Questions about TM1 implementation. Need your help.

[SamyP]

Hi,

My company is considering upgrading from TM1 9.1 to TM1 9.5.2 for our financial planning system. We are also looking at Hyperion and BPC.

We would love to talk to some of the people who are on 9.5.x. We have questions about:

The implementation itself:
- How was it structured? A full time project lead? How many consultants? Who? etc...
- How long did it take? (Upgrade vs clean slate)
- Training the end users
- ...

The process changes:
- Your processes before
- Your processes after
- How detailed were your requirements

Measuring results:
- How did you measure success?

Technical questions:
- Size of cubes
- Speed overseas
- How many users
- etc..

Issues/hurdles & lessons learned.


If some of you are willing to spare 30 minutes of your time to speak with us on a phone call, that would be great! Otherwise, I'd be happy to see what everyone has to say right here, on the forums. That way the whole community can benefit.

[Kaveenga]

We upgraded from 9.1 to 9.5.1 and then to 9.5.2 within a month, and it was pain free.

We are mandated to have our support partner present during any upgrade to the server. The server upgrade took approximately 45 mins. The client apps were deployed via Citrix so that was very quick as well.

Performance has increased substantially in 9.5.2. Start times are halved, without even using the new persistent feeders.

We have some fairly complex cubes and processes, but none needed to be changed just because of the upgrade.

[jim wood]

As Kavee said the ugrade to 9.5.2 for 9.5.1 is pretty painless. I would however have a quick look at the Bugs sub forum just to check see if that if some of teh current known issue would have an impact on what you do going forward. Also I would consider downloading teh Fix Pack that IBM have made available. Again details of teh fix pack are available on this site,

Jim.

[SamyP]

Thanks for the replies. Actually, we won't do a straight upgrade. There would be so much clean up and process changes involved that a a clean install is what we are aiming for. You could assume that we're coming from nothing and moving to a new system. So my questions are much less focused on the technical aspect, but more on the implementation aspect: how did you go about it and how did it workout for you?

[tomok]

You should look at the upgrade as two things; 1) installing the new software and 2) upgrading/moving the model.

Item 1 is fairly straightfoward. Just install the software. If you have both TM1 and TM1Web on the same box then it should be pretty easy. I would recommend starting with a new image and installing TM1 like it was the first time. If you are re-using the old hardware then make sure to copy off your data directory to another spot before wiping the image.

Item 2 is even easier, if you don't intend to take advantage of any of the new options in TM1. Just set up the service when installing TM1 and then after install, copy in the data directory contents from your previous installation. If drive letters have changed, or service names have changed, you may need to modify the tm1s.cfg file, but that's about it.

If you are planning on taking advantage of some of the new features in 9.5.2, like Contributor, or the locking changes, or misc other things, you may need to start a project to lookl into that but you don't have to do it right off the bat, it can be added later. Bottom line is that the upgrade itself is easy but if you are using this opportunity to change your models then it would be wise to get some qualified help.