I am at the IBM training center in Dallas as I write this. It is Day Five of the Cognos TM1 developer class. The IBM instructor for this class is Steve Harris, and he has done an excellent job.

I must say that I am very impressed with the capabilities of TM1. It is very different from Cognos Planning, to say the least. Here are just a few of the differences:

1)      As you might already know, TM1 is memory-resident on the server. This technology enables developers to build gigantic cubes. It is not unheard of to have cube sizes in the billions. A cube in TM1 can have up to 256 dimensions. Updating or recalculating a cube is very quick.

2)      It is customary to have all cubes in a TM1 model as part of a single application (or “Server Instance”). This is quite a departure from Contributor, where I have seen as many as ten to fifteen applications that make up one overall model.

3)      There is no such thing as a “Synchronization” or “Go To Production” in TM1. Once you make a change to a cube, to a dimension, or change the rights, the user view is updated immediately.

Another big advantage that TM1 has over Cognos Planning is the “drag and drop” capability within dimensions. You can create hierarchies using this method, which means no more dealing with eLists stored in Excel.

One other difference is that the scripting of the rules and calculations in TM1 are done outside the basic user interface, which can be challenging for non-technical business users.

In summary, there are many compelling reasons to choose TM1 over Cognos Planning. Cognos Planning isn’t going away anytime soon. Both are great tools for budgeting and forecasting.

For more information on TM1, click here:

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/25076.wss

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Mitch Paioff