Oracle threw down the gauntlet to rival application giants such as Cognos, Business Objects and Microsoft with the release last week of a $1,000 a seat business intelligence (BI) package for up to 50 users. John Stokdyk reports
While licence revenues for transactional and operational applications have been stagnant, business software developers have all been buying and creating BI tools, especially for mid-market organisations that previously could not afford the six figure sums often associated with sophisticated analysis and performance management suites.
Oracle's Business Intelligence Standard Edition (SE) One is based on Siebel technology the company acquired in 2005 and is designed to cater for five to 50 users. The company also presented it as an early representative of the Oracle Fusion project that is intended to pull together all of its various business application families (Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel etc) on to a common platform. The mid-market BI system will scale up, if the user needs it, to Oracle's Enterprise Edition BI suite.
The $1,000 package is based on Oracle's 10g Standard Edition database and "warehouse builder", along with a business intelligence server to control the reporting infrastructure. As explained by the official announcement, the suite also includes:
Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher - an environment for producing reporting packs (for example financial statements and management accounts) using standard programs including Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word.
Oracle Business Intelligence Answers for ad hoc reporting and analysis using point-and-click menus to select items from the underlying data model.
Oracle Business Intelligence Interactive Dashboards - a simple, drag and drop web interface lets users deliver personalised KPI views, summary reports and live graphical charts via the web.
Introducing the new suite, Oracle's vice president of business intelligence Paul Rodwick commented, "Oracle Business Intelligence SE One is the only end-to-end BI and data warehousing solution that is based on category-leading technology for every component, offering a complete and compelling solution at an attractive price."
Oracle is locked into a serious technology race and BI landgrab with SAP in the space above, Microsoft below and BI specialists such as Cognos and Business Objects around the fringers. Oracle's mid-market announcement shows Larry Ellison's company getting its retaliation in first, as Microsoft is on the brink of introducing its PerformancePoint Server suite, which will include elements it acquired in last year's ProClarity deal and a price tag in the hundreds.
SAP, meanwhile, is still digesting Outlooksoft, but no doubt is brewing up its own product strategy to attack the mid-market.
Afer all the recent industry consolidation, it promises to be a lively summer in the new look BI marketplace.
