Oracle Business Intelligence tools overview

Oracle provides three different applications along with licensing options for Business Intelligence and Data warehousing. Those tools are: Oracle Discoverer 10g (Oracle BI Suite Standard Edition), Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition One (for mid-market segment) and Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition (formerly Siebel Analytics).
This article shows the purpose and major characteristics of each of the Oracle BI applications, also indicating similarities to IBM Cognos 8 and SAP Business Objects applications.

ORACLE DISCOVERER 10G (ORACLE BI SUITE STANDARD EDITION) QUERY & ANALYSIS

Oracle Discoverer is an ad-hoc query and analysis tool which allows users to do basic query construction along with tables, cross tabs and charts. End users can interactively navigate, drill down, slice and dice, aggregate and add calculations. It is very commonly used with Oracle RDMBS (most likely with the OLAP database option) and embedded in a number of Oracle Applications in the Oracle e-Business Suite. 

In 2006 Oracle Discoverer was repackaged along with Oracle Reports, BI Beans and other tools to form Oracle BI Standard Edition. 

The main advantages of Discoverer are Personalized Portals where worksheets can be customized at the portal level for each user, the fact that it comes in a bundle which affects its price and its technology infrastructure is generally very well received by IT.
The problem with Discoverer is that its future is rather uncertain and it should be rather considered as a legacy product. Among other weaknesses it is worth mentioning that it is Oracle only (only Oracle native connection, no multiple data sources, other RDBMS via ODBC only) and its reporting capabilities are limited to singly block (only one graph/crosstab/table). 

Discoverer competes with Query Studio, Analysis Studio, Report Studio (for IBM Cognos 8) and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence and Desktop Intelligence.

ORACLE BI SUITE ENTERPRISE EDITION (SIEBEL ANALYTICS)

After acquiring Siebel in February 2007, Oracle decided to use Siebel Analytics as a key component of their Business Intelligence strategy and the product was renamed to Oracle BI Suite Enterprise Edition (OBI EE). 
Oracle’s vision is to continue to focus their Business Intelligence efforts on Enterprise Edition after the acquisition of Hyperion. 

Oracle BI Enterprise Edition (OBI EE) consists of:
• Oracle BI Server - BI server and common enterprise semantic layer, it provides ROLAP and federated data queries
• Oracle BI Answers - Ad-hoc query and reporting. It uses a central repository (a semantic layer)
• Oracle BI Interactive Dashboards – dashboarding solution and a way to distribute Oracle BI Answers reports
• Oracle BI Delivers - Business activity monitoring (BAM) and alerting solution
• Oracle BI Disconnected Analytics - mobile analytics
• Oracle BI Publisher (formerly known as XML Publisher) - Enterprise reporting and distribution of "pixel-perfect" reports
• Oracle BI Briefing Books – creates snapshots of dashboard pages for offline use

Oracle BI suite EE Answers and Dashboards products compete with Cognos Query Studio, Analysis Studio, Report Studio and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence (along with Web Intelligence Rich Client). Oracle Interactive Dashboards are equivalent to IBM Cognos 8 Go!Dashboard and a lightweight version of BusinessObjects Dashboard Builder or Crystal Xcelsius.

ORACLE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE STANDARD EDITION ONE MID-MARKET

Introduced in June 2007, Oracle BI Standard Edition One (OBI SE1) is a packaging of Business Intelligence and data warehouse products aimed at providing a complete solution for the mid-market (5-50 named users). 

Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition One is a subset of Oracle BI Enterprise Edition(previously Siebel Analytics) containing basic functionality like dashboarding, ad hoc querying and pixel perfect static reporting, and also data integration and database technology. 

OBI SE1 includes the following applications:
• Oracle BI Dashboards –dashboarding providing the ability to combine ad hoc and pixel perfect reports, provide links between them and a drill through functionality.
• Oracle BI Answers – Ad-hoc query with analysis limited to drilldown.
• Oracle BI Publisher – Reporting tool to create and distribute pixel-perfect formatted reports.
• Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) – An ETL tool bundled with Oracle RDMS.
• Oracle Database Standard Edition One – a database offering packaged and priced for small-to-medium businesses or departmental systems providing full database functionality (limited to 2 CPU).

