Operis Analysis Kit (OAK 4.00) – time to upgrade?

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Operis Analysis Kit (OAK 4.00) – time to upgrade?

by Rickard Warnelid on April 13 2009

Operis, the developer of the spreadsheet review software OAK (Operis Analysit Toolkit) recently announced a new version OAK 4.00.

Graphically Operis has taken on the huge task of bring OAK into the ribbon-style interface of Excel 2007 and Windows Vista. Graphical updates are of course necessary to keep a software up to date but with the lack of uptake of Excel 2007 and Vista by the wider financial modelling community it doesn’t excite me nearly as much as the more technical improvements. We are yet to analyse the full impact of the new OAK functionality, but the promises are definitely very positive:

Complete conversion from VBA to C#, which speeds some functions up one thousand fold
Full compatibility with Excel 2007 and Vista, including ribbon interface and large spreadsheets (which, of course, make the performance all the more valuable)
More capable setup utilities, capable of diagnosing and overcoming many obstructions to installation in the more locked down environments typical of banks
Innovative and technically ambitious commands that seek to clarify the intent of complicated calculations, going much beyond simple precedent tracing
Various enhancements to the already market-leading comparison functionality
Exposure of all the functionality to COM, so that it can be driven by VBA and similar programming environments, allowing favourite review processes to be automated

OAK (Operis Analysis Toolkit) v 4.00

Updates from David Colver (Joint Chief Executive) indicate that Operis are in great shape to handle the continuous demand for PPP/PFI services in the UK and I would like to believe that the new version of OAK will make them even stronger. Delivering a big software update in the middle of a financial crisis is a very positive signal from Operis, so good on them for pulling this off when many other companies are scaling back investments to manage cash flow.

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COMMENTS

Mike, If you have problems

Submitted by Rickard Wärnelid (not verified) on Fri, 21/08/2009 - 03:53.

Mike, If you have problems with OAK I would recommend that you speak to Operis and get them to sort it out for you. We use a combination of Spreadsheet Advantage and Spreadsheet Professional and a few internally developed tools. We will not develop any tools for external use and will leave others to focus on this - we prefer to focus on the application of the spreadsheet review tools instead of the tools themselves.

I have had to use OAK at the

Submitted by Mike P. Travis (not verified) on Thu, 20/08/2009 - 14:44.

I have had to use OAK at the accounting firm I used to work for. We have tried quite a lot of the different packages and I think they are pretty much the same, some cost less than others. Now I work for myself I do not use OAK, I had a lot of trouble installing it once and then every time I turned my PC on for a year after a window came up and it stuffed my system clock. What auditing software does Corality use and would you consider building your own?

Thomas, I have not had any

Submitted by Rickard Wärnelid (not verified) on Mon, 11/05/2009 - 21:42.

Thomas, I have not had any problems with the Operis OAK installation but am currently having problems with my trial version of the OAK 4.00 when it comes to the Summarize Workbook functionality which freezes half way through. It freezes on different worksheets every time so it appears to be a bit random. We are in contact with Operis support and I believe they are looking into to it so should hopefully be sorted soon.

OAK is a sound bit of

Submitted by Thomas O. (not verified) on Fri, 08/05/2009 - 18:38.

OAK is a sound bit of software once you manage to get it installed, but this upgrade is really too little too late. Operis should have fixed their installation problems years ago and saved users hours of frustration. The "major" upgrade here is changing a menu system to the ribbon. This is hardly something to get excited about. When all is said and done, the menu system/ribbon is only a small part of the overall software.