FAQ

Oracle Business Intelligence

Strategy and Roadmap

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 FAQ:
Oracle Business Intelligence
Strategy and Roadmap

WHAT IS ORACLE ANNOUNCING?

Oracle is announcing the next generation of Oracle Business Intelligence, uniting
Oracle’s databases, middleware, and analytic applications. Oracle Business
Intelligence consists of best-of-breed BI components that form the industry’s
most-comprehensive suite of BI functionality. Oracle Business Intelligence will
address the complete spectrum of BI and analytical requirements facing customers
today, including historical, real-time, and forward-looking information; data
integration and management; and enterprisewide, prebuilt analytic applications.
Oracle Business Intelligence is hot-pluggable, meaning it works with and enhances
customers’ investments in IT systems.

WHAT IS NEW?
Oracle Business Intelligence now includes the Siebel Business Analytics next-
generation BI infrastructure software and analytic applications. An increased
investment in business intelligence across Oracle includes dedicated BI sales and
consulting organizations, and focused partner and channel development to support
the expanded product offerings.

WHAT IS THE VALUE TO CUSTOMERS?

The Oracle Business Intelligence Suite is available today and offers the following:
• A comprehensive, best-of-breed suite of solutions that covers the complete
spectrum of BI tools and technology
• A suite of applications that is open to your environment, and hot-pluggable
with your existing enterprise applications
• An integrated offering of BI tools and analytic applications that gives you the
overall lowest complexity and best total cost-of-ownership (TCO)

WHAT ARE THE KEY MARKET TRENDS THAT ORACLE IS

ADDRESSING?
• Pervasive deployment beyond the typical business analyst and executive users
• Business processes driven for performance optimization

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 • Heterogeneous customer requirements
• Role-based and industry-specific analytic applications
• Decreasing IT costs through vendor consolidation

WHAT ARE ORACLE’S STRENGTHS IN BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE?

Numerous analyst studies rank Oracle as leading this space. Oracle is the most-
popular data warehousing supplier and fastest-growing middleware supplier. Oracle
offers the most-popular and broadest suite of analytic applications, including
industry-specific and functionally specific solutions, as well as corporate
performance management applications.

HOW IS ORACLE’S OFFERING DIFFERENTIATED FROM OTHER

OFFERINGS?
Oracle offers open, extensible, and best-of-breed BI tools on top of a unified
platform. This unified platform delivers a single source of truth and helps reduce
customers’ cost of implementation and ownership.

WHAT PRIMARY TECHNOLOGIES SERVE AS A BASIS FOR ORACLE

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE?
Oracle plans to take the best components of all portfolio products and
technologies. Specifically, Oracle plans to leverage the following:
• Oracle Database will be the premier data-warehousing database, although we
plan to support other popular databases as well.
• We plan to integrate Siebel Business Analytics technologies with Oracle
Fusion Middleware capabilities, including Oracle Portal and Oracle
Application Server. We are also considering packaging Siebel Business
Analytics with Oracle Fusion Middleware.
• We plan to make Siebel Business Analytics products the basis of the Oracle
Business Intelligence platform. This would be composed of

o Siebel Intelligence Dashboards (role-based information delivery and

interactivity)
o Siebel Answers (ad hoc exploration and dashboard building)
o Siebel Delivers (proactive detection and alerts)
o Siebel Mobile Analytics (full interactive analytics for disconnected
laptops)
o Siebel Advanced Reporting Engine (for highly formatted, pixel-perfect
enterprise reporting; used in conjunction with Siebel Intelligence
Dashboards and for high-volume busted output)

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 • We plan to use Oracle Data Mining for high-performance, in-database
predictive analytics. Access to Oracle Data Mining will be incorporated into
Siebel Business Analytics platform.
• We plan to use Oracle Warehouse Builder as the preferred
extract/transform/load (ETL) technology for custom-built analytic
applications targeting Oracle Database.
• We plan to use Siebel Real-Time Decisions for real-time self-learning
predictive analytics applied to customer interaction optimization (such as
retention management and cross-sell/upsell).
• Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) will be used to monitor and
detect real-time business events. Oracle BAM is planned as a real-time data
source provider to Oracle Business Intelligence.
• Oracle XML Publisher provides advanced formatting for enterprise
reporting, integrated with the Oracle Business Intelligence platform.
• We plan to continue to enhance Microsoft Office integration with Oracle
Business Intelligence and Siebel Business Analytics.
• We plan to enhance Siebel Business Analytics applications to support
additional horizontal and vertical business requirements. We also intend to
certify additional versions of Oracle E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft
Enterprise.
• Oracle Daily Business Intelligence will continue to be offered as the lowest
TCO, rapid implementation option for Oracle E-Business Suite applications.
• We plan to expand collaboration between Oracle Business Intelligence and
PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management solutions by offering
Oracle Business Intelligence tools as an alternative to third-party BI tools.
• Oracle Corporate Performance Management will continue to provide
capabilities for planning, budgeting and forecasting, score carding,
consolidations, profitability management, and activity-based management.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF SIEBEL BUSINESS ANALYTICS?

