- Preview: Oracle BI Suite sweetens BI for analysts and business-line users
- Preview: HardMetrics goes for deep -- not broad -- BPM solutions
- Preview: Hyperion Smart Search puts friendlier front end on BI data
- Preview: Attensity 4.1's Industrial-Strength Text Mining
- Preview: Business Objects' newest platform release is more than meets the eye
- Preview: FASTRadar 8.1 makes an EIS modern
October 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Preview: Oracle BI Suite sweetens BI for analysts and business-line users
Oracle has a logical argument why you should buy your business intelligence (BI) solution from the company. Having acquired ERP, CRM, and other data-intensive application vendors to pour data into the Oracle back end data store, why not analyze and distribute that data with a set of native BI tools? The counter argument often asserted by IT management, that enterprise analysis should be independent of the polyglot pieces that create the grist for analysis, was only sharpened by Oracle's purchase of Hyperion Solutions in March. How might Hyperion's offerings complement what Oracle is already proffering?
The Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (BISEE) 10.1.3.2, released around the same time as the Hyperion acquisition, doesn't reflect any of the many tools from the BI giant. Because a broad swath (not all) of the Hyperion offerings have functions parallel to existing Oracle BISEE tools, it's impossible at this point to know what the suite will look like once the integration is completed. After an extended demo, I'll tell you what the existing suite, BISEE 10.1.3.2, does now.
BISEE 10.1.3.2 sports storage and management tools in the Oracle BI Server, which pulls data from Oracle and non-Oracle data sources for analysis. The analysis goes on in Oracle Answers. Separately-priced delivery modules include Publisher (for static reporting), Interactive Dashboards, Briefing Books (collections of dashboard results), and Delivers (a real-time alert mechanism).
While Oracle developed some of this technology internally, much is here as a result of purchasing other tools vendors. I expected to see a Babelicious mishmash of interfaces, and given previous work with Oracle’s products, gnarly user-unfriendly and programmer-unfriendly approaches. Although Oracle hasn't spackled all the interfaces into a smooth, consistent, and unified approach, I was very pleased with the design of both the tools that analysts use and the ones that end users work with. Though not particularly consistent, the interfaces don't clash with one another either -- no mean task given the multiple origins of the pieces.
Oracle Answers, the browser-based centerpiece of the suite, is the analysis client. IT sets up the data so that users don't have to know the underlying sources or locations. Analysts can form ad-hoc queries or assemble multipane dashboards. As has become less exceptional over the last year, but no less useful, dashboards support drill-down exploration both for the analyst and a downstream consumer of pre-designed (and subsequently personalized) dashboards, promoting both the wisdom of the wise and the wisdom of the crowds. Organizations can diffuse that wisdom in additional ways, my favorite being what Oracle calls Briefing Books, a set of static snapshots of dashboard panes bundled for consumers or to archive a baseline for later comparison.
Key features new to version 10.1.3.2 include the ability to deliver a PDF version of a Briefing Book, drag and drop screen design for authoring dashboards, and simpler interactive filter imposition. Support for RSS subscription adds another alert mechanism.
Oracle has backed up its logical argument with a sweet suite that gives existing customers a strong reason to consider native BI. Whether that will overcome the counter argument noted above, I believe, will strongly hinge on how quickly and thoroughly the creative brain-candy acquired in the Hyperion takeover gets integrated with the rest of the suite.
Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition 10.1.3.2
Price: Oracle Business Intelligence Suite EE is priced at $1,500 per named user or $225,000 per CPU
Platforms: OS: Microsoft Windows 2000/2003 Server, Red Hat Linux 4.x, Novell SUSE 9.x, Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4, Sun Solaris 9 SPARC 32-and 64 bit, Sun Solaris 10 SPARC 32-and 64 bit, AIX 5.2 & 5.3 PowerPC 32- and 64 bit, HP-UX 11.11 or 11.23 PA-RISC 64 bit2, HP-UX 11.23 Itanium 64 bit3. Web server: Apache Tomcat 5.5.x, Microsoft IIS 5.0 on Windows 2000 and IIS 6.0 on Windows 2003, Oracle Application Server version 10.1.3.1, IBM WebSphere Application Server versions 5.1, 6.0, 6.1, Sun Java System Web Server 6.1, 7.0. Data Sources: Oracle 9i and higher, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and higher, Sybase SQL Anywhere, MySQL 4.1 and higher.
