Magic Quadrant for Corporate Performance Management Suites 2011

Analyst research firm Gartner has published a new report titled " Magic Quadrant for Corporate Performance Management Suites", (Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00210145), dated March 8, 2011, authored by Neil Chandler and John E. Van Decker.

Oracle has been ranked the highest along the "Ability to Execute" dimension, and the second highest along the "Complete of Vision" dimension.

Some excerpts from the research note:

• Oracle remains the best recognized brand in finance offices and continues to appear in the majority of CPM evaluations.
• Oracle has a strong customer base, and the company is a strong vendor capable of competing on price, product features, performance and geographic presence.
• Hyperion Data Relationship Management  (PDF Data Sheet) continues to sell well...
• Oracle released Hyperion Financial Close Management (PDF Data Sheet) and Hyperion Disclosure Management (PDF Data Sheet) in 2010, making it the first large CPM vendor to offer this functionality

For more head over to the Gartner link above, or to the EPM and BI site at Oracle.com

New Oracle University Course: BI 11g Sys Admin

Oracle University has published a new online Oracle BI EE 11g course, "Oracle BI 11g R1: Introduction to System Administration - Online Course". It is in a self-study format, and is intended to allow users to learn how to manage Oracle BI 11g:

• Fusion Middleware (FMW) Control to monitor manage, and configure Oracle BI system components
• Oracle WebLogic Server (WLS) Administration Console to monitor and manage Oracle BI JEE Java components
• Oracle Process Manager and Notification Server (OPMN) Tool to manage Oracle BI system components
• Oracle BI Administration Tool to perform administrative tasks.

The course topics are:

• Oracle BI System Administration Overview
• Managing Oracle Business Intelligence
• Configuring the Oracle BI SystemStarting and Stopping Oracle BI
• Scaling an Oracle BI Deployment
• Deploying Oracle BI For High Availability
• Managing Performance Tuning and Query Caching
• Diagnosing and Resolving Issues in Oracle BI
• Managing Usage Tracking
• Oracle BI Security

Flash demo on Location Intelligence in Oracle BI EE 11g

There is a short, self-running Flash demo on Location Intelligence using Map Views in Oracle BI 11g.
Watch it here.

Map Views allow you to overlay analytics data over geo-spatial map using a variety of formats, like color-fills, bar graphs, pie graphs, bubbles, variable markers, and even images. 

As you drill from one level to the next, the formats carry over - which I think is very, very neat.