"Take me home, country roads"- Oracle composes the EPM tune !!
Oracle started consolidating in the BI space sometime in 2005. My guess is that was the time when Oracle would have envisioned a lot of confusion down the line with multiple products increasing chances of cannibalization. This was also the time when BI space was seeing a lot of volatility with organizations increasingly tilting towards pre packaged BI solutions and pushing vendors to pack in advanced BI features like forecasting, kpi tracking, visualization etc.
In keeping with both these factors, Oracle has carefully crafted a roadmap with dual purpose of creating a product suite to cater to both epm as well as bi needs and with this varied arsenal it plans to meet the ever changing demands of epm space.
Oracle is enhancing its core reporting platform, OBIEE, to 11g which seamlessly integrates with all leading OLTP as well as OLAP platforms. It includes score carding abilities which were previously absent and also is backbone of BI Applications suite. Oracle Essbase and Oracle OLAP form the multidimensional analytics pillars for planning, budgeting, sales helping identify key trends and boosting business decision making. On enterprise performance management part, Oracle has solidified its presence with acquired hyperion products like strategy management, profitability and cost management,planning budgeting and forecasting apps. These are complimented by other oracle products like crystal ball, DRM, IR etc to create the most comprehensive BI offering from any vendor as suitable acknowledged by all leading analysts.
Fusion applications makes BI and integral part of ERP and is a clear indication that Oracle will keep refining its magnum opus following it's well led out bi roadmap.