Verdict: Oracle’s BI suite is rich on the back end and in delivery options for analysts and business-line users. In the middle of the workflow, the analysis and presentation preparation sequences, it’s got some game, though it won’t dislodge installed competitors because of those functions. The key to extending the suite to non-Oracle shops looks to be how well the company integrates, preserves, and continues to build on the Hyperion technology that complements its strengths.
Posted by Jeff Angus on October 16, 2007 12:00 PM
April 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Preview: HardMetrics goes for deep -- not broad -- BPM solutions
Most of the vendors in the BPM (business performance management) arena are working to diversify and broaden offerings, through development, acquisition or private labeling. HardMetrics, however, is going its own way with many of its choices, including making its products deeper and more focused rather than broadening their scope.
HardMetrics' four solutions are Java-based applications intended to run on the entire range of business workstations from either their hosted multi-tenant servers or from a licensed (perpetual or annual) version. I saw a demonstration of their Call Center Performance Manager (the other products include the Marketing, Collections, and Field Service Performance Managers).
One noteworthy difference is that HardMetrics doesn't use connectors or OLAP cubes from which to draw the many data sources customers need to integrate; instead, they use very simple out-of-the-box tools to bring data out of the original sources and into a discrete HardMetrics database. End-users work with highly-interactive pre-built or roll-their-own graphs and charts that operate within their browser and show off exceptions and trends they can drill down into. The results let you track and judge trends in effectiveness.
The company's avoidance of connector complexity has several consequences when it comes to the optimal use of Call Center Performance Manager and the other products. They're aimed square at time-series analysis -- and that makes sense because the value to be revealed is less dependent on real-time updates. However, it also means that the system doesn't auto-trigger alerts. And, the system is not meant as a standalone replacement for, or competitor to, offerings from broader-solution providers such as Cognos, Business Objects, or Hyperion/Oracle; rather, it complements those broader tools by delivering a sharper attack on a specific area of expertise.
I was wowed by HardMetrics' wizard for building data presentation. It was very linear in the design phase, as it should be for the types of users who will take on the analysis.
At the same time, the drag-and-drop screen designer, combined with Call Center Performance Manager's ease of iterative changes (preview, see possibility for improvement, adjustment), was extremely well-executed. And the ability to output deliverables to both PDF (for static, high-fidelity) or spreadsheet files (for others to add value to the analysis) is very sensible.
The manipulation and drill-down or drill-up actions are intuitive and surprisingly quick in the demo. I found the business-logic thinking of the company’s experts extraordinary and unusually perceptive.
On the downside, HardMetrics' targeted world view leaves a couple of interface elements with rough edges that more standard designers would have smoothed. For example, menus didn't provide visual cues that there were sub-menu choices underneath (in Firefox or in Windows desktop applications, designers cue submenus with an arrowhead pointing toward 3 o'clock).
And although alert mechanisms would complicate connections, they could come in handy, even in non-real time analyses. For example, if someone else examined the same data series you had already plumbed, an alert sent to both of you could trigger a collaborative discussion that might generate a synthesis of views.
IT personnel who are scared of original or eccentric models will be befuddled by HardMetrics; those looking for analytical solutions, though, should put this company on your list of innovators to examine
HardMetrics Call Center Performance Manager
Platforms: HardMetrics solutions (Call Center Performance Manager, Marketing Performance Manager, and Collections Performance Manager) are Java-based solutions designed to be delivered through browsers to any enabled workstation
Price: A perpetual license is $250,000 with an annual management fee; hosted and annual lease options available
Verdict: Enterprises looking to increase effectiveness in the areas HardMetrics' solutions are aimed at should take a deep breath before judging how original/non-standard their approaches are, and measure the potential benefits of this remarkable solution platform. Refined to handle specific problems in specific ways, a solution such as Call Center Performance Manager might just save you a significant hunk of currency in speed and simplicity of deployment at the front end, and insightful conclusions at the users' desks.
Posted by Jeff Angus on April 19, 2007 01:08 PM
March 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Preview: Hyperion Smart Search puts friendlier front end on BI data
Hyperion Solutions is hammering against a trend that has seemed intractable to the entire analytical data vendor market: only 20 percent of the end users who are in a position to do something with BI deliverables receive data from BI systems. There's a huge number of reasons – including some of the vendors' own hinky past user-interface choices and many IT shops' overbearing security concerns -- that impair productive access to that BI data.