OBI SE1 doesn't include the following Enterprise Edition capabilities:
• Alerts (e-mail distribution, alerts)
• Disconnected Analytics (offline dashboards and querying)
• MS Office Plug-in

Strengths and Weaknesses 

Key strengths of OBI SE1 are:
• It is a complete solution including database – the package provides Business Intelligence tools for reporting, analysis, as well as ETL and a database to act as a data warehouse.
• Low entry price (up to 50 named users)
• Multiple data source semantic layer - can combine multiple, different data sources.
• For those familiar with Oracle Discoverer, they will find OBI SE1 to be a better option for query, dashboarding and reporting.

However, OBI SE1 is still an Oracle focused solution (for reporting and ETL target it must be an Oracle RDBMS, MS SQL Server, IBM DB2 and Teradata can be used as ETL sources) and as a mid-market solution it cannot be run at more than 50 named users (when deployment goes beyond 50 named users the customer needs to move to Enterprise Edition). There is also no support for Linux as Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition One runs on the Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 server only. 

OBI SE1 competes primarily against IBM Cognos 8 BI and Business Objects Professional products family.

ETL Tools Comparision

ETL TOOLS - GENERAL INFORMATION

ETL tools are designed to save time and money by eliminating the need of 'hand-coding' when a new data warehouse is developed. They are also used to facilitate the work of the database administrators who connect different branches of databases as well as integrate or change the existing databases.

The main purpose of the ETL tool is:
• extraction of the data from legacy sources (usually heterogenous)
• data transformation (data optimized for transaction --> data optimized for analysis)
• synchronization and cleansing of the data
• loading the data into data warehouse.

There are several requirements that must be had by ETL tools in order to deliver an optimal value to users, supporting a full range of possible scenarios.

Those are: 
- data delivery and transformation capabilities 
- data and metadata modelling capabilities 
- data source and target support 
- data governance capability 
- runtime platform capabilities 
- operations and administration capabilities 
- service-enablements capability.

ETL TOOLS COMPARISON CRITERIA

The research presented in this article is based on Gartner’s data integration magic quadrant, forrester researches and our professional experience. The etltools.org portal isnot affiliated with any of the companies listed below in the comparison. 

The research inclusion and exclusion criteria are as follows: 
- range and mode of connectivity/adapter support 
- data transformation and delivery modes support 
- metadata and data modelling support 
- design, development and data governance support 
- runtime platform support 
- enablement of service and three additional requirements for vendors: 
- $20 milion or more of software revenue from data integration tools every year or not less than 300 production customers 
- support of customers in not less than two major geographic regions 
- have customer implementations at crossdepartamental and multiproject level.

ETL TOOLS COMPARISON

The information provided below lists major strengths and weaknesses of the most popular ETL vendors.

IBM (Information Server Infosphere platform)

Advantages:
• strongest vision on the market, flexibility
• progress towards common metadata platform
• high level of satisfaction from clients and a variety of initiatives

Disadvantages:
• difficult learning curve
• long implementation cycles
• became very heavy (lots of GBs) with version 8.x and requires a lot of processing power

Informatica PowerCenter

Advantages:
• most substantial size and resources on the market of data integration tools vendors
• consistent track record, solid technology, straightforward learning curve, ability to address real-time data integration schemes
• Informatica is highly specialized in ETL and Data Integration and focuses on those topics, not on BI as a whole
• focus on B2B data exchange

Disadvantages:
• several partnerships diminishing the value of technologies
• limited experience in the field.

Microsoft (SQL Server Integration Services)

Advantages:
• broad documentation and support, best practices to data warehouses
• ease and speed of implementation
• standardized data integration
• real-time, message-based capabilities
• relatively low cost - excellent support and distribution model

Disadvantages:
• problems in non-Windows environments. Takes over all Microsoft Windows limitations.
• unclear vision and strategy

Oracle (OWB and ODI)

Advantages:
• based on Oracle Warehouse Builder and Oracle Data Integrator – two very powerful tools;
• tight connection to all Oracle datawarehousing applications;
• tendency to integrate all tools into one application and one environment.

