Oracle made a strong statement to the market in late March with the launch of Oracle Business Intelligence Suite, a comprehensive, open-standards-based suite of analytical software targeted at all sizes and types of organisation.

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite unites the business intelligence components of Oracle Fusion Middleware with the Siebel Analytics platform that Oracle gained with its acquisition of the CRM vendor. It addresses the whole spectrum of BI and analytical requirements, from historical data to real-time analytics and forward-looking insight.

"Our investment in Siebel Business Analytics complements our already strong BI and analytic application product set enabling us to now offer the industry's most comprehensive solution," said Charles Phillips, president, Oracle. "Our investment extends to the creation of a dedicated BI sales organisation to support our expanded product offerings. We're uniquely positioned to assist customers to glean greater business insight and garner increased value from their data and applications."

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite is available in three editions: Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition and Standard Edition One.

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition is a packaged suite of analytical applications for business users. It combines the former Siebel Analytics product set with Oracle Fusion Middleware. It is designed for out of the box deployment in heterogeneous computing environments; a marketplace that is new for Oracle in the analytics applications space.

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition is designed for reporting and analytics within an Oracle systems environment. It consists of Oracle BI Discoverer and Oracle BI Reports, as well as Oracle BI Beans for custom BI application development and Oracle BI Spreadsheet Add-In, which provides an interface to Oracle OLAP from Microsoft Excel.

Not yet launched, Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition One will be a complete business intelligence infrastructure for small and mid-size organisations, and is expected to consist of Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition One, Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g, and reporting, query and analysis tools.

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition are already available. Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition One is expected to ship later this fiscal year.

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise and Standard Edition Overview

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition and Standard Edition One offer customers a choice of solutions for their BI initiatives. Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition allows enterprise customers to gain better insight across their existing systems and applications including SAP applications.

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition integrates BI technology from Siebel with Oracle Fusion Middleware. It features:

• Relational and OLAP query and analysis for both Oracle and non-Oracle environments
• Powerful ad-hoc query and analysis tools
• Easy-to-use, thin-client analytic dashboards
• Enterprise reporting and publishing to allow business users to publish reports
• Real-time alerting to allow for proactive BI detection and alerting
• Mobile analytics to allow business users, sales representatives, and others to have full query and analysis capability on a mobile laptop
• Integration with Microsoft desktop tools to allow business users to interact with BI information using Excel, Word, Outlook, and Exchange

Businesses seeking to complement existing investments in Oracle can rely on Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition, which includes:

• Oracle BI Beans - custom application development
• Oracle BI Discoverer - ad-hoc query, reporting, and analysis with dashboard features
• Oracle Reports - high-fidelity, enterprise reporting tool
• Oracle BI Spreadsheet Add-In - direct access to Oracle OLAP from within Microsoft Excel

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition One will offer SMBs a compelling, integrated BI offering with the necessary infrastructure software and tools to quickly and efficiently deploy a BI system. Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition One is expected to include Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition One, Oracle Warehouse Builder as well as reporting, querying, and analysis tools.

Pricing and Availability

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise and Standard Editions are generally available today:

• Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition is priced at $1,500 (€1190) per named user.
• Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition is priced at $400 (€315) per named user.
• Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition One is priced at $25,000 (€19,850) and is planned for availability in the next fiscal year.

For more information about Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition, go to: http://www.oracle.com/bi