Oracle Takes Aim at Enterprise BI Market
Product suite represents entry into the business
March 27, 2006 (Computerworld) --
Oracle Corp. last week moved to stake a claim in the increasingly crowded enterprise business intelligence market with a new suite of tools and applications.
The Oracle Business Intelligence Suite will be part of Oracle's Fusion Middleware product family and will be offered in three editions: an entry-level bundle targeting Microsoft Corp. at the low end, a standard edition, and an enterprise edition for high-end users. The enterprise edition, which targets BI vendors such as Business Objects SA, SAS Institute Inc. and Cognos Inc., will integrate analytic tools and applications from Siebel Systems Inc. with Oracle BI tools. It will use Fusion Middleware to link into non-Oracle applications, data sources and tools.
James Archuleta, director of CRM at Alaska Airlines Inc. in Seattle, said the Oracle tools will eventually help ease integration among his Oracle database, Siebel analytic applications and PeopleSoft back-office applications.
"We're looking at Oracle being able to sell us one package at one point in time where ... we'll have one set of developers who have one skill setOracle Fusion," he said.
Still, Archuleta said he hopes Oracle will be receptive to the airline's suggestion that Oracle integrate the analytic tools from Siebel with a statistical tool for more heavy-duty analysis in the future.
"We trick Siebel analytics to do this, but it doesn't have the horsepower that a statistical package does," he said.
Basheer Khan, managing partner at systems integrator Innowave Technology LLC in Irvine, Calif., and an official of the Oracle Applications User Group, said most Oracle users have been forced to use disparate BI tools that were packaged with PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards or Oracle enterprise applications in the past.
The new BI suite from Oracle will provide a single option for these users, he added.
Oracle President Charles Phillips said BI will be a "fourth leg" of products for the vendor, along with its database, enterprise application and middleware product lines. The new suite will include query and analysis, enterprise reporting, dashboards, workflow, business activity monitoring, and integration with Microsoft Office and Excel. It will tie together best-of-breed products on top of a common metadata model and user interface to allow users to get more consistent reports and results from analyses of data sources across the enterprise, Oracle executives said.
Keith Gile, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said that Oracle has not had a strong BI strategy. Instead, its BI tools have been part of the database, application server or enterprise applications, he noted.
While he applauded Oracle for laying out its plans for an integrated BI suite of tools and applications, Gile said the company will still have some ground to make up in terms of competing with established vendors of best-of-breed reporting and analysis tools.
Continued...
1 |
2 |
NEXT
|
|
 |
Oracle Takes Aim at Enterprise BI Market
|
|
If you're like our 7,000 survey respondents, your paycheck this year has been flattened and your bonus obliterated. We offer 12 ways to plump up your paycheck.
Microsoft's next OS might more accurately be called Windows 6.5: It's essentially a better version of Vista.
Twitter can be a valuable business tool -- if you know what you're doing. Here's how to juice it for all it's worth.
By helping Intel with loosened 'Vista Capable' requirements, Microsoft 'severely damaged' its credibility, said an HP exec in a newly unsealed Feb. 2006 e-mail.
Get the latest news, reviews and more about Microsoft's newest desktop operating system
Find wage data for 50 IT job titles.
|
 |
| Speeding the time to intelligence Get this Computerworld report free for a limited time, compliments of SAS. Time To Intelligence -- a concept defining how long it takes to get accurate and timely information into the hands of workers who need it most. Do it slower than your competitors and your company is toast. Do it faster, you scorch them. Business Intelligence is the key to optimizing Time To Intelligence, and success there is a combination of people, policies, and technology. Download this executive briefing |
|
| Transforming Disaster Recovery - VMware Infrastructure for rapid, reliable and cost-effective Disaster Recovery Download this white paper today! (Source: VMware) VMware Infrastructure transforms disaster recovery by providing you fast, reliable and cost-effective disaster recovery. Why suffer from the slow, expensive and unreliable problems associated with traditional disaster recovery solution? VMware makes disaster recovery affordable through consolidation savings and re-use of existing servers for your disaster recovery site. Experience the speed of virtualization! Download this white paper |
|
| Turning information into a Competitive Advantage Turning information into a Competitive Advantage View this webcast now! Go to the webcast |
|
| White Papers Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. | View more whitepapers |
|
|