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IBM Watson Explorer vs Oracle OBIEE comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Watson Explorer
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (11th)
Oracle OBIEE
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (12th), Reporting (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Watson Explorer is designed for Data Mining and holds a mindshare of 2.9%, up 0.8% compared to last year.
Oracle OBIEE, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 1.4% mindshare, down 3.8% since last year.
Data Mining Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Watson Explorer2.9%
IBM SPSS Modeler17.4%
IBM SPSS Statistics17.2%
Other62.5%
Data Mining
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle OBIEE1.4%
Microsoft Power BI8.0%
Tableau Enterprise6.0%
Other84.6%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1319820 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
A data analysis tool that is scalable and includes keyword search functionality
The solution is used for a government company for data collection and analysis I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer. I have been using the solution for five…
AA
Analyst at Equifax Inc.
Unified semantic layer has driven informed credit risk decisions and real-time analytical insight
Performance-related issues are a concern, as in multiple reports I have seen, some reports were poorly performing. We can focus on implementation of performance so that reports are delivered within seconds. The user interface and self-service experience can be improved through modernization of the UI, addressing self-service limitations, and integrating with mobile. Technical and administrative complexities can also be addressed. Complexities such as system configuration require attention. In the initial setup of Oracle OBIEE, there are multiple things starting from infrastructure provisioning, database schemas, and WebLogic server installations. However, the RPD, the semantic layer, is the steepest hurdle. Security integration, integrating with LDAP or Active Directory, is rarely plug and play and requires deep knowledge of WebLogic. Deep knowledge is necessary when starting with the initial setup of Oracle OBIEE. Other dependencies include Java middleware and client tools. Since Oracle OBIEE deals with huge data, report performance is the biggest concern. The out-of-the-box setup is rarely optimized, so we need to manually check configuration files, such as nqsconfig.ini file settings. For recommendations in Oracle OBIEE, from what I have seen, we work with star schemas in the RPD. I always aim for the star schema in the business model, even if the physical source is normalized. This approach will impact the performance, speed of the data, and accuracy. Oracle OBIEE could improve to allow other schemas as well. Performance is a major area for improvement, and they should work on aggregating the persistence and improve the persistence wizard where we implement aggregations. Caching features have been given, including event polling tables where we can do purging and seeding, but the main focus should be with respect to schema designs.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer."
"IBM has been working with Bradesco since 1968, I think, and the support is very good, with a team of 10 IBM employees working every day, 24 hours, inside the bank in Sao Paolo."
"The valuable feature of Watson Explorer for us is data entities, and being able to see hidden insights from within unstructured data."
"Implementing the solution really helped with manual labor, it takes care of a lot of FT work."
"We take natural language that was happening in our repositories and our application and then feed it to the Watson APIs. We receive JSON payloads as an API response to get cognitive feedback from the repository data."
"The main use case is FAQ for the user; it works for almost 80% of the use case coverage."
"I really can't talk enough about the team."
"The