Oracle is not first in BI, and wants to change that - that was the clear
message of a well executed, multi-site "real plus virtual" event with
top executives showing off the result of a multi-year effort to
rationalize and integrate a set of leading but overlapping components
into a seamless suite. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition
11g (OBIEE) deserves the accolades it has already received from analysts
who welcomed its announcement - it makes bold and serious bets on
effective centralized metadata administration, data integration/
unification and optimized analytic architecture, collaboration,
globalization, mobile device support, and a powerful link to action that
will be most effective (unsurprisingly) with its own business
applications. While it misses some pieces - fully integrated in-memory
processing, SaaS and cloud support among them - these will be
forthcoming, and Oracle is clearly committed to a quicker release cycle
now that the thorny internal politics around legacy products seem to be
resolved. But its competitive focus may be misdirected; while SAP is
still ahead in market share, IBM is the bigger threat in the
marketplace.

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