Disadvantages:
• focus on ETL solutions, rather than in an open context of data management;
• tools are used mostly for batch-oriented work, transformation rather than real-time processes or federation data delivery;
• long-awaited bond between OWB and ODI brought only promises - customers confused in the functionality area and the future is uncertain

SAP BusinessObjects (Data Integrator / Data Services)

Advantages:
• integration with SAP
• SAP Business Objects created a firm company determined to stir the market;
• Good data modeling and data-management support;
• SAP Business Objects provides tools for data mining and quality; profiling due to many acquisitions of other companies.
• Quick learning curve and ease of use

Disadvantages:
• SAP Business Objects is seen as two different companies
• Uncertain future. Controversy over deciding which method of delivering data integration to use (SAP BW or BODI).
• BusinessObjects Data Integrator (Data Services) may not be seen as a stand-alone capable application to some organizations.

SAS

Advantages:
• experienced company, great support and most of all very powerful data integration tool with lots of multi-management features
• can work on many operating systems and gather data through number of sources – very flexible
• great support for the business-class companies as well for those medium and minor ones

Disadvantages:
• misplaced sales force, company is not well recognized
• SAS has to extend influences to reach non-BI community
• Costly

Sun Microsystems

Advantages:
• Data integration tools are a part of huge Java Composite Application Platform Suite - very flexible with ongoing development of the products
• 'Single-view' services draw together data from variety of sources; small set of vendors with a strong vision

Disadvantages:
• relative weakness in bulk data movement
• limited mindshare in the market
• support and services rated below adequate

Sybase

Advantages:
• assembled a range of capabilities to be able to address a mulitude of data delivery styles
• size and global presence of Sybase create opportunities in the market
• pragmatic near-term strategy - better of current market demand
• broad partnerships with other data quality and data integration tools vendors

Disadvantages:
• falls behind market leaders and large vendors
• gaps in many aspects of data management

Syncsort

Advantages:
• functionality; well-known brand on the market (40 years experience); loyal customer and experience base;
• easy implementation, strong performance, targeted functionality and lower costs

Disadvantages:
• struggle with gaining mind share in the market
• lack of support for other than ETL delivery styles
• unsatisfactory with lack of capability of professional services

Tibco Software

Advantages:
• message-oriented application integration; capabilities based on common SOA structures;
• support for federated views; easy implementation, support andperformance

Disadvantages:
• scarce references from customers; not widely enough recognised for data integration competencies
• lacking in data quality capabilities.

ETI

Advantages:
• proven and mature code-generating architecture
• one of the earliest vendors on the data integration market; support for SOA service-oriented deployments;
• successfully deals with large data volumes and a high degree of complexity, extension of the range of data platforms and data sources;
• customers' positive responses to ETI technology

Disadvantages:
• relatively slow growth of customer base
• rather not attractive and inventive technology.

iWay Software

Advantages:
• offers physical data movement and delivery; support of wide range of adapters and access to numerous sources;
• well integrated, standard tools;
• reasonable ease of implementation effort

Disadvantages:
• gaps in specific capabilities
• relatively costly - not competitive versus market leaders

Pervasive Software

Advantages:
• many customers, years of experience, solid applications and support;
• good use of metadata
• upgrade from older versions into newer is straightforward.

Disadvantages:
• inconsistency in defining the target for their applications;
• no federation capability;
• limitated presence due to poor marketing.

Open Text

Advantages
• Simplicity of use in less-structured sources
• Easy licensing for business solutions
• cooperates with a wide range of sources and targets
• increasingly high functionality

Disadvantages:
• limited federation, replication and data quality support; rare upgrades due to its simplicity;
• weak real-time support due to use third party solutions and other database utilities.

Pitney Bowes Software

Advantages:
• Data Flow concentrates on data integrity and quality;
• supports mainly ETL patterns; can be used for other purposes too;
• ease of use, fast implementation, specific ETL functionality.

Disadvantages:
• rare competition with other major companies, repeated rebranding trigger suspicions among customers.
• narrow vision of possibilities even though Data Flow comes with variety of applications.
• weak support, unexperienced service.

SAP Business Intelligence and SAP Business Objects

What is Business Intelligence (BI)? In a word, Business Intelligence is compounded of all the IT solutions responsible for extracting, transforming, and loading data, as well as different types of information operating, reporting and analysis. Along that, Business Objects (BO) is one of the market leaders in Business Intelligence area.

