggestion says that TM1 is scalable and you have seen systems with 2000 users. This is close to the 1750 users' case study mentioned in proven practices.
Any case study for more than 5000 users? Lets say 500 Active and 50 concurrent users?

You may get better answers if you start asking reasonable, practical questions rather than throwing some plucked-out-of-the-air number into the ether and expressing concerns about TM1's scalability if there hasn't been a site that meets it yet. So what is your user base? What, realistically, is the number of users that you could actually have? How many of those, realistically, need access at the same time? How many, realistically, will need read only access and how many will need to write to it? What, realistically, is the geographical spread of the users? Provide that sort of solid information and you may find that you get more useful answers.

[milind_chavan]

Hi,

My apologies if I have hurt your feelings. In my first post I have addressed you all as TM1 Experts. Let me rephrase my statement. As compared to Cognos BI, there is not much TM1 expertise available.

And yes, these numbers are not imaginary.

I work on Cognos Planning project where user base is more than 1000. It includes users for Sales, Expense, Marketing, Capex, L&D and Workforce Planning.
We work on distributed environment with multiple servers. Two of them are application servers. Number of Active users on each server is 400. Using the thumb rule, Concurrent users on each server is 40.

Acquisition of Applix by Cognos was a strategic aquisition. TM1 is meant to replace Cognos Planning in future.(IBM may not accept it officially though). With 64 bit technology available, It has excellent capabilities in terms of performance, with inbuild sparcity removing algorithm, it has virtually no limits on model size. (Only limit is a physical RAM limit i.e. 1 TB. Even that may be overcome in future when intel comes up with next generation RAM chip. )

Having said that, TM1 has few limitations. Most prominent of them is its workflow (ver 9.4) .
IBM Cognos introduced workflow similar to Cognos Planning , in IBM Cognos TM1 (ver 9.5).

Second limitation is scalability. Traditionally, TM1 was targeted at SMB, as during those days, 32 bit technology was in existance and Max limit of RAM was 2GB.
With acquisition of Cognos by IBM, while Cognos BI is still going strong, what is IBM's strategy? Will and can TM1 replace Cognos BI?

It seems not. May be from business perspective IBM would not like to lose such a strong product (cognos bi).
At the same time it would like to promote TM1. Hence probably its targeting TM1 for SMB and BI for large enterprises.

But is it the only reason? Traditionally Cognos BI (and every other non-in memory BI tool) had a tough time to cater to performance requirements of demanding customers ( I have worked on Impromptu, Powerplay , all series 7 tools and Cognos 8 BI ver 8.2)
However, performance of TM1 is excellent, then why doesn't it replace cognos bi?

Only prominent reason I can think of is scalability. While Cognos BI is deployed for tens of thousands of users, there is no visible evidence for large TM1 deployment.

In recent times there was a requirement of TM1 deployment to tens of thousands of users. (I cannot disclose more information than this but believe me, its true)

Shall be delighed if you all experts can share your views and throw some light on this.

Thanks & Regards
Milind Chavan

[Martin Ryan]

I'd both agree and disagree that TM1 is (was) targeted at SMBs. Given its calculation abilities it was also pitched at the more complicated modelling areas in a larger business. However from a pure budgeting point of view it was never really aimed at the big leagues.

As for your scalability issue I would suggest that the biggest impact will be what you want to do with the model. If it's simply aggregation of planning data then I don't see any reason why 5000 users or 500 concurrent users would be a problem. You probably won't find many examples of that because TM1 doesn't do just that very often.

If you want to use the calculation engine in TM1 (its main strength) then getting to 5000 users may prove a bit dicey. It'll do it, but it might be slow. There are workarounds, such as those mentioned above like multiple replications, but they are workarounds and have their own problems.

I'd strongly recommend getting an old Applix partner (not Cognos/IBM, but someone who's being around TM1 for a few years and has some good war stories) to at least consult on the design, if not build it.

While this forum might be able to give you a few ideas, a project of this size most definitely needs someone on the ground who knows exactly what you're trying to achieve.

HTH,
Martin

[Kyro]

However, performance of TM1 is excellent, then why doesn't it replace cognos bi?

You should be aware that the two products are very different and have quite different uses.

Caution I will over simplify here:
Cognos BI is an Enterprise Reporting Suite with SQL Generation and the functionality of staging Reporting Data.
TM1 is just an easily accessible (Excel, TM1Web, API’s) Proprietary (In-Memory M-OLAP) Data source.

[Martin Erlmoser]

500conc users at the same location, on the same server? Or are they spreaded all over the world, maybe working on "own" systems and "just" replicating data with mother?

[rochellechase]

That is what we are trying to do right now with TM1 v 9.4, and we are running into serious issues. We have many distributed servers, our users will need to read as well as write, and the users are across the globe.

Has ANYONE implemented TM1 for this many users?

If so please write me because I would love to have the chance to share learnings.

[paulsimon]

Hi

I have heard of companies with 500 concurrent users on TM1. When it comes to registered users whether you say 5000 or 50000 it is largely irrelevant. What matters is the number of concurrent users. 500 users entering planning numbers will place a different load on the system compared to 500 users doing reporting.

The next version of TM1 will have offline capabilities similar to those in ePlanning. However, I think it is important to recognise that ePlanning also has its drawbacks, eg the need to split things in to several models and to then re-combine them, the need to export data so that it can be reported on using Cognos BI, etc.

If you really did have 50000 users that I doubt that they would all require access to the same cubes, and therefore it would be possible to split different cubes over different servers. You could then recombine them again. Which is similar to what ePlanning does with its different models.

Certainly handling that number of concurrent users in 9.5.1 would require some careful design, but from what I have seen of the direction that IBM are taking TM1 it will get easier.

Regards


Paul Simon