Comparing Oracle BI Suite to More Modern BI Platforms
May 06, 2016
Comparing Oracle BI Suite to More Modern BI Platforms
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Enterprise BI Platform
- Enterprise Reporting
Overall Satisfaction with Oracle BI Foundation Suite
The Oracle BI Suite was an enterprise-wide implementation at two of my previous places of employment. It was used primarily for business intelligence reporting and analysis. My first use of it was within a 12 hospital health system with millions of rows of data and a user base of around 150 end users.
- Oracle BI Suite is a comprehensive suite able to handle any size of data as well as complex analytical requirements.
- With proper training, most end users can be taught to use the front-end in a relatively short period of time.
- It plays very well with Oracle databases, obviously, so for companies that are an Oracle shop already, it can be implemented as a logical next step for business intelligence.
- Oracle BI is a very bulky and, to a large extent, unwieldy application. It almost invariably requires a dedicated, full-time technical resource to manage it on an ongoing basis.
- The dashboard visuals could use a lot of improvement, especially when compared to more modern BI applications that sell well largely due to their impressive visuals.
- The resulting reports could be a bit more user-friendly and more intuitive. Again, this is one area where more modern BI platforms have a distinct advantage over Oracle BI.
Oracle BI is similar to MicroStrategy in their difficulty of implementation and need for technical resources for ongoing management and administration. Both are well-suited for very large corporations with extensive data processing requirements. More modern BI tools such as Tableau, Qlik, Sisense etc. are much easier to deploy and run and do not require as much technical administration as Oracle BI or MicroStrategy. In my case, Oracle BI was already selected as the default choice for enterprise BI before I arrived, so I did not have much influence of the selection process. However, when I founded HDI and after an extensive evaluation period I made the decision to go with Tableau as a more modern BI tool that is easier to manage than Oracle BI.