Business Objects company was settled in 1990, in Paris. Even the very first years of its activity were full of successes and quite profitable, what resulted in company's debut in NASDAQ market. Along market existence, came the cooperation with the largest and the most meaningful enterprises from all over the World.

WHAT BUSINESS OBJECTS HAS TO OFFER TO ITS CUSTOMERS?

Mainly, Business Objects is a company concentrated about vending databases and applications supporting data management. Furthermore, BO offerings include solutions for enterprise performance management, as well as diverse Business Intelligence solutions designed especially for tiny and medium-size companies.

Flagship products of Business Objects have been included in the scheme below:
 

Business Objects XI Enterprise

Among a few main products, one might be described as a factor determining Business Objects market success. Business Objects XI Enterprise is a rightful, independent BI platform ideal for usage in the largest enterprises. The widest-known and - simultaneously - the most successful product in Business Objects' portfolio was designed for supporting data quality management, data integration, ad-hoc information analysis, reporting (including print-oriented formatting), and data visualization cockpits for managers. Finally, facilitated data sharing and compatibility with Microsoft Office suite, coupled with multiple functionality and high performance, make Business Objects XI Enterprise a really efficient solution.

BO Enterprise Performance Management

Second large, meaningful product of Business Objects is BO Enterprise Performance Management - the wide range of applications and solutions designed especially for the largest companies. The aim of the whole tools packet is supporting all the processes necessary for Performance Management (Enterprise Performance Management - EPM). What features are provided by Business Objects Enterprise Performance Management? 
Diverse types of results cards, manager cockpits, systems supporting planning, budgeting and prognosis. Furthermore, Business Objects EPM suite guarantees innovative solutions for consolidating an enterprise and financial evaluating demanded periods for active-based costing (ABC). The same as financial and risk analysis, predicting profitability and financial modeling. Finally, all the tools offer indispensable security, supporting Financial Governance.

Both solutions presented above refer to the largest enterprises. That doesn't mean Business Objects creates solutions only for customers from that segment. There are also a lot of offerings for large- and medium-sized companies and the two most-known of them - Business Objects Edge and Crystal products family.

Business Objects Edge includes Business Intelligence solutions for customers from medium- and tiny-sized companies segment. Basing on proven standards - Crystal Enterprise and Crystal Xcelsius, they efficiently support managing.

Crystal Reports

Finally, the last two products of Business Objects are a bit different. They're usually being described together, as they're almost similar. The main difference between them applies to their destination - Crystal Reports Server are designed to function as a standalone reporting server, while Crystal Reports demands integrating into .Net application. All in all, both solutions are dedicated for usage in small- and medium-sized companies. According to applications' specific, both solutions are wanted by companies keen only on reporting aspect. From the whole range of Business Intelligence applications, Crystal Server and Crystal Reports refer exclusively to reporting, offering its multidimensional functionality. While both solutions' specific doesn't allow self-dependent functioning, they're usually - as a proven environment for reporting and analysis - developed with other vendors' offerings.

ACQUISITION OF BO BY SAP AG AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Twenty years of BO's market presence cannot be boiled down to a matter of case. Successive technological advance, growing data dependence, and information importance were the favorable factors that led BO to a due place in "great four of business intelligence vendors". Even though BO as an independent company lived its bests, year 2008 brought a completion of its acquisition by SAP AG.

Finally, the whole acquisition process engendered significant revolution in Business Intelligence market, as it has to lead to the full integration of SAP and BO BI offerings, and both sides' partnerships joint.

Despite the fact of company acquisition and increasing compatibility of solutions, both vendors' offerings remain separate. Thereupon, comes the questions about Business Objects BI and SAP Business Intelligence. Which one is better? Which one to choose? The answer isn't obvious and depends on a customer.

SAP BI AND BUSINESS OBJECTS FEATURES COMPARISON

While comparing two similar solutions, it's important to call attention to three aspects: solutions' architecture, data access, and profits. 

