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What CIOs Want Most Is Integrated Business Intelligence, Says InformationWeek

According to data from InformationWeek Research, 78 percent of IT professionals who evaluate BI tools say their top selection criterion is a BI product's ability to integrate with existing operational systems, business processes, and IT infrastructure.

This desire for BI integration represents a significant shift in thinking about enterprise analytics, a market that AMR Research estimates could grow 9 percent this year to $23.9 billion.

Toward Pervasive BI
In the past, BI applications existed as "siloed" technologies that served small groups of analytical specialists who examined historical business information to spot buying trends, market opportunities, or operational problems.

Now, by contrast, companies are increasingly seeking "pervasive" business intelligence— the capacity to deliver information to anyone who needs it, when they need it, integrated within a business process, to drive the right decisions and actions.

Oracle #1 Preferred Vendor
InformationWeek also found that, among respondents, Oracle was the number one preferred BI vendor.

The survey was conducted before Oracle announced it would acquire Hyperion, which InformationWeek Research called "a move that promises to increase Oracle's profile in this market even further."

"I think there is a clear correlation between the two surveys," says David Planeaux, director of marketing, Oracle Business Intelligence Applications. "Organizations are looking to Oracle because we're uniquely able to deliver the kind of multilevel integration that makes pervasive BI possible."

The Integration Foundation
Oracle Fusion Middleware—based on an open, standards-based, service-oriented architecture—provides the foundation for integrated BI. It also offers the ability to incorporate middleware solutions from other vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, and SAP.

Oracle also offers the industry's most comprehensive suite of operation BI applications, from CRM to supply chain and financials to HR. To speed implementation while lowering cost and risk, they come with prebuilt integration points into Oracle and non-Oracle Applications and data sources.

In addition, Oracle Fusion Middleware provides other key structural elements of a unified, enterprisewide approach to BI, including integrated security and identity management, business process management, and a single, preintegrated portal solution.

From Intelligence to Action
Recently Oracle has begun taking integration to a new level by embedding intelligence directly into applications, business processes, and workflows.

In this way, workers monitor business conditions, including alerts, and then take appropriate action without taking the time to toggle between different applications.

"Having BI alone is like sitting in a car and staring at the gauges on the dashboard but finding you don't have any brake or gas pedals," says John Kopcke, senior vice president, Business Intelligence and Performance Management Global Business Unit.

But by embedding BI directly into business processes, says Kopcke, "we're not just answering the question, 'What do we do next?' We're also answering the question, 'How do we motivate people to do it and make sure it is successful?'"

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