BI Now Becomes Obsession of Oracle

After its acquisition spree, which included those of business software makers PeopleSoft and Siebel, database magnate Oracle Corp. is now using its market size to promote its own business intelligence (BI) capabilities.

BI, the hottest thing in the enterprise market right now, has become the favorite "value-added" proposition among IT solution vendors such as SAS Institute and GreenPlum, a greenhorn database company.

Put simply, BI systems help companies have a more comprehensive knowledge of the factors affecting their business. As the term implies, it provides intelligence to the business as opposed to the current platform where technology is only a system and does think.

It is for this reason, according to Oracle, that companies are now looking to integrate BI in their systems to better respond to challenges and enhance customer satisfaction.

The opportunity in this area, according to research firm IDC, is so huge that "a new wave of investment in BI applications will appear as demand grows for BI for the masses."

Oracle is so convinced on BI that it has actually appointed a general manager for BI in Asia Pacific region in the person of Ricky Kapur. He was in the country recently to give a media briefing together with Oracle Philippines managing director Francis Ong.

During the briefing, the executives cited a Gartner report which said that Oracle is now the fastest growing stand-alone BI platform vendor in Asia Pacific.
Based on the report, Oracle registered 64.8-percent revenue growth in Asia Pacific in 2005, compared to the previous year.

Another Gartner survey, on the other hand, put BI as the top choice of CIOs in the area of technology priorities, outranking traditional issues such as security and mobile workforce enablement.

Based on the Gartner study, Oracle claimed it currently owns 14 percent of the BI market globally -- the biggest share among vendors. As for the local market, there are no data available for revenue potential although the Redwood, California-based database giant is bullish about it prospects here.

One of the main advantages that Oracle brings to the table, the company said, is its "leading position" in business analytics software and data warehousing tools. This, it said, gives it the perfect position to converge both systems to "empower users through the democratization of BI."

Unlike SAS, which is currently one of the leading BI vendors, Kapur said Oracle’s BI tools offer open scalability. "Their (SAS) BI also is based on analytical applications. On the other hand, Oracle has pre-built and imbedded analytics. No other vendor has the same breadth of offerings."

The only area, Kapur said, that SAS can effectively compete with Oracle is in "departmental applications." "But those are very simple applications that other vendors can also offer."