As long as extracting, transforming, and loading data (ETL) make up the essence of business intelligence, grows the importance of data management system. In this case, both solutions - Business Objects BI and SAP Business Intelligence - are extremely different. SAP BI is a singular data warehouse, itself supporting all the ETL processes, as well as data management, and providing reporting tools. The architectural model assimilated by Business Objects BI is slightly different, as it provides the broad range of tools separate for every process. Even though there are a lot of diverse tools, all of them cooperate well thank to open standards (CORBA, Web services, etc.). Both models are different, but it cannot be undoubtedly stated which one is better. 

Second aspect, data access method, also differs. With SAP Business Intelligence, data from diverse sources is being extracted, loaded into a data warehouse. Next, data stored in OLAP cubes is being reported. This model of data accessing is commonly described as "business interface", enabling all types of the access without involving into a complex physical data structure. Once again, the solution used by Business Objects BI is slightly diverse. With BO, data isn't stored regardless to reports in OLAP cubes. Instead of this, high efficiency is being reached through concrete reports. Even though both models are different, each of them might be replaced by the other one. To reach that, using remote cubes becomes a necessity (SAP Business Warehouse) or using the data integrator (Business Objects BI). 

Thirdly, features. Both solutions have their strengths, among which a few deserve pointing out.
Business Objects Business Intelligence: 
- wins with more intuitive reporting (creating and sharing) interface, 
- couples its main goal with wide range of tools extending its functionality. 

SAP Business Intelligence: 
- praises for its more advanced data store module, 
- enables significantly faster access to data.

These features listed above are only chosen from much longer list, commonly similar for both solutions. All in all, the most meaningful features of both vendors' solutions supply themselves mutually, what was an additional factor favoring the acquisition.

BUSINESS OBJECTS BI OR SAP BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE - MAKING THE RIGHT CHOICE

Choice between Business Objects BI and SAP Business Intelligence had always been difficult, but has become even worse since the acquisition. However, earlier and recently, it depends on the customer, especially the size of an enterprise, which is of the most meaningful factors. The second factor that should be considered, are all the former implementations of any SAP solutions. Along that, enterprises might be divided into five specific groups, being simultaneously a base for future solution choice.

• Large enterprises with no earlier implementations of SAP solutions - This is a kind of customers, which generally Business Objects XI is suggested for. The factor determining this choice is multitude and diversification of systems already reporting with direct access to databases. Why BO? Mainly because of its simplicity of cooperation with multiple databases and data sources. Also user-friendly interface and no necessity of moving already existing data to the new data warehouses argue for using Business Objects XI. Eventually, additional functionalities of BO XI might also be useful. On the other hand, large enterprises might prefer SAP Business Intelligence. Especially while attention is attached to reporting of large data volumes and data access efficiency. SAP BI guarantees the highest performance with possibilities of data extracting to off-line data warehouses and reporting with OLAP data structures.
• Large enterprises, which earlier implemented SAP solutions are important element of BI system in - Already existing systems (especially with SAP ERP) heterogeneity, might be a factor arguing for implementing typically hybrid solution. Already mentioned SAP ERP contains data that might be easily reported with SAP Business Intelligence, while any other data sources and more advanced BI appliances might demand Business Objects XI.
• Large and medium-sized enterprises, which earlier implemented SAP solutions play dominant role. Generally, regardless to a company's size, main role of SAP ERP determines future SAP Business Intelligence usage. Logically, the best integration might be reached when using tools from the same vendor's portfolio. Along that, ETL tools provided with SAP BI might work with currently stored data in the most efficient way. However, more advanced Business Intelligence appliances might demand implementing Business Objects BI.
• Medium-sized companies with no or only marginal earlier implemented SAP solutions - While considering this type customers, the choice depends on real company's needs. Generally, for most of their uses, Business Objects Edge is ordered, due to its simplicity (in oppose to Business Objects XI and SAP BI), but - simultaneously - even more functional.
• Medium-sized and tiny companies with no or only marginal earlier implemented SAP solutions - Finally, the tiniest and medium-sized companies as well should accurately consider their real needs. If they're keen exclusively on reporting, then Business Objects Crystal Reports would suit them best. It's a solution designed strictly for reporting (excluding most of other Business Intelligence appliances) and its main strength is price. Crystal Reports is relationally the cheapest solution, designed especially for customers who don't want to pay for functionalities they're never going to use.

