Oracle launches industry’s ‘most complete’ BI solution

Oracle has launched its new business intelligence (BI) solution, claiming it is the most complete and integrated product on the market.

The offering, known as Oracle Business Intelligence 11g, seeks to expand users' BI capabilities so they can make use of accurate data from numerous sources and across different platforms.

Oracle BI 11g is built around the Common Enterprise Information Model, enabling commonality for users across all different layers.

It is the first solution on the market with a unified environment for accessing and analysing information from relational, online analytical processing (OLAP) and XML data sources, Oracle said.

Plenty of excitement has been aroused by the fact the solution is also the first to unify relational OLAP, multidimensional OLAP and enterprise reporting on a single foundation.

Another attractive feature in Oracle BI 11g is the highly interactive, single interface that has plenty of functionality. It allows for business users to play around with the various charts and tables containing the data and customise the experience to make it more effective.

A thin-client report design editor, meanwhile, lets users publish both interactive, web-based reports and "pixel perfect" production reports, according to Oracle.

For simple access to reports and metrics within them, the BI system also includes a search function that simply requires the user to enter key terms.

In another industry first, by integrating with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g, IT departments will be able manage BI performance from the same environment that they control their IT stacks, according to the software giant.

To speed up business decision-making, an Action Framework feature, which Oracle also believes is unique to the segment, enables users to initiate actions from the dashboard.

President of Oracle, Charles Phillips, told delegates at a launch event in London today this makes 11g the first "closed loop" BI solution available.

Phillips said the introduction of Oracle BI "could not be more timely".

He claimed Oracle had put some distance between itself and competitors in the BI sphere, such as SAP and IBM.

"Our strategy has not changed in a long time," said Phillips. "We are trying to build a very complete and integrated stack of technology."

Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of product development at Oracle and one of the boffins behind 11g, said the new offering gave businesses all the tools to span all kinds of analysis.

He stressed the "openness" of the solution, highlighting it can take information from any data source and can be deployed in IT infrastructures without having to change the setup.

Oracle is having a positive year so far. Just last month its results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2010 showed revenues rocketing up by 39 per cent.

However, in slightly concerning news for the company, creator of MySQL Monty Widenius has launched an appeal to the EU against Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems.