TM1 Consulting for overrall environment recommendations?

[jimicron]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone has had a consultant come in and give a thorough review of their TM1 environment (servers, server settings, configurations, how it's tied into their bigger Cognos/IBM environment, etc.).

Do you have any recommendations? And what did you like best about them? Also, is there anyone that you would NOT recommend and why?

We tend to have a rather unique set up (Cognos). We didn't really have any problems with 9.5.2, but ever since going to 10.1.1 we've had a lot of issues/instability. We upgraded ourselves but going from 9.5.2 to 10.1.1 was a pretty big leap. We were to have a consultant out at the end of this month, but that just recently fell through because the person we requested left that company.

Thanks a lot for any information!

[jimicron]

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[jim wood]

There are quite a few consultancy companies that offer this kind of service. I would go to the IBM website and look for partners in your area. I'm sure if you contact them they'll be happy to talk you through what they would do and costs,

Jim.

[jimicron]

Thanks Jim.

I guess I was hoping for some recommendations as we had a consultant out one time and it was not a good situation. So, was wondering if anyone had raving reviews over someone in particular

[tomok]

Most of us experienced posters are actually consultants ourselves and it is against forum protocol to advertise our services here. You should have posted this in the Commercial forum where there is no such limitation.

[jimicron]

Woooops

Thanks tomok. Didn't know that. Innocent error. BUT, good to know. I did wonder since it says "sponsored by" above... but wasn't sure. Probably explains why I didn't really get any recommendations. Still learning the ropes and my way around.

Thanks for providing that tid bit of information!!

[Alan Kirk]

Most of us experienced posters are actually consultants ourselves and it is against forum protocol to advertise our services here. You should have posted this in the Commercial forum where there is no such limitation.

Other way around actually; Commercial is intended for sellers, buyers can go wherever. (I'm not really sure that Commercial would be the right place since it's intended to be the sellers' forum but I don't think anyone would care if a buyer posted there.) Doubly so since jimicron was primarily looking for end user recommendations. However even then sellers can do this:

If a user posts about a problem that they're having and you think that your product or service can fix it, please link them to your post in the Commercial forums. "Boosting" your product in the main forums isn't acceptable.

So posting "We service Idaho, please see our post here {link}" is fine. The policy is really intended to knock on the head the type of posters, and doubtless everyone has seen them in other forums, whose sum total of contributions is "We are SnakeOil Consultancy Pte Ltd, very skilled, very cheep, call us for *FREE* quote, we are best TM1 {/Excel/DBA/whatever} consultants!!!!" in every sodding thread.

Thanks tomok. Didn't know that. Innocent error.

That's OK, you didn't really make one.

BUT, good to know. I did wonder since it says "sponsored by" above... but wasn't sure.

When the forum started the whole thing - server and hosting costs, etc, etc - was paid for out of the pockets of the Admin team. Some consultancies offered to stump up the cash for those costs. The admins now just provide the time in maintenance, updates, spammer killing, database backups and such. The "Sponsored By" links (they differ between regions) mean exactly what they say; they merely recognise the contribution to the running costs. We wouldn't take sponsorship from any firm that didn't have a decent reputation and track record (although the Asia Pacific area did once come within a whisker of being "sponsored" by my You Tube channel before Martin found a "real" sponsor there), so the ones who sponsor us are "go to guys"... but it shouldn't be inferred that they are the only "go to guys". (Or that all of them are "guys", come to that...)

Probably explains why I didn't really get any recommendations.

No disrespect to America's foodbowl and the fine tubers that it grows but I think that the principal reason is that the major Cognos / TM1 consultancy firms are probably thin on the ground in Idaho. For obvious reasons they tend to congregate on the east and west coasts over there. That doesn't mean that they won't service your area but they probably don't have a permanent presence there. (Nor does it mean that there are no quite reputable smaller firms nearby.) Similarly there probably isn't an exceptionally high density of TM1 users out there, and the subset of those who have used a consultant is undoubtedly smaller.

[jimicron]

Appreciate that response Alan! That was informative and interesting to read.

Ummm. Are you saying in Idaho... we are out in the sticks? Boondocks? Backwoods? hahahahaha. Yes, Idaho is a bit rural and only two companies in town use TM1 that I am aware of. But, we've had folks fly in from the west cost and even from Chicago once. Or, with our recent consultancy, we were going to do that remotely but that is the one that fell through due to this partciular person leaving that company.

Anyway, thanks again! Interesting to know who makes up this forum and how it's all volunteer. I COMPLETELY appreciate all the help I get from here!!! I have learned a lot and really do appreciate the help I receive - even more now knowing it's all voluntarily!! I've even mentioned to my manager that I feel bad that I can't really contribute yet, but he has told me that when I am up to speed, he certainly doesn't have any issues with me spending a little time per day helping others on here as he knows how much I have been helped. So, I'll keep on absorbing and learning as quickly and best as I can so I can some day return the favor.

