Oracle OBIEE Reviews

Very large and complexes environments implementation, 10000+ users with 24x7 global operation and multiple EPM tools working in sync.

With a good model implemented, businesses can easily take decisions to improve anything they want.

An example I like to give is a retail company for which we developed online BI for sales. With this model, the managers follow the sales in real-time and can make decision like when, how much, and where to start a sales campaign during the day. This helps all managers to fulfill their quotas easily.

It's a great tool for the businesses as it's easy to manipulate and to create new dashboards. For the development side, it requires a good datamart to make things easier. It's very robust with a lot of resources.

It needs better parent-child dimension options that don't need to pass through OBIEE to build it. It's an easier way to update the model in case of a change of dimension size or sources.

Also, it needs better and more dynamic graphics. There are a lot of tools with better graphics and big part of BI is about this.

More than 12 years.

There were issues mainly because of a Java memory leak.

The scalability is limited because of WebLogic.

The technical support for EPM is bad. I don't remember anytime that the service support help me in something. The problem is bigger when you have a environment with more than one product like Hyperion Planning and ODI. This happens because the products have different owners within Oracle and then different supports and because this if, you open a trouble ticket of loading data to planning and you say the words ODI, you'll be pushed around the two separate support teams indefinitely, even if your company has an Oracle support director just for you.

Neutral

EPM is an enterprise suit that is made of some independent tools and to have all working together it makes it complex no matter your level of knowledge. The bigger the environment the bigger is the challenge you need to face. Maybe one day Oracle will integrate all their tools. It'll be easier and the good thing is that I saw a lot of improvements over the years.

Always talk with a Oracle representative and negotiate a discount. I already saw 99% of discounts and a free licence once.

Some times is cheaper if you get a hardware together (helps to negotiate a discount)

I'm a consultant and my only evaluation was on the database. I decided on Oracle because of the database and, during my career, their other tools are starting to come naturally.

Because Oracle products are development frameworks, your final results are as good as the people who implemented it. Make sure that your implementation team is the best it could be, at least for the first implementation. If something is implemented incorrectly at the start, it'll cost you a lot more to fix than to build a new system from scratch. Sometimes it can be so badly designed that it is impossible to fix.

I've been working on implementation for 20 years and I have seen bad implementations everywhere. In fact, I have seen the same tools implemented in the same team by two different people, with one being a success and the other a failure. In the same company, one department says that the tool does not work for them and another says that the tool is the best. The only difference was the implementer. Make sure you get a good team to implement it. The tool has its flaws, but most of time (99%) it is the implementer's fault that you have a bad or slow model.

This is an enterprise analytics platform that allows you to do both analytical and real-time reporting. It has a large fleet of products within itself, such as Oracle BI Publisher.

You don't need a lot of time to build and deploy these tools. For the analytical needs, you have OBIEE as a platform where you can build the requirements. You model it, build dashboard reports, and then use it.

Oracle covers all of your reporting needs from an organization standpoint. This application also has a self-service BI, which is an ad-hoc service. It allows businesses to generate their own reports. They don't have to wait for IT to come and do it for them.

It saves a lot of time from a scheduling capability standpoint. If C-level executives want to create more billable reports, they can go down to the granular level of details.

This solution is a self-service BI. It makes it much faster for the business. The tool helps the organization by not having to maintain the infrastructure, nor worry about infrastructure and performance issues.

It also has the enhancements such as new data visualization capabilities and other robust features. The tool can be deployed quickly, is easy to use, and is scalable.

The tool has everything I need right now, including mobile, geo-spatial, and data visualization. I would like to see better licensing in terms of data visualization.

Maybe they could include it as a part of the Oracle E-Business Suite, which would allow product users to take advantage of it. Otherwise, it's going to be an expensive product.

The solution is very stable. I've been involved in this product for close to 14 years now, even before Oracle acquired Siebel. The initial Siebel Analytics did some good generation of BI.

There wasn’t a lot of advancement made initially, but later the architecture changed and it was taken to the next generation with a lot of new, rich, and cool features like mobile, geo-spatial integration, and integration with new data sources. It's been great.

Scalability-wise, it's pretty good. When you use it with an ERP system or with CRM applications, it integrates with SAP, Oracle-based e-business applications, and even the Microsoft stack.

Scalability-wise, you can leverage this product, and not only with an Oracle database. It can work with any database and with any heterogeneous source. It's very scalable and easy to maintain.

I do use technical support with this subscription on any issues that we encounter, except for cloud-based systems. We already gave them product bugs. They are addressing them in patches. I think they are pretty good. Oracle always has someone who will respond to you, depending upon the severity levels involved.

When I started at this organization, we had a Microsoft BI stack and a SAP BI stack in place. Both of them used the dashboard capabilities and kept all of the reports together in one place. Microsoft BI has a subscription facility where you can subscribe users to set up reports and get them by email.

Neither of these solutions was robust nor scalable. The ad-hoc reporting capability is one more area which was missing in these previous solutions. One of them has it, but it's very complex to configure it.

Another reason why we chose this tool is the ease of use. You don't have to know a lot of programming to deal with this product.

I did the setup by myself in my organization. I did the delivery destination production from scratch, with the help of the documentation logs from various forums. You just have to follow the instructions which are straightforward. As long as you follow the instructions, it was easy to use.

We looked at IBM Cognos, QlikView, and Tableau. From an IT standpoint, we look at self-service BI, integration, and scalability. When it comes down to the senior, C-level executives, price is also another factor.

Tableau is a product which can be used for data discovery, but not for organizational analytical needs. That is the missing part.

Cognos is missing a lot of important features like self-service BI and many other dashboard capabilities.

I've seen other data analytics platforms like IBM's suite of products, SAP Business Objects, and Microsoft BI stack. All of them are good, but when it comes down to the collaboration of functionalities, on the business or IT side, OBIEE is the best for the organization. That's the reason we deployed Oracle Business Intelligence for our organization.

If your requirements are for an enterprise reporting platform, Oracle would be able to satisfy your needs. From an analytical standpoint as well, this product will address your real-time data operational report needs.

If you are only looking for data discovery, or just looking at flat files and the patterns of the data, then Tableau or QlikView will do the job.

Whenever I select a vendor, I look at multiple things:

• Scalability
• The integration of the products with other important applications within an organization
• Data integration
• A database application with Excel-based files

It has good dashboarding. Also, being an Oracle product, it's good for ETLing in and out. It has a very good ETL process to get the data in and out of the data warehouse system. Also, it does have very good integration points to different products, such as Big Data, Hyperion, or Financials. You can pull everything up, project it and dashboard it. It's a good business intelligence platform.

For advanced users, they can build their own custom reports. You can actually create a custom dashboard for your upper management, and for your middle management. You can provide required reports at all levels of management for decision making. You can get data from different systems into it. It works well with other products, where you can bring in data, and then project it. It's got a very good ETL process, which makes it easy for you to bring in data.

They should focus more on performance. Basically, no one has the time. They also have to compete with big data analytics. They ought to keep that in mind and see how this product could eventually, down the line, be replaced. They should take some measures to actually make it stay.

For stability, in the back end, you have the Oracle database. You can use In-Memory.

You can fund it well, scale it well and size it well; all of these things. It's a good product.

It's not distributed. You can’t do distributed scaling, per se. Whenever you use the algorithm, if that's the case, you can always use a RAC system or something like that. On the application side, you can use however many servers you want. You could redirect your traffic accordingly, based on different servers. You can cater to different customers or to different business end users, depending on their priority. It's pretty scalable, but not distributed in nature. For example, it’s not good for big data analytics and that kind of stuff.

I don’t know about technical support these days. Overall, Oracle support is not that impressive, which it used to be. We are living with it. If you have a stable product like Oracle, if it’s going good, most of the time, it's fine. The only challenges come whenever you try to upgrade, and then it'll be a little rocky for a while. You'll be okay, but during that rocky period, you don't get enough support. There isn’t enough documentation. It's a huge product. Those are some of the challenges.

We previously used a custom reporting solution, like Crystal Reports and so on, then we actually moved into this OBIEE a few years back, when OBIEE first came out. It's been a long journey with OBIEE.

Setting up is pretty easy in terms of infrastructure and so on. When customization comes along, that's when it's never easy. Any customization is never easy. It's always complex.

Look at big data and other open-stack solutions. See if that actually fits; otherwise, you might want this kind of solution, ready to install. Don't customize. If you have a lot of customizations, see if this product will work; do a PoC. I strongly recommend to check big data, and go from there.

When I’m choosing a vendor to work with, the most important criteria are scalability and how well it works with other products.

Another thing is that we shouldn't be locked in to a vendor. We should be able to move vendors in and out if we really want. I don't like vendor lock-in. That's another thing. It should be scalable in a distributed way.

My rating is because of the performance and scalability. We did scale it well and we did size it well, but there are still some limitations in achieving the kind of performance that we want. It's not always consistent in its performance.

Oracle OBIEE is the company's primary workhorse for financial and HR reporting. It is used globally for the company. Everyone uses it for those purposes. The cloud version is also used for account acquisition.

It serves its purpose. It doesn't have many frills and is definitely older technology, but it is undeniably a workhorse.

Rigidity and speed are areas that could be improved. Everything has to move quickly in today's world, especially in the data world. Everyone wants it right now.

Having a system is great, and when you code it correctly, it can get the job done. However, a modern solution takes a long time; it moves much slower than some other things. You have products such as Tableau, and there are other data science tools out there churning through just as much data. Obviously, that element is not intended to be a data science tool in and of itself. It's more of a reporting tool than anything else. Expanding beyond pure data reporting and into analytics, or expanding data science, would be areas for improvement.

I have been working with Oracle OBIEE for seven years.

We keep it fairly up to date. We would be using the most recent version or perhaps one back.

We have an on-premises system as well as a cloud system in our environment.

If it's coded correctly, it can be very reliable.

Oracle OBIEE is very stable, it is very dependable.

Oracle OBIEE is scalable, we are using it on a global level.

Given the size and scope of how we use it, every change requires significant effort, some of which is internal. It is managed by our IT department. To make large-scale changes and integrate new systems, I believe a small army is required. The heavy lifting is done once they're all set up, and once they're in there and running, the actual maintenance and minor tweaks are fairly simple. This requires a much smaller skeleton crew.

I was not a part of the initial setup.

I believe it will be about how well the tool they choose fits their company, their company culture, and how scalable it is.  Oracle OBIEE is fantastic, but it is intended to be used in the enterprise. It is meant to be a large-scale workhorse. As a result, make sure it's the right tool for your business.

In comparison to other things we have out there in the grand scheme of things, I would say six or seven. I would rate Oracle OBIEE a seven out of ten.

The solution is offered as a PaaS - a platform as a service.

The setup isn't too difficult.

While technical support used to be quite bad, it's my understanding that it has gotten better.

I find I prefer Oracle OAC over OBIEE. It's more advanced, has artificial intelligence, and there's more that we can do with it in general. OBIEE is lacking features.

The reporting could be better. We can only develop standard PDF reports. We don't have reports that show analytics. It doesn't generate barcodes at the top and it doesn't have the ability to show notes. The reporting system needs to introduce logic so that we can make the reporting more flexible.

Writing any code takes a long time. Merging data is also a long and tedious process. 

I've been working with the solution for 13 and a half years so far. It's been a while. 

The solution isn't exactly stable. There are some reports, for example, in relation to email compliance or other policies that are not working as they should. We're actually migrating off of OBIEE's reports to Crystal Reports as some functionality is just not possible.

The scalability of the solution is fine. It's arranged per user. However, you need to pay more if you add more. 

There are no plans to increase usage as the solution is limiting in the features on offer and the client is leaning more towards Oracle OAC. 

I haven't tried to contact technical support in a long while. The last time might have been 2017 or 2018. I recall support not being very good. At the time, the application was new and we had questions, and we did not really get any response. It took them a long, long time to say anything. At that time, we were installing the application and facing some issues and it was a frustrating process. 

That said, their support may have stabilized and gotten better, however, I haven't really dealt with them since. 

I've started working more with Oracle OAC.

The solution is a platform as a service. We pick and choose our requirements as we like. If we need more CPU or RAM or hardware, we make sure we have that in the setup. We decide how many users we want, et cetera, and the system is set up to accommodate for that.

Oracle can help set up the solution.

OAC has a more reasonable price point than OBIEE. OAC gives you more options and choices. It's more flexible.

I'm a consultant. I'm not a partner of Oracle. I have no business relationship with the company.

There is a lot of competition in the market right now and there are so many cloud applications that users can look at, including Power BI. Some have more features and are more user-friendly. This product needs to advance its technology and catch up. It needs more advanced features.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

The best feature of this product is the reporting capability and customization. It lets the users do their own reporting, slicing and dicing, and getting the visual outputs rather than depending on a partner or developer to get reports or produce management reports.

It's much easier to get different outputs rather than relying on a partner or another developer who has some experience in development, but with this product you don't need that as such.

The product can definitely improve. It is a good product compared to Microsoft Power BI or other Microsoft products, the SAP BIs and other small BIs in the market. In comparison with the others, the Oracle BI product is much more advanced; it's a heavy product. However, the issue is the cost factor. If Oracle decides to improve the cost factor and provide facilities to the user where the user can benefit, then it will be good.

Apart from the cost factor, it is a good product. Now, they are moving to the Cloud with the BICS model and adding visualization features. They are heading the right way. For us, the mobile and visualization features are more beneficial; plus with the Big Data coming in, it will really benefit us on that scale.

I've been using it for around four years.

It is a stable product. It depends for downtime. For the repository and repository refresh, you don't need that. It has both online and offline options but you can do the online repository upload as well.

