Over the last year, something has changed for Oracle moving them toward the front of the pack among BI market leaders, says Boris Evelson, principal analyst for Forrester Research. And, this release is a “game changer.”
While the company had a tougher time integrating overlapping BI technologies from Siebel and Hyperion acquisitions – compared to SAP with BusinessObjects or IBM with Cognos – release 11g closes the gap between Oracle and its competitors, says Evelson.
According to Evelson, the platform, which is mostly enhanced Siebel analytics, does two things for Oracle: it introduces interactive features that level the playing field, and its new Common Enterprise Information Model sets it apart from all other leading platforms.
Oracle’s release as more than just a simple upgrade, says Evelson. “Nobody else has anything as seamless and elegant and tightly integrated as Oracle.”
The Common Enterprise Information Model allows users to access data directly from all Oracle applications – not just BI, says Evelson. “Users can access data directly from CRM, risk, ERP, HR, finance applications – all of them – without having to build a separate data warehouse or data mart. With this model, if you take the time to build it, your BI application instantly knows how data is structured and can report accordingly.”
Release 11g’s upgraded interactivity for BI includes rich Internet applications, text to query, mobile BI and analytic performance management. The new reports work in real time and are highly interactive.
Lastly, The Action Framework feature closes the loop between insight and action, according to the company release, by enabling users to initiate an action, such as a business process or Web service, directly from their dashboard.
“Oracle Business Intelligence 11g delivers the complete spectrum of business intelligence capabilities, spanning enterprise reporting, scorecards, dashboards, ad hoc queries, OLAP analysis, search, and actionable collaboration on an integrated technology foundation,” Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management for Oracle Business Intelligence was quoted to say. “The new release is easy to implement for departmental needs, and scales to provide unrivaled performance and scalability for the largest and most demanding enterprise deployments.”
Adrienne Baker is associate editor at Information Management. She can be reached at adrienne.baker@sourcemedia.com.
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