With that in mind, Hyperion has been cooking up a few components designed to address the 20 percent ceiling and open up the fruits of data output to a much wider audience. The first of these, Smart Search for Google OneBox, appeared in this month's version of their suite, Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3.
(Curious about how Oracle's purchase of Hyperion will affect this product and others in both companies? Read our analysis and find out more of the aquisition's details.)
Smart Search's objective is to use the ubiquitous Google search UI as a front end for data consumers to find the data they need. Once a report is prepped to run dynamically, or run regularly and stored, it is a potential hit in a user search run against the Hyperion data in this browser instance.
The demo gave me a strong sense that it's a positive move and one that is well-executed to raise that 20 percent ceiling. Not only does the component put one of the world's easiest to use interfaces in front of an organization's structured information, but it frees end users from having to know directory structures, the names of reports and queries, or other arcane details such as file extensions.
Hyperion built layered security into the mechanism – a user without authorization to see the data won’t get a hit delivered in the search list. And the value of bookmarks to browser-based viewers is as strong in this component as it is in any browser-based front end.
Note, however, that this feature doesn't pour hits into a generic browser instance, but a specialized one geared towards collections of static and dynamically run queries executed in real time. Hyperion said they provide tools for configuring the service to hit systems and data sources external to the Hyperion store.
Judging by Smart Search's set of abilities, I believe Hyperion's goal of rising through the 20 percent ceiling is a possibility. Smart Search makes it easier for the 80 percent of users who allowed ease of use issues to stand in their way to get at -- and make use of -- BI data. But Hyperion’s developers have a much more important component on its way, a genius of collaborative conception, coming later this year, probably late Summer or early Fall: Smart Space. I’ll discuss that truly heady demo in a subsequent Preview.
Hyperion Smart Search for Google OneBox
Platforms: Smart Search for Google OneBox comes with the currently shipping Release 9.3 and requires Google OneBox module; Java SDK or JRE 1.4.2; Tomcat 5.0.28; Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x
Cost: A 125-user deployment of Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3 starts at $100,000
Verdict: The addition of Smart Search to Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3 allows a wider end-user base to get at the BI and business performance management data. Thanks to the universally-known Google UI, Hyperion-standard organizations may find Smart Search generates more answers, and perhaps wiser follow-up questions.
Posted by Jeff Angus on March 5, 2007 01:03 PM
March 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Preview: Attensity 4.1's Industrial-Strength Text Mining
One of the key tools in any truly knowledge-managed organization is a business analytics feature set for mining and analysing text. 
Attensity recently updated their line to version 4.1, and the results are impressive.
Text mining tools plumb unstructured and structured documents to find and expose relationships between various kinds of data. If the tool supports mapping of concepts and vocabulary, it can focus discovery in areas like product failure analysis, fact-based marketing clustering, and competitive intelligence as well as fraud detection. The more text an enterprise is larded with, the fewer clear possibilities most human analysts can latch on to and the more relationships a text analysis tool can condense and offer up for the analyst's consideration.
Attensity calls their multi-module text analytics product a "suite," and while I'm not ready to assign a specialized tool such a vaunted noun, the five browser-based functions do complement each other pragmatically. "Text Search" supports iterative exploration of text documents. "Discover" supports categorization, combining, and clarifying words, as well as structuring results for further exploration. What Attensity calls "Analytics" is a module that delivers graphical visualization tools to examine results (I have to say I really dislike the trend in BI where companies call graphics "analytics"). The "Alert" module triggers messages based on emerging conditions in data, allowing rapid event response.
The interface is fairly typical for text analysis tools: neither elegant nor confusing. An analyst working with the various modules will find a real but shallow learning curve to cope with.
Attensity 4.1 targets both data extraction (which operates in response to the organization's prepared knowledge engineering specs) as well as "exhaustive extraction" which seeks relationships without any specs, a significant potential benefit.
There are a few features not yet in Attensity's system that I'd like to see added. For one, I'd like the system to learn to distinguish ambiguous "hits" that fail by having the user identify them as "misses." And while Attensity can direct output for reporting in Business Objects' Crystal Xcelsius, it doesn't currently connect effortlessly with more compound Business Analytics solutions from SAS and SPSS (which have their own text mining tools).
Text mining is one of the vastly under-appreciated 21st century applications. Organizations that hop on this set of capabilities will find advantages over their competitors that are not soon evened out.
