As Published In July/August 2006

Business Intelligence Gets Smarter
By Caroline Kvitka

New suite combines Oracle business intelligence with Siebel Business Analytics

Oracle is making a major push into the business intelligence space with a comprehensive suite that combines Oracle's business intelligence (BI) middleware with Oracle's Siebel Business Analytics. Oracle Business Intelligence Suite addresses the complete spectrum of BI and analytical requirements facing customers today, including historical, real-time, and forward-looking insight, data integration, and management. This open, standards-based software enables customers to extend BI across the enterprise to make informed decisions based on timely, actionable information.

"We're integrating a variety of tools and technologies into a common platform to enable you to tackle all kinds of business intelligence problems with a common toolset," says Thomas Kurian, Oracle senior vice president of Server Technologies. "Today if you use BI tools from other vendors, they aren't built on a common platform. With a common platform, they have common metadata, a common security model, a common UI, a common way to be managed, and a unified notion of the information against which you're doing all of your calculations. No matter which tool you're accessing the information from, you always get the same view of the information."

Developed for heterogeneous IT environments, the Oracle Business Intelligence Suite allows business users to collect and analyze information from Oracle and non-Oracle databases, including IBM, Microsoft, and Teradata, and from business applications from Oracle, SAP, and others. Part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware product family, the suite delivers information that is hot-pluggable into existing data sources and operational systems.

Choose Your Bundle

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

The enterprise edition features relational and online analytical processing (OLAP) query and analysis for both Oracle and non-Oracle environments. It includes ad hoc query and analysis tools; easy-to-use, thin-client analytic dashboards; enterprise reporting and publishing; and real-time alerting. This edition also supports integration with Microsoft desktop tools. Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition is priced at US$1,500 per named user.

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Aimed at businesses seeking to complement their existing Oracle investments, Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition includes Oracle Business Intelligence Beans for custom application development; Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer for ad hoc query, reporting, and analysis; Oracle Reports, for enterprise reporting; and Oracle Business Intelligence Spreadsheet Add-In, for direct access to Oracle OLAP from within Microsoft Excel. It is priced at US$400 per named user.

Targeted at small-to-midsize businesses and departments, Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition One, planned for availability within 12 months, is an integrated BI offering with all the necessary infrastructure software and tools to quickly and efficiently deploy a BI system. This version is expected to include Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition One and Oracle Warehouse Builder, in addition to reporting, query, and analysis tools. It will be priced at US$25,000 for up to 50 users and a maximum of 2 CPUs.

Infusing BI Across The Stack

Oracle plans to deliver specific analytical updates within the next 12 months by integrating the BI infrastructure of the suite with Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise, Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, and Oracle E-Business Suite applications. Within the same time frame, Oracle also plans to release enhanced enterprise performance management capabilities in PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 9.0, expanded daily business intelligence features in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, and industry-specific analytic applications.