BI IS A PROCESS AND PROVIDES A MAJOR COMPETITIVE DIFFERENTIATOR
No one said it better than a C-level business executive at an Industry presentation:
“I do not want IT solutions to be just about productivity and efficiency gains. If we are not productive and efficient at this point, we are in the wrong business. I need my IT colleagues to be real business partners and bring solutions that will enable our company to win new business, convert more prospects to customers, increase our market share, and get into the new markets. I need IT to be a true business partner, not a cost center.”
Getting better insight from information based on richer data sets, more complex models, or even making the same decisions as everyone else but before everyone else makes them — this is how most advanced enterprises compete in today’s world. Business intelligence tools and technologies form the major components of the foundation that supports and enables such competitive differentiation.
Business Intelligence Is Not Just For Reporting Anymore
Contrary to the common misconception, BI enables more than just reporting and analytics. Leading Analysts like Forrester defines BI as:
“A set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information used to enable more effective strategic, tactical, and operational insights and decision-making.”
While a dashboard can be used as a graphical UI (GUI) component, business activity monitoring (BAM) also captures data and process events (e.g., number of credit applications processed today and number still pending in a queue), correlates and aggregates them into business metrics (e.g., ratios of processed, approved, and rejected applications per hour), and displays the real-time status of the metrics and trailing patterns.
Oracle BI EE is very rich in features and functions and scores very close to the leading BI vendors. The BI suite includes a powerful BI Server with a ROLAP engine and enterprise information integration (EII) technology, qualifying Oracle’s BI suite as a heterogeneous, not just Oracle-centric, BI platform. Even though Oracle continues to support all products it has acquired, Essbase is the key Hyperion product that will receive the most attention and R&D dollars. Essbase continues to be one of the leading OLAP engines on the market and a preferred tool of finance departments all over the world.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Friday, September 5, 2008
Identity as a Service - IDEAS about IDaaS
A Leak ? You call what’s happening here “a Leak”? The last time we had a leak like this, Noah built himself a boat
Information sharing becomes extremely complex once you need to secure information outside and across enterprise boundaries, such as information for business customers, prospects, partners, dealers, or other “outsiders.”
The current IT practice of concentrating all security at the network perimeter has created an enterprise environment that looks like a single hard shell around a soft chewy center (Think Tootsie Pop);
However, a cohesive identity management strategy across the enterprise lets an enterprise securely facilitate these exchanges without placing undue strain on often over-burdened internal resources. This makes it easier to develop and expand alliances and channels, expand and accelerate business opportunities, at the same time reducing IT cost and complexity – thereby reducing leaks, leaks of information and productivity.
Identity Management helps organizations deal with many of the issues and challenges they face as they attempt to respond to information sharing, increased security threats, wide-ranging compliance initiatives and rising IT bottlenecks. Moreover, Identity Management defends an organization not only from external threats but also more importantly from internal threats – often the source of the majority of security risks.
The “big idea” here is to bring security closer to the data and the services it is trying to protect. At the EBS Group, we think of Identity as a Service which externalizes Identity into a service layer in the Enterprise Architecture..
It makes identity a key security artifact on which to base security decisions wherever they need to be made, making it possible to build security at the appropriate perimeter; be that the Network perimeter, at the application perimeter, or even at the data store perimeter. At the same time, it provides centralized management of security policies and scalable management of the massively distributed identity data so that corporate networks can be safely opened up to customers, suppliers, and partners.
Information sharing creates many opportunities for enterprises, but also many challenges and dangers. IT growth must contend with the legions of information and security threats that cast a shadow over your best-laid business plans. Oracle has developed and refined state-of-the-art information security for customers worldwide. The EBS Group can help your organization deploy best practices to protect against security threats while maintaining the agility and functionality of your IT infrastructure.
Information sharing becomes extremely complex once you need to secure information outside and across enterprise boundaries, such as information for business customers, prospects, partners, dealers, or other “outsiders.”
