Hyperion Solutions is hammering against a trend that has seemed intractable to the entire analytical data vendor market: only 20 percent of the end users who are in a position to do something with BI deliverables receive data from BI systems. There's a huge number of reasons – including some of the vendors' own hinky past user-interface choices and many IT shops' overbearing security concerns -- that impair prod With that in mind, Hyperion has been cooking up a few components designed to address the 20 percent ceiling and open up the fruits of data output to a much wider audience. The first of these, Smart Search for Google OneBox, appeared in this month’s version of their suite, Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3. (Curious about how Oracle’s purchase of Hyperion will affect this product and others in both companies? Read our analysis and find out more of the aquisition’s details.)Smart Search’s objective is to use the ubiquitous Google search UI as a front end for data consumers to find the data they need. Once a report is prepped to run dynamically, or run regularly and stored, it is a potential hit in a user search run against the Hyperion data in this browser instance. The demo gave me a strong sense that it’s a positive move and one that is well-executed to raise that 20 percent ceiling. Not only does the component put one of the world’s easiest to use interfaces in front of an organization’s structured information, but it frees end users from having to know directory structures, the names of reports and queries, or other arcane details such as file extensions. Hyperion built layered security into the mechanism – a user without authorization to see the data won’t get a hit delivered in the search list. And the value of bookmarks to browser-based viewers is as strong in this component as it is in any browser-based front end. Note, however, that this feature doesn’t pour hits into a generic browser instance, but a specialized one geared towards collections of static and dynamically run queries executed in real time. Hyperion said they provide tools for configuring the service to hit systems and data sources external to the Hyperion store. Judging by Smart Search’s set of abilities, I believe Hyperion’s goal of rising through the 20 percent ceiling is a possibility. Smart Search makes it easier for the 80 percent of users who allowed ease of use issues to stand in their way to get at — and make use of — BI data. But Hyperion’s developers have a much more important component on its way, a genius of collaborative conception, coming later this year, probably late Summer or early Fall: Smart Space. I’ll discuss that truly heady demo in a subsequent Preview. Hyperion Smart Search for Google OneBox Platforms: Smart Search for Google OneBox comes with the currently shipping Release 9.3 and requires Google OneBox module; Java SDK or JRE 1.4.2; Tomcat 5.0.28; Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x Cost: A 125-user deployment of Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3 starts at $100,000 Verdict: The addition of Smart Search to Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3 allows a wider end-user base to get at the BI and business performance management data. Thanks to the universally-known Google UI, Hyperion-standard organizations may find Smart Search generates more answers, and perhaps wiser follow-up questions. Technology Industry