Even though SAP AG do its best to calm down former BO customers, the most meaningful acquisition of recent years became a fact, and - as a consequence - a lot of changes are unstoppable.

What does it mean especially for Business Objects customers? 
While the acquisition's results are more and more visible, SAP states to keep each BO BI and SAP BI separate. Despite all the promises, some specific relation among both solutions must have evolved. Along that, the basic, fundamental BI role has been confided to SAP Business Intelligence. According to proven SAP Business Warehouse, SAP BI might function as a base for diverse solutions. On the other hand, Business Objects BI saved its independence and - as well - might function completely alone, but also using SAP BW's foundation. The benefits of such cooperation may be meaningful - multiplied functionality, improved Enterprise Performance Management, etc.

FUTURE OF SAP BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SOFTWARE

Even though the acquisition process has been announced to be completed, integration has to last much longer. First forecasts state the two-year period for integration, but no one can be sure of its success - there's still so much to be done that even two years might eventually turn out insufficient. What exactly changes are being prepared?

To begin with data extracting, both solutions Business Objects Quality Management and SAP Master Data Management are going to become fully integrated. Data management is announced to stay unmodified and still provide two separate, differentiated models of access. Reporting solutions are going to be intercepted from Business Objects. The point is to rely formatted reporting on Crystal Reports (to be significantly extended), and make Pionieer (the effect of current Voyager BO and SAP BEx Analyzer consolidation) solution responsible for ad hoc reporting. Furthermore, former Xcelsius and Web Application Designer solutions are going to be integrated in one, called Xcelsius+, responsible for cockpit creating and managing. In the matter of reports availability, portals of SAP and Business Objects are said to become integrated.

Was the acquisition a profitable move? For SAP AG - certainly. And for the market? There are two sides to every story. At once, the integration made SAP's offering much more attractive for customers, making it one of the best - if not the very best - solutions ever. On the other hand, the acquisition was a move against competition and its long-term results are difficult to be predicted.

SAP Business Objects and IBM Cognos comparison

The high and extremely significant growth of demand on information delivery in the enterprises caused that the companies offering business intelligence solutions live their best years. Although the market is still fresh and quickly expanding, a few enterprises managed to outdistance the rest - SAP after acquiring Business Objects and and IBM with Cognos. Both widely-known, both highly-experienced and, finally, both fighting for the leadership.

The following article analyzes strengths and weaknesses of both BI platforms, with the mainemphasis on weak points of both as this kind of information is hard to find in the whitepapers or marketing slides. 
We don't compare costs of licenses here as this changes with time and really depends on the organization and at the end the total cost of implementing BusinessObjects and Cognos is really comparable.

SAP AND IBM

SAP (Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung / Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing) company has been founded in 1972, in Germany. The enterprise expanded step-by-step achieving new sectors of computer software industry. The chain of significant successes brought a leadership to SAP that (2009) is the biggest European software enterprise what makes it fourth in the World.
SAP became one of the leaders of the business intelligence market after acquiring Business Objects in 2007.

The IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) history dates back to the last twenty years of nineteenth century. Founded in 1889, in New York, Big Blue (as people used to call the company) is thought to be one of the first computer software enterprises ever. Employing about 400,000 workers all over the world, IBM became the largest IT company worldwide. Just to remember – the IBM employees won a lot of awards, starting with five Nobel Prizes. 
Also in 2007, one month after SAP bought a French company Business Objects (for $6.8 billion), IBM took over Cognos, based in Canada for $4.9 Billion

Although the list of both – SAP and IBM – companies' achievements seems astonishing, the fight between them still continues. Only the object of rivalry got changed – currently, the business intelligence platforms sector seems to be the hottest.

SAP BO AND IBM COGNOS SOFTWARE EQUIVALENTS

Both offered platforms are popular and widely-used, therefore it's hard to unambiguously choose the better one. All the solutions that have been applied have their advantages and disadvantages, strong and weak points. Even the objective summarization seems practically impossible, separate parts and aspects might be easily compared. 

There is no better way than to compare the both companies suite separate components. 
 
