Oracle Analytics - A Fresh Start

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock this week as well as steering clear from all forms of social media, then you would have heard about the Oracle Analytics Summit which took place at the Skywalker Ranch in California.

T.K. Anand, senior vice president, AI, Data Analytics and Cloud announced "a new beginning" that would be based on transparency, partnership and trust. Recently, Oracle announced its Analytics Roadmap, a new move for Oracle which appears to be indicative of this new approach.

The new vision of Oracle Analytics is to be based on three pillars:

1. Augmented - Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and AI are embedded throughout the product
2. Integrated - Providing the insights in the right place
3. Collaborative - Enabling users to share their insights across all lines of business and IT.

A recording of the Analytics Summit can be found below:

In this Summit, the Oracle Analytics Product Management team announced a consolidation of the Analytics product suite.

There were 18 products previously which have now been reduced to 3:

• Oracle Analytics Cloud
• Oracle Analytics Server
• Oracle Analytics for Cloud Applications

Oracle's Analytics capabilities will now be in the Cloud with Oracle Analytics Cloud, on premise with Oracle Analytics Server and in applications with Oracle Analytics for Oracle Cloud Applications.

What was previously called Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) has now been rebranded to Oracle Analytics Server. Everything that was available in the on premise OBIEE will now be available in this new product in addtion to the functionality that was only previously available in Oracle Analytics Cloud.

It will also offer users an easier path to migrate to the cloud. The Oracle Analytics Server will include Data Visualization. Existing OBIEE customers will automatically be licensed to use Oracle Analytics Server when it is available towards the end of the year.

The UI look and feel of the three products will be unified, with a new homepage which brings together dashboards, analyses, BI Publisher reports and data visualisations.

Oracle Analytics for Applications will initially focus on ERP and HCM applications. It provides an end-to-end solution with out-of-the-box, ready-to-use dashboards and analyses, as well as data integration capabilities. It is based on Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse and Oracle Analytics Cloud.

All in all, Oracle Analytics has been streamlined, consolidated and simplified. Also good to hear of the improvements of Oracle Support for @OracleAnalytics

The key takeaway from this announcement could be summarised with one word: simplification. Everything from the product lineup, support model, licensing and the inter-product integration has been simplified. The announcement also highlights Oracle's focus on Cloud as the backbone of its strategy.