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Key Business Drivers behind OBIEE

Superficially I could describe OBIEE as a bundle containing Oracle Discoverer and Oracle Reports-like functionality, to which has been fitted an enhanced query engine that allows simultaneous access to heterogeneous data sources. And this description will give you a good feeling for what OBIEE can and cannot do.

However, OBIEE is rather more than this. While in the past Oracle products have usually been workmanlike, they have rarely been well designed as far as the enterprise as a whole is concerned; instead they have focused on providing particular solutions to particular problems. OBIEE is Oracle’s first attempt at what might be called “joined-up software”. While Oracle has borrowed from its competitors and from its own acquisitions (OBIEE is essentially Siebel’s Business Analytics Platform in borrowed robes), OBIEE gives the impression that Oracle has finally decided to deliver software for the enterprise, rather than software that fills some application niche. Here, we can see strategic vision, rather than a tactical fix designed to parry Microsoft’s or IBM’s latest product offering.

But just because Oracle has got the right concepts in place doesn’t mean that it has necessarily realized them in practice. That is likely to take a decade of tweaking and product enhancement. For example, with dozens of components, this behemoth of a SOA-based product suite is sorely in need of a software tool that provides a single point of maintenance; at present your sysadmin has to edit numerous configuration files with disparate software tools, while at the same time choreographing the stopping and starting of various processes. That said, we can see in OBIEE a clear plan for an enterprise-wide architecture, one that stretches well beyond the confines of business intelligence, one that focuses one-pointedly on maximizing end-user efficiency. In OBIEE we can see:

A transfer of control to either smart software or to end users from IT specialists;

A transfer of control to smart software from end users;

An emphasis on sharing and the elimination of duplication;

An emphasis on separating functionality into reusable components;

An emphasis on using agreed standards; and

The leveraging of those competitor products that have become de facto standards.

Realising Efficiency Gains from OBIEE

If your business has the “capability” to deploy OBIEE then you will achieve significant cost savings. But “capability” does not mean just an ability to get the infrastructure components of OBIEE conversing happily with one another. Most businesses that have deployed OBIEE are just using it as an Oracle Discoverer and Oracle Reports replacement with some extra functionality thrown in. If you do this then don’t expect any useful efficiency gains. To get the real benefits of OBIEE you’re going to have to do something much more difficult: re-engineer your business:

Those end-users with the ability to do so will need to take greater responsibility for managing their own IT needs, and those that lack this ability will have to go. Executives used to being spoon fed information will have to learn how to access it on the corporate intranet all by themselves. IT developers will have to transition from being code monkeys working with a single product to multi-skilled individuals familiar with a wide variety of products; they will need both business skills as well as IT skills; they will need to be capable of working comfortably in the end-user domain, providing support to those end users who need it – support in solving problems that are as much business problems as they are IT problems. And where developers cannot make this transition then they too will have to go.

The net result of re-engineering your business will be fewer more highly skilled staff in both the IT and end user departments. These changes will happen in the next decade whether your business likes it or not; they will happen irrespective of whether your business is a trailblazer when it comes to innovation, or a foot dragger that limps after its competitors. The main obstacle to making these changes up until now has been a lack of suitable IT infrastructure to make the changes both possible and cost effective. With OBIEE and its competitor products, IT vendors have finally stepped up to the plate. Now it’s your turn.

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OBIEE:	Business	Re-engineering

Re-engineering Business for a New Age