The scheme illustrates the SAP BO tools responsible for tasks appropriate to their IBM Cognos equivalents 

A detailed products comparison of IBM Cognos, Business Objects and Microsoft BI can be found in the following article on our pages: Cognos and Business objects products

IBM COGNOS

Let's begin with IBM – the business intelligence platform offered by the Big Blue is Cognos. There are two series – 7 and 8 – currently available, but the Cognos 7 – although its Version 4 was introduced in 2006 - gets out-of-date (IBM claims to support Cognos Series 7 users till 2012). 

The first Cognos 8 software was presented in November 2005 including a few refreshed tools: Report Studio, Query Studio, Analysis Studio (in the place of former PowerPlay), Metrics Studio (instead of Metrics Manager), and Events Studio (replacing NoticeCast). 
The software was continuously actualized, therefore IBM quickly introduced Cognos 8 Business Intelligence. 

IBM advertises Cognos as a result of eighteen-years experience earned by fulfilling the demands of more than 23,000 clients, focusing on performance management and business intelligence. 

In the following article we analyze Cognos BI only, not Infosphere, Infosphere Warehouse (DB2) and other IBM products from the BI family.

Cognos strengths

• Cognos is a complete performance management system built from the ground on a single, purpose-prepared SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) platform.
• The customers praise IBM business intelligence software for great access to all the data – completely, quickly, and accurately. The common metadata used for the complexity from users optimizes the work. 
• Cognos simplifies consuming the once authored data. The solution offered by IBM enables easy transforming and publishing resources in different languages and formats (starting with HTML, PDF, XLS and other), and accessing them from several locations (portal, e-mail, mobile, search, office). 
  The interface seems user-friendly and intuitive. All the elements may be completely self-serviced – the involvement of developers is not a necessity. If required, the IT developers have an easy way to deploy and manage system. 
• IBM claims that Cognos' features are maturity, stability, and high-participation planning solution – IBM offers a wide range of planning capabilities (advanced scenario modeling, plans, forecasts, budgets). 
• Cognos system function all over the world basing on only one solution – the diversification of operating countries doesn't matter as the platform works for the whole enterprise on a global scale. 
• The analytic applications are fully compatible – stored content might be quickly transformed.
• IBM provides Performance Management Framework, Innovation Center, BICC services, online communities, free trainings for business partners, a bunch of certifications which makes it interesting as a personal career focus.

Cognos weak points

Cognos – as every new upgrade gets released – changes but some weak points still stay unimproved. 

• First of all, IBM does not support its own ETL and data quality software. Surely, they're available as separate platforms (Infosphere products) or provided by separate vendors. 
• Some aspects of functionality hasn't been implemented while preparing Cognos 8 – for offline reporting and analysis the customer is obligated to move back to Cognos 7 platform. 
• Cognos is known for its performance, scalability, and caching that might have been worked-out much better. Up to Cognos 8 Release 2 IBM haven't offered a possibility of caching across users and reports.
  Nevertheless, the end-users' surveys show that they usually see the animated icon of hourglass very often... 
• Cognos software is divided into more parts than it's necessary. For example, three – Report Studio, Query Studio, and Analysis Studio. Many experts say that three studios might be operated by one common tool (comparable functionality is offered by BO Web Intelligence application). 
• Query Studio and Report Studio seem not as well-rounded as possible due to the lack of power and inordinate complexity. 
• Despite all the advantages, the reporting platform – based on the ReportNet - still stays unproven in terms of huge implementations.
• Its scalability leaves much to be desired – the loss of performance is significant while adding hardware and users in the same proportion.
• Next, the problem of visual analytics. Very often the pre-sales demos shown by IBM vendors contain the components from Series 7 or other Vendors not included in Cognos 8 suite. Surprisingly, the authors of the presentation forgot to remind that minor detail (we are talking about PowerPlay and XCelsius here). 
• Further, the cooperation among users of different parts of the platform is hardened – it's possible only using the scorecards of Metrics Studio. 
• The documentation storing is difficult due to the lack of appropriate tool. The same problem applies to enterprise reporting – Report Studio, tool responsible for noticing summarizations, has about half the power of its prototype. The other thing goes around the planning applications that are purpose-built. Remembering about their functionality, the usage is embarrassing as every tool requires learning it from the beginning. 
• The inseparable connections between Cognos 8 and Cognos Series 7 platforms cause strange and unpredictible consequences in their work.