The current IT practice of concentrating all security at the network perimeter has created an enterprise environment that looks like a single hard shell around a soft chewy center (Think Tootsie Pop);
However, a cohesive identity management strategy across the enterprise lets an enterprise securely facilitate these exchanges without placing undue strain on often over-burdened internal resources. This makes it easier to develop and expand alliances and channels, expand and accelerate business opportunities, at the same time reducing IT cost and complexity – thereby reducing leaks, leaks of information and productivity. Identity Management helps organizations deal with many of the issues and challenges they face as they attempt to respond to information sharing, increased security threats, wide-ranging compliance initiatives and rising IT bottlenecks. Moreover, Identity Management defends an organization not only from external threats but also more importantly from internal threats – often the source of the majority of security risks.
The “big idea” here is to bring security closer to the data and the services it is trying to protect. At the EBS Group, we think of Identity as a Service which externalizes Identity into a service layer in the Enterprise Architecture..
It makes identity a key security artifact on which to base security decisions wherever they need to be made, making it possible to build security at the appropriate perimeter; be that the Network perimeter, at the application perimeter, or even at the data store perimeter. At the same time, it provides centralized management of security policies and scalable management of the massively distributed identity data so that corporate networks can be safely opened up to customers, suppliers, and partners.
Information sharing creates many opportunities for enterprises, but also many challenges and dangers. IT growth must contend with the legions of information and security threats that cast a shadow over your best-laid business plans. Oracle has developed and refined state-of-the-art information security for customers worldwide. The EBS Group can help your organization deploy best practices to protect against security threats while maintaining the agility and functionality of your IT infrastructure.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
The Parable of “the Information Age”
To quote Charles Dicken’s from the opening of A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. As the amount of available information (physical and digital) continues to grow and thereby create knowledge and opportunity…the very real challenge of taking advantage of all this information, grows as well. As we’ve moved squarely into the information age (dare I say digital age), organizations large and small have faced several new challenges with the creation, distribution, consumption and management of content – both paper-based as well as digital. Fortunately, the capabilities and the technology of enterprise content management (ECM) have evolved dramatically over the past few years and are now moving beyond the easy knee-jerk reaction of “buying a bigger SAN”.
Historically, content management applications were used to address separate lines of business (LOBs) like Finance, Legal & Compliance, Human Resources, Sales, IT infrastructure and Web needs – all of which have specific functional needs but also basically perform very similar functions. These previously disparate systems are converging and now capable of addressing the needs of the entire organization – on one platform. This eliminates or at least greatly reduces integrations and cost redundancies while at the same time provides a solid infrastructure ( or Content Service) that promises to minimize or eliminate the costs of separate systems, support, development and integrations, improve user experience and productivity, and simplify upgrades, maintenance and training. This new “Unified” approach returns a tremendous return on investment (ROI) and in a much shorter time than the current “Band-Aid” or “Patchwork” solutions.
Unified ECM provides the full array of ECM functionality – including document and imaging management, records and retention management, Web content management, and digital asset and information rights management all on one platform - by leveraging a common set of content services that are shared across independent content management applications…and that will provide rapid ROI to most organizations.
Put us to the test: We’ve created a ROI Calculator and Assessment engagement that I guarantee is worth the time and effort to try. We’ve also partnered with Oracle/Stellent on this so that the cost of the Assessment will be credited back to your Organization if you ultimately choose Oracle as your platform for Unified ECM.
Historically, content management applications were used to address separate lines of business (LOBs) like Finance, Legal & Compliance, Human Resources, Sales, IT infrastructure and Web needs – all of which have specific functional needs but also basically perform very similar functions. These previously disparate systems are converging and now capable of addressing the needs of the entire organization – on one platform. This eliminates or at least greatly reduces integrations and cost redundancies while at the same time provides a solid infrastructure ( or Content Service) that promises to minimize or eliminate the costs of separate systems, support, development and integrations, improve user experience and productivity, and simplify upgrades, maintenance and training. This new “Unified” approach returns a tremendous return on investment (ROI) and in a much shorter time than the current “Band-Aid” or “Patchwork” solutions.
Unified ECM provides the full array of ECM functionality – including document and imaging management, records and retention management, Web content management, and digital asset and information rights management all on one platform - by leveraging a common set of content services that are shared across independent content management applications…and that will provide rapid ROI to most organizations.
Put us to the test: We’ve created a ROI Calculator and Assessment engagement that I guarantee is worth the time and effort to try. We’ve also partnered with Oracle/Stellent on this so that the cost of the Assessment will be credited back to your Organization if you ultimately choose Oracle as your platform for Unified ECM.
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