Attensity 4.1
Platforms: Runs on Windows and Linux; works with SQL Server, mySQL, Oracle, or Teradata source databases
Cost: Solutions start at $250,000 for the server application license; a hosted application suite starts at $15,000 per month
Verdict: Attensity 4.1 is a cleverly-formulated competitor in a vital but generally ignored category: text mining for knowledge management and business analytics. Its capabilities cover both targeted extraction (where you know what you're looking for) as well as untargeted (where Attensity discovers potential insights you may not know about). More prepared connections to popular platforms that would benefit from Attensity's features should be built.
Posted by Jeff Angus on March 1, 2007 12:39 PM
February 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Preview: Business Objects' newest platform release is more than meets the eye
As one of the titans of business intelligence (BI) platforms, Business Objects has been slowly but surely acquiring technology and integrating it into their existing foundation. A careful reading between the lines of the marketing for their newest release, Business Objects XI Release 2 (R2), will lead an experienced IT hand to think it's primarily an integration release, with the focus on smoother connections between the working parts.
That might be true, but it would undervalue what Business Objects accomplished with this upgrade.
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The key values souped-up in XI R2 involve simpler self-service querying and the ability for low- to intermediate-level users to easily set up dashboards and portals to give bird's-eye views of current dynamic and stored data. Crystal Xcelsius is the powerhouse behind most of that ability, though not all of it.
A feature set that Business Objects calls "Intelligent Question" gives rank newbies a natural-language interface to deliver queries the system will try to answer. A new Encyclopedia documents accessible data sources and deliverables, and searchers can use English-language queries to find items.
Individuals have (and can share) their own "InfoView" dashboard. The act of building dashboards through the Dashboard Manager appears very straightforward, with a graphically-clear design environment. The deliverables UI supports clean drill-down capabilities.
My sole dispute with Business Objects' design is the use of the word "analytic" to define a delivered graphic -- a muddying of the term for marketing purposes. Otherwise, I'm very impressed with what they've achieved in the release. The sales engineer who demonstrated the platform allowed me to take him far off the script, but everything we walked through was clearly thought-out and looked highly implementable, customizable and maintainable.
The entire BI space underwent a revolution in the last two years in terms of its strength at making the creation of BI deliverables something IT can delegate to business analysts -- or even some of the more-capable executives -- who consume the information. Business Objects XI R2 exemplifies how cleverly it can be delivered.
BusinessObjects XI R2
Platforms: AIX 5.2, Red Hat 4.0 Advanced or Enterprise Server for x86, HP-UX 11.11, Windows 2000 SP4 Professional and above
Price: Roughly $750 per user for typical installations
Verdict: BusinessObjects XI R2 is a more significant release than it appears at first glance. The most striking and IT-resource saving enhancements in this release help advance self-service intelligence work for users in the totally raw and low-intermediate skill ranges.
Posted by Jeff Angus on February 21, 2007 12:44 PM
December 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Preview: FASTRadar 8.1 makes an EIS modern
Fast Search & Transfer's new version 8.1 of FAST Radar sells itself as BI for broad-based users. In reality, it's a lot more than that, almost a full-fledged Executive Information System (EIS) or what some newbies call a "dashboard" tool.
The company is aiming this BI tool squarely at the mid-market, trying to deliver a self-service model for non-analysts to build gauges, widgets and other visual indicators to track indicators in real-time or at intervals. From the demo I got, the building routines seem approachable for an intelligent user, and the default end products come out looking like eye candy.
Previously known as Corporate Radar, FAST Radar presents data from back-end databases: Oracle, MySQL, and SQL Server. A few of the aspects that make it uncommon are in the data store. For example, the system uses a ROLAP model.
And unlike most BI solutions that only broadcast data, not receive it, FAST Radar supports users posting updates and comments back to the data store through "writebacks." The company says IT can structure this process by designing workflows to handle control of updates. For organizations striving to apply data more broadly and quickly, it's well worth a look.
FAST Radar 8.1
Cost: $40,000 for the server application and five end-users
Platforms: FAST Radar's Application Server runs on Windows 2003, Windows 2000 or Windows NT and requires IIS 5.0 or greater. Client runs inside standard browser windows with Javascript
Verdict: FAST Radar is a promising BI offering, with its strength being increasing user interaction both through the self-service dashboard model and through the writeback ability. If your organization is looking for ways to apply data more broadly and quickly, FAST is worth your consideration.
Posted by Jeff Angus on December 4, 2006 07:00 AM