Summarizing all highs and lows, there's one conclusion that cannot be omitted. Although IBM Cognos 8 is a great business intelligence platform, it seems to be not as independent as it should. It looks like IBM released Cognos 8 BI a bit too early. So early that definitely too much of the Series 7 was left. The common work of both – 7 and 8 – platforms would be an unequalled combine, but the real goal is to pack the advantages of both suites into the only one perfect-working system.

SAP BUSINESSOBJECTS

It's the right time to make a slight move to SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform. We don't analyze SAP Netweaver or SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) in this article.

Business Objects strengths

What SAP BusinessObjects software has to offer? The producer claims platform to be the one to fulfill all the expectation of customers – easy and quick access to all data placed in every part of system with simultaneous growth of productivity and performance. The found data is accurate and relevant regardless to questions' complexity – consolidation and aggregation of data are done to improve the efficiency. 
Furthermore, the structure of information is flexible, offering good scalability – more receivers and more forwarded data do not slow down the transfer, therefore the decision making might be accelerated. 
Next, all the information is unified what simplifies the access to all resources independently on their format or location diversification. 
But still it's not everything. 'SAP BO' platform is praised for the interface – all the dashboards are designed to increase the familiarity and service-intuitivism. Next, the software was created as a single intelligence platform to maximally reduce the effort necessary for cooperation of different users. 
Finally, the clear and transparent structure of the platform enables an insight into the whole operations – every process within every stage on every level might be easily checked out (and modified if it's required). The timely delivered information helps making right decision due to the shortened time of reaction needed that leads to a significant increase of performance. Last but not the least, easy deployment increases security and functionality of SAP BO platform that is currently accessible for everyone.

Business Objects weak points

On the other side, 'SAP BusinessObjects XI' has a few significant disadvantages that should be mentioned (what's probably going to provide practical knowledge much more usable than the list of superlatives accessible e.g. on the producer's website, as well). 

• The first thing that may discourage potential customers of SAP is an unclear BI and PM roadmap – it's built of number of separate products basing on different technology, therefore the integration is not as good as possible. 
• SAP BusinessObjects is repeating risk of gaining inconsistent data results – the data connections should be improved due to their excess and inconsistence. 
• multiple locations options work well but their enabling was inconsistent.
• Separate parts of the suite differs in the development requirements.
• The service of software seems embarrassing. Only a few of changes might be done personally by the customer. Most of them demand engaging the IT developers. 
• SAP offers plenty of products responsible for financial consolidation. It's great until it comes out that the communication among them is hardened – lack of migration path.
• Further, the breadth is stunning but modifying the content requires complicated and labor-consuming IT lifting.
• The company not always realizes their promises – there is a risk of lateness or even reject of foretold integration. 
• The focus on performance management has been weak. SAP promises to head this direction in the near future.
• SAP claims that Business Objects is fully integrated with SAP BW and that this kind of integration doesn't require any additional IT work. Whoever tried to create a Business Objects universe based on a SAP BW Infocube knows that this is not the case.

As it's clearly visible, SAP BusinessObjects software, providing effective solutions, is on a best way to the success, but the half-baked details worsen the general feeling.

COGNOS VS BO – CONCLUSIONS

Both platforms – IBM Cognos Series 8 and SAP BusinessObjects – have specific advantages and disadvantages. Some of them are major, some only minor. But all of them influence on the usage. The answer which one is better to choose will remain undiscovered probably as long as both companies existence. New versions, additional applications, plenty of upgrades, tons of instructions and white papers – all those are the details. But those are the details that really matter. 

As long as there's no extremely significant difference between offered platforms, just the details may decide about the fight's result. In the end, when all the possible comparisons are done, all features examined thousand times and it seems that there's really nothing to add, customers should still remember about other options - SAS, Oracle and Microsoft business intelligence solutions and the strongest rivals of both companies presented above. 

Nevertheless, when choosing the right business intelligence platform for your organization it might be a good idea to precisely define your needs, then talk to the technical sales people from both SAP and IBM and try to get a trial version of both platforms and test it in your business environment. This will say which platform suits the end-users best