Oracle Analytics Review

Oracle
Product:
Vendor:
Founded:
Headquarters:
Oracle Analytics
Oracle
1977
Austin, TX
Ownership:
Customers:
Deployment Model:
Free Trial:
Public
430,000+
Cloud, On-Premise
Yes
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Oracle Analytics At A Glance

Good: Machine learning that provides smart recommendations and fast insights, the ability to collaborate on reports, flexible deployment options.
Bad: Occasional slow performance of Oracle Analytics Cloud, steep learning curve for some users.
Bottom Line: BI solution that uses augmented analytics to empower organizations to make faster and better business decisions.

Product Overview

Oracle has offered a variety of BI software in the past, including the Business Intelligence 12c platform. However, the company now provides a more comprehensive BI tool called Oracle Analytics, which is the focus of this review.

Oracle Analytics uses embedded machine learning and artificial intelligence to help businesses make better decisions, faster. It has self-service functionality, so users can explore their data without leaning on IT. Oracle Analytics can be deployed in the cloud, on-premise or in a hybrid environment.

There are four main products:

  • Oracle Analytics Cloud
  • Oracle Analytics Server
  • Oracle Fusion Analytics
  • Oracle Essbase

We discuss each product in our Features section below.

Features

Oracle Analytics Cloud – Oracle Analytics Cloud allows users to create reports and dashboards from their web browser or mobile device. They can build visual stories out of their data, as well as ask questions (via voice or text) and get real-time answers. As mentioned, Oracle Analytics uses machine learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to streamline the data discovery process. It provides personalized recommendations for preparing datasets (e.g., dates/times, location), gives text descriptions of visualizations for presentations and gives forecasts and predictions with one click. In addition, users can get real-time alerts straight from their mobile device of new data or if data parameters reaches a specific goal. They can share reports with their teams or clients with collaboration and publishing functionality. Finally, Oracle Analytics Cloud can be embedded within another application.

Oracle Analytics Server – Oracle Analytics Server has the same features as Oracle Analytics Cloud except it’s intended for companies that want to host the software on their servers.

Oracle Fusion Analytics – This software integrates with other Oracle Cloud applications and includes a prebuilt key performance indicators (KPI) library. It also comes with prebuilt data models for finance, HR, customer service and supply chain management teams. It is now part of the Fusion Data Intelligence Platform, which combines ready-to-use analytics with prebuilt AI and machine learning models, in order to help businesses get deeper insights into their data and make actionable business decisions faster.

Oracle Essbase – With Oracle Essbase, users can design and test complex business scenarios. It includes 100 prebuilt calculations, and users can also create and store new formulas with most query languages (e.g., multidimensional expressions). They can also develop what-if analyses for multiple scenarios from a single user interface.

Target Market

Oracle Analytics targets finance, HR, sales, marketing and supply chain teams from organizations of all sizes and in many industries. We’ve listed 10 of its clients below.

  • Adventist Health
  • Coca-Cola HBC
  • Dropbox
  • FedEx
  • Lyft
  • Northwell Health
  • Riverbed
  • Synlait
  • Vodafone
  • Western Digital

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Implementation/Integration

Oracle develops a tailored implementation plan based on the client’s needs and requirements. Some of the typical components are identifying goals of the software, customization, data migration and training. Oracle offers free and paid courses on the Oracle Analytics and other solutions.

Customer Service & Support

Users can access the MyOracle Support Portal to browse articles, submit a ticket, participate in training courses and engage with other users via a community forum. Oracle offers tailored support plans that include a dedicated support manager, priority support and other services.

Pricing

The Oracle Analytics Cloud has two pricing plans: Professional and Enterprise. The Professional plan costs $16 per user, per month, while the Enterprise plan is priced at $80 per user, per month. It also uses the Oracle Compute Unit (OCPU) per hour strategy for companies that prefer that option. The Professional plan will then cost $0.54 OCPU per hour, and users on the Enterprise plan can expect to pay $1.07 OCPU per hour.

Pricing isn’t publicly available for the Oracle Analytics Server, Oracle Fusion Analytics and Oracle Essbase, so please contact the vendor for a quote.

Shortcomings

Some users have mentioned that Oracle Analytics Cloud has occasional performance issues (e.g., data load is too slow) and that there’s a steep learning curve because the interface is not intuitive.

Screenshots

Oracle Screenshot 1
Oracle Screenshot 2
Oracle Screenshot 3

About

Oracle has a simple mission – to simplify IT resources. In so doing, it has created systems and products to enable hardware and software to work together. In addition to engineered systems and software, Oracle also has sold products and solutions relating to databases, servers, storage, and cloud solutions. It also offers solutions aimed at specific job functions, such as finance, marketing, and human resources.

Headquartered in Austin, TX, Oracle employs more than 164,000 people, including 47,000 developers and engineers.

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Powerful and Flexible

on 2014-08-14 15:59:51

With the power of Oracle RDBMS Oracle Hyperion Essbase is extremely powerful and fast. In addition to the speed in getting data into the OLAP tool, the tool itself can run large quantities of calculations on very large datasets effectively. We were running it locally so I would expect that the hosted solution would have even more computing power behind it.

Training was a bit more complex than other tools based on how to build the base queries compared to other tools. Granted the flexibility that was provided by giving power users meant less work for IT or he ability to pilot a different view or calculation before sending in a formal request to have the action handled database/server-side.

One issue that appears to still persist (seen in the screenshots above) is a limitation in its ability to manage aggregate calculations (percentages/rates.) Instead of doing the calculation to the summed values, it averages or sums the values of the rates from the individual rows at equal weight. The work around was to create different dashboard reports for rates vs. total quantities.

All-in-all, a powerful and flexible tool that non-data people can become power users with varied levels of complexity.