It is a scalable product. It should meet our future needs.

It is a product where you have to initially set it up and position it for the future requirements so that the analysis part takes place properly. Based on that, you can get proper outputs. You can build it upon your stack, scheme, marks and dimensions.

I would give the technical support a 60/100 rating.

At times, it is difficult for us to get support, especially at the skill levels and due to the regions to which we have been allocated to in terms of support; that is also an issue. The expertise is in that particular domain like for the BI, ETLs, etc. For the modeling-related technical skills, they are lacking a little bit, as opposed to the ERP and the other domains.

The setup is straightforward but it needs expertise. The normal IT guys cannot do this. In other words, for the setup, BOMs, scaling ups and other supporting requirements, you need to have proper domain expertise and product knowledge individuals for carrying out the setup properly. Otherwise, you will not get the proper output. It is very resource intensive. If you get the wrong output, then all your assumptions and forecasts goes wrong; so it's very sensitive.

I have used both the on-premises and the cloud module.

The cloud module is still in a premature state, so it has to get mature.

I use different servers in OBIEE that are reflected as different subject areas on the application, and I can use one of them. For example, I have one subject area for marketing, the second for finance, so I have two subject areas available. I can use one of them that's not available for designing each function. Each file has or also contains mobile options. If the best model is a different file, I have to import it.

I like that Oracle OBIEE comes with more options. For example, more options with data security, user security, and other security. It's more complicated than Microsoft, but it gives you more options. They also added the part for machine learning, which is good.

It would be better if it had a wide range of visualization options. For example, Microsoft Power BI has an extensive range of visualization options, but it's not available in OBIEE. There are also some conflicts because it's complicated, but the cloud application is easier. They added some features for ETL with the on-premises application, but we need a different or a separate application for ETL in the cloud. In the next release, I would like to have more AI features.

I've been dealing with Oracle OBIEE for about two years. 

The initial setup is complicated and time-consuming.

We are a very big organization with many different data sources. For large organizations like ours, I would recommend OBIEE. If we are speaking about a medium or small company with limited data sources, then I may recommend Power BI.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Oracle OBIEE a nine, especially for organizations using large datasets.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Business Intelligence is the ability to drill down and show business value for your customers with the different subject areas they have implemented.

What's improved the functioning of the business is the single source of truth. Everybody pulls the same information from the same set of dashboards. We eliminated duplicate reporting, and we have a single data warehouse.

Some of the new products they have with the mobile version and Day by Day look extremely good. I would like their mobile version to incorporate HTML5, and also go through some accessibility testing, which would incorporate new web standard features.

The stability of the product has been very good. I've been very impressed with the product itself, considering all the users that we have online and being able to prepare the reports that they need.

We have not had to scale it.

Technical support overall has been as good as can be expected. We've had to open up some TARs or some tickets with them. Overall, they've been fine.

We previously used Excel, Microsoft Access and Discover. Everybody had their own report. They would save the open order report on 52 desktops of Microsoft Access. In 2006, we bought Oracle BI, eliminated all those different reports and were able to create a single source of truth. It changed their lives.

The initial setup of version 10.7 was fine, but when we upgraded from version 10 to 11, it was a whole new technology stack; it took extremely long. The nice thing about going from 11 to 12 is that it is the same technology framework, so it looks straightforward for an upgrade. The first upgrade took 15 months; this should take a week.

We also considered Hyperion and there was also Teradata.

We had Oracle E-Business Suite, so we just stayed with the same product suite. It ended up becoming a good bet because right now everything is BI, and mobile and data analytics. Back then, I didn't expect it to be that, but I picked a good horse.

When I’m looking at a vendor such as Oracle, it is important that they're providing new tools all the time, and that they also are very stable; you know they're going to be around. You also feel like they have an integrated solution, so that OBIEE works with the Oracle database, and then you also have Oracle front ends that are also calling Oracle BI reports. It's an integrated solution.

I've actually had to look at different divisions within my organization and try to sell this product. In some cases, I've actually had to go over and help set it up. It's important to look at form and function. Look at the features that they have today; they're looking for the same thing. The proof is in the pudding, by showing them the reports, showing them the functionalities, setting up new dashboards, setting up ad-hoc reports through Answers, and then scheduling those. I've had to do that, and they don't believe that it's that easy.

I have given this product a perfect rating because they're getting the integrated products within their E-Business suite. They have pre-built analytics. They also have a very developmental-friendly development suite with answers. A lot of it is self-service, where users can subscribe to products. They can also reorganize columns and do everything they need to do to make it friendly for themselves. Now with the new mobile tools, with Day by Day and Sunopsis, they make it even more powerful.