Oracle Analytics Server, replacing the former Oracle BI Foundation Suite is a business intelligence reporting and analytics platform. It provides users with a series of integrated tools for ad-hoc query and analysis, dashboard and scorecard creation, enterprise reporting, mobile analytics, multidimensional OLAP, and predictive analytics.
The entire deployment and configuration stage was easy and it was accessible across the organization in a matter of days. Oracle Analytics Server being a cloud-based solution helped right from Input of Bulk Data to Info preparation, Data cleaning, and finally Data Modeling. Everything was visual and the Help Wizard was very intuitive.
SAS Business Intelligence is more suited to organizations which are already using SAS as the primary software for their analytics needs. Learning curve is relatively shorter for teams already skilled in BASE SAS. For organizations already working with open source software like Julia and Python, it doesn't make much sense to use SAS BI.
SAS BI makes it very easy to create interactive dashboards even for someone who is not from an IT background. For some specific requirements, basic knowledge of SQL is good enough.
A lot of functions have been predefined which makes it very convenient to create dashboards and reports. One doesn't need to be from an IT or a programming background to understand and create dashboards.
It supports other programming languages like R and also has a seamless API integration with various data management platforms.
There will be a steep learning curve for individuals transitioning from BASE SAS to SAS BI. Our department was filled with experienced SAS programmers, but that did little to prepare us for the challenges of SAS BI. Training will be a must.
It is possible, but extremely difficult to customize the web-based portions of SAS BI, like the Information Delivery Portal or Web Report Studio. Having an out-of-the box solution is great to get up and coming quickly, but customizing the look and feel for the web-based users will require some previous web design skills.
In order to fully appreciate the features of SAS BI, you absolutely need someone on your team with a background in platform administration, security, web design or some other basic IT skills. Alternatively, you may just need strong support from your IT department. Simply having a group of individuals experienced in BASE SAS will not cut it.
Scalability and rich integration capabilities. In the future, if we go with Hyperion for the Financial Consolidation and planning purposes -BI integration with Hyperion is going to be much simpler as it has native interface connectivity and even integration capabilities with well known CRM products (Siebel) and ERP Products (Oracle EBS, Peoplesoft, SAP) is going to be easy and straight forward.
There is no other product that can match SAS. There are some products that can compare to ETL but lack the analytics that SAS has. Others can perform a limited set of analytical procedures but lack the data processing that comes with SAS. Using thin client allows users to access data whenever they have an internet connection.
SAS BI is good for creating reports and dashboards and then sharing it with the users. It also has ability to manage access to the reports and dashboards but somehow with most of the world moving to open source languages R, Python and Julia, SAS BI feels to be archaic in terms of feature set and integrations it allow[s]. Also, comparing it with other Business Intelligence tools like Tableau and Microsoft BI, the functionality of SAS BI is very limited and doesn't justify the pricing.
It's fast, efficient and easy to work with. Scheduling could help when planning out a day however overall it's a big plus when rolling out and supporting Oracle.
When you call tech support, you are immediately routed to a person who can answer your question. Often they can answer on the spot. However, if they cannot, you are given a track number and then followed up with. There have been times when I have had multiple track numbers open and they will actually TRACK YOU DOWN to ensure that your problem has been resolved. Issues do not fall into black holes with SAS. They are also willing to do a WebEx with you to diagnose the problem by seeing your environment, which is always helpful.
A properly implemented Endeca solution performs extremely well on the largest of datasets and it positions your organization to immediately achieve your ROI.
Oracle BI works pretty well and has been well acknowledged and appreciated by the business users and power users who develop reports and dashboards. Compared to other tools, Oracle BI object development is easier and has a quick turnout. Using Oracle BI with Essbase and Oracle Exadata db, we believe the performance rendering data is quite good. We are using MicroStrategy as well almost equally, but for critical reporting needs considering the back end is Oracle and Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications (OFSAA) we have chosen OBIEE.
SAS Business Intelligence is not the cream of the crop for business intelligence applications, but it is not far behind. The software is generally easier to apply than most other business intelligence software. Additionally, SAS Business Intelligence runs smoothly in the background when making real-time updates. With that said, the software is not as efficient of many of the other business intelligence software applications that have been on the market for longer than this one.
We have seen the results of this in our initial research and are not surprised that Oracle does this like it does soo many other things in this area, so well.
We've used OBIEE (or it's previous named product) for over 13 years and it's still the most used tool for BI by the business.
We moved our largest business system off of Business Object into OBI so we could gain improved performance, reliability, and easier management of metadata.