Siebel Business Analytics includes platform products (such as Siebel Analytics
Server, Siebel Dashboard, and Siebel Answers) and prebuilt analytic applications
(such as ETL maps, physical data models, dimensional business models, key
performance indicators (KPIs), OLAP reports, and role-based and function-
specific dashboards). Siebel Business Analytics applications source data from Siebel,
Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, SAP, and other enterprise sources, providing
a very strong solution for customers that need to analyze data across multiple
heterogeneous systems. Siebel Business Analytics will continue to play a prominent
role for all CRM-related analytics.

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WILL SIEBEL BUSINESS ANALYTICS REPLACE CURRENT ANALYTIC
OFFERINGS (PEOPLESOFT WAREHOUSE AND OPERATIONAL
DASHBOARDS, ORACLE DAILY BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE, ETC.)?
Siebel Business Analytics is entirely complementary to Oracle's current set of
analytic applications. Oracle plans to invest in building key integration points
between Siebel Business Analytics and current Oracle applications to extend the
value for all customers.

WILL ORACLE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PROVIDE A SOLUTION

ONLY FOR THE ORACLE DATABASE?
The Oracle Business Intelligence infrastructure is hot-pluggable for Oracle and
non-Oracle databases. The Oracle Business Intelligence infrastructure takes special
advantage of Oracle Database features (“Better as a Suite”). We plan to have it
provide native support of additional Oracle Database features including the OLAP
option and Oracle Data Mining.

SIEBEL HAS PARTNERSHIPS WITH ACTUATE FOR REPORTING AND

INFORMATICA FOR ETL. WILL THOSE CONTINUE?
Oracle plans to maintain those partnerships far into the future. Oracle also plans to
introduce equivalent Oracle products that provide equal functionality as
alternatives.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF ORACLE DISCOVERER?

Because there are more than 10,000 Oracle Discoverer customers, we plan to
continue adding features to it, and customers will be protected by Oracle lifetime
support. For example, we are planning to add support of custom aggregates within
the next 12 months. Releases of both Oracle Discoverer and Oracle Reports are
planned for the 11i release of Oracle Fusion Middleware (scheduled for calendar
year 2007). In addition, metadata migration tools will be available to ease
movement to the Oracle Business Intelligence platform.

WHY WOULD I CHOOSE ORACLE DISCOVERER OR SIEBEL BUSINESS

ANALYTICS?
In the short term, Oracle Discoverer is the only Oracle product that provides
support for the Oracle OLAP option. Oracle Discoverer supports Oracle
applications and is an appropriate choice for customers needing an Oracle-centric
solution. Oracle Discoverer will continue to be available as the centerpiece of
Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition.

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Siebel Business Analytics provides the infrastructure foundation of Oracle Business
Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition is
the correct solution for customers who need to access heterogeneous data sources
across Oracle and non-Oracle applications, have an existing data warehouse on
non-Oracle databases, or need analytic applications in conjunction with Siebel
Customer Relationship Management.

IF I’M AN ORACLE DAILY BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE CUSTOMER OR A

PEOPLESOFT ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
CUSTOMER, WHAT DOES THIS ANNOUNCEMENT MEAN FOR ME?
WHAT IS THE BEST TECHNOLOGY CHOICE?
Oracle continues to invest in developing Oracle Daily Business Intelligence and
PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management. The new analytic applications
from Siebel are complementary to existing offerings.
• Oracle Daily Business Intelligence is the lowest TCO option and the right
starting point to get rapid BI results for your organization if you source data
only from Oracle E-Business Suite.
• PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management continues to be a good
option for PeopleSoft Enterprise and JD Edwards customers. We plan to
offer Siebel Business Analytics to PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance
Management users as their front-end BI tool, as an alternative to Business
Objects, Cognos, or MicroStrategy. For JD Edwards and PeopleSoft
customers needing solutions for planning, budgeting and forecasting, score
carding, consolidations, and activity-based management, PeopleSoft
Enterprise Performance Management is the appropriate choice.
• Siebel Business Analytics platform and applications are the best option for
customers who need insight in a heterogeneous environment. This includes
customers who are looking for a standalone data warehouse with adapters for
PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite; customers who require multiple
instances or have requirements beyond Oracle Daily Business Intelligence;
Siebel Customer Relationship Management customers; customers who want
to apply analytic applications to existing data warehouses or data marts not
on Oracle Database; customers who use a combination of Oracle,
PeopleSoft, Siebel, and other systems, or customers who use SAP
applications.
• For Oracle E-Business Suite and Siebel customers, Oracle’s Corporate
Performance Management solutions will continue to provide capabilities for
planning, budgeting and forecasting, score carding, consolidations,
profitability management, and activity-based management.

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WHAT FUTURE RELEASES ARE PLANNED FOR ANALYTIC
APPLICATIONS?
Oracle has a clear roadmap to continue enhancing current product families, helping
you to leverage the Oracle Fusion Middleware and Business Intelligence
infrastructure, and providing direct upgrade paths to Oracle Fusion.
The following enhancements are planned over the next 12 months:
• Oracle’s PeopleSoft and Oracle’s JD Edwards Enterprise Performance
Management 9.0
o Uptake Oracle Fusion Middleware and Business Intelligence
infrastructure
o Industry-specific analytics for higher education
o Expanded enterprise planning, compliance, and audit features
o Balance sheet, cash flow planning, and compensation scenario planning
o Internal controls diagnostics and reverse mapping on journal publishing
o Drill down to PeopleSoft Enterprise General Ledger

• Oracle E-Business Suite Corporate Performance Management and

Daily Business Intelligence 12
o Certification of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Business Intelligence
infrastructure
o Additional 61 reports, 48 new KPIs, and 6 new dashboards
o Additional intelligence for Oracle Human Resources, Oracle
Procurement, Oracle Supply Chain Management, and Web analytics
o Integration with Oracle Collaboration Suite, drag and drop pure user
web experience
o Expanded enterprise planning capabilities and financial compliance
features

• Siebel Business Analytics 8.0

o Enhanced customer relationship management analytics dashboards and
metadata
o Planned integration of a unified data model for customer relationship
management and enterprise resource planning analytics
o Total cost-of-ownership improvements
o New analytic applications for industries
In 2007, Oracle plans to deliver individual Fusion analytic applications specific to
industries such as financial services, pharmaceuticals, and higher education, and we
will also deliver role-based dashboards and embedded analytics. Additionally,

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Oracle plans to deliver a single, integrated corporate performance management
(CPM) suite that crosses all Oracle product families that span front- and back-
office systems.

WHAT IS THE PRICING AND PACKAGING FOR THE ORACLE

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PLATFORM?

Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition, and

Standard Edition One offer customers a choice of solutions for their BI initiatives.
Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition helps enterprise customers
gain better insight across their existing systems and applications, including SAP
applications. Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition integrates BI
technology from Siebel with Oracle Fusion Middleware. It features
• Relational and OLAP query and analysis for both Oracle and non-Oracle
environments
• Powerful ad hoc query and analysis tools
• Easy-to-use, thin-client analytic dashboards
• Enterprise reporting and publishing to allow business users to publish reports
• Real-time alerting to allow for proactive BI detection and alerting
• Mobile analytics to allow business users, sales representatives, and others to
have full query and analysis capability on a laptop
• Integration with Microsoft desktop tools to allow business users to interact
with BI information using Excel, Word, Outlook, and Exchange
Businesses seeking to complement existing investments in Oracle can rely on
Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition, which includes
• Oracle Business Intelligence Beans—a custom application development
• Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer—ad hoc query, reporting, and
analysis with dashboard features
• Oracle Reports—a high-fidelity, enterprise reporting tool
• Oracle Business Intelligence Spreadsheet Add-In—direct access to Oracle
OLAP from within Microsoft Excel
Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition One will offer small-to-midsize
businesses a compelling, integrated BI offering with the necessary infrastructure
software and tools to quickly and efficiently deploy a BI system. Oracle Business
Intelligence Suite Standard Edition One is expected to include Oracle Database 10g
Standard Edition One and Oracle Warehouse Builder, as well as reporting,
querying, and analysis tools.
Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise and Standard Editions are available
today. Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition is priced at $1,500 per

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 named user. Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition is priced at $400
per named user.
Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Standard Edition One is priced at $25,000 and is
planned for availability in the next fiscal year.

FAQ: Oracle Business Intelligence Strategy and Roadmap

March 2006

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