But, thank you to all of you for your help! It's greatly appreciated!! THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

[jim wood]

Alan,

A good point. Most of the consultancies in the US are based on either the west or east coast. There are exceptions like CarpeDatum who are in Denver. You also get some guys in cities like Chicago. Another trend that seems to be happening is that some east coast companies are hiring guys in other cities and advertising that they have physical locations in these cities. While they're not technically telling a fib, the physical space is probably a home office in somebodies bedroom,

Jim.

[jim wood]

I've even mentioned to my manager that I feel bad that I can't really contribute yet, but he has told me that when I am up to speed, he certainly doesn't have any issues with me spending a little time per day helping others on here as he knows how much I have been helped. So, I'll keep on absorbing and learning as quickly and best as I can so I can some day return the favor.

That's good to hear. Some managers (One of my old ones comes to mind) are not very willing to let their staff spend time on such things. I'm pretty sure that everybody on here is more than glad to help you and any assistance you give to people going forward will be received gratefully.

[macsir]

I would say if you can list some problems you have now, that would be better to discuss.

[Alan Kirk]

I would say if you can list some problems you have now, that would be better to discuss.

That's been done, from the posting history. But we can only answer questions one by one and within the limitations of forum postings. (We can't see the environment in real time, for instance.) However sometimes it's a good idea to get an experienced consultant in who can look at all aspects of the environment and do a root and branch review. They may be able to identify things that end users, especially ones who haven't had a lot of experience with TM1, won't even know are a problem.

Speaking of which... in the absence of recommendations there's a way of plucking out ones for your own self. There are a number of people in here who post under their own names and with their own company's details. You should be able to get a feel for which ones might be of use to you just from reading their postings. I name no names (mainly to avoid putting any noses out of joint if I miss anyone), but there are quite a few in here who, if I was a new TM1 user, I'd certainly consider contacting for this kind of help. A lot are either admins or MVPs (though not all admins or MVPs are consultants; I'm not), but some aren't. (Though some who don't use their own names may not want to be contacted since their cloak of anonymity allows them to be more blunt in their assessments of any shortcomings in TM1. Doesn't really matter in my case since my relationship with IBM is probably beyond redemption in any case.)

[jimicron]

Thanks again Alan for a response to help in understanding!!

I am going to have to revisit our issues actually... we JUST installed FP1 along with Hot Fix 4 from IBM on Tuesday of this week. We've been working closely with developers from the UK, our advocates on the IBM team, tech support, and our account manager. We were on 10.1.1 and this week we installed FP1 along with HF4 to our 10.1.1 on our Test server.

It has resolved 4 major issues we were having! Our biggest was that with older models that were in 9.5.2 we coudln't open them up in Performance Modeler - it would just spin. However, the FP1 and HF4 has resolved that!! Major win. We had pretty much given up on Performance Modeler.

Our major issues though that we have been dealing with:

1) Servers (not the phyiscal server, but the model servers) crash intermittently when opening processes that use ODBC to connect to either .csv or Oracle databases. We have been working with Microsoft and IBM on this. The Microsoft Access Text Driver has somehow corrupted our Oracle DSN. We are removing text drivers all together. This one is being heavily worked on with the developers in the UK along with Microsoft so I don't think this one needs attention at this time.

2) Initial execution of a chore is very high (dramatically as in hours versus minutes) when a new alias is added to a dimension that is used in the chore. We have an APAR number on this and this was not resovled with FP1. I am unsure if HF4 fixed it though.

3) Not able to export to .PDF from TM1 Web (this is an odd one, we are able to from test but not prod but test is intermittent). Our admin has looked at regisry settings between the two servers, files, etc. - a lot of work has been put into this one as wel.

4) We get an intermittent error (only some of us - especially me) when trying to click on a model server to open it. We get "client name does not exist on server" and then I do "logon as" and it opens just fine. This has been intermittent and hasnt' happened for awhile. They have done/tried all sorts of things on this too.

5) We are trying to get TM1 Connector to work

6) We had a server crashing when selecting multiple elements, but FP1 and HF4 has resolved this

We have also just seen odd errors at odd times. For example, when I was screensharing with the developers in the UK this week, I was creating a process in PM and got an error but went over to Architect and did the exact same thing and didn't get an error. He was going to try and replicate in his environment to see if it was our environment or PM. Just general slowness of PM as well. We've just seen various things in the 6 months or so of being on 10.1.1 that make it seem like we have possibly various things in our environment (settings) that just aren't right. Or maybe our whole infrastructure just isn't set up quite right. We have our TM1 security pinging our BI servers, which are on 10.1 and were upgraded last Fall.

Anyway, just various things. Hopefully that gives you a bit of an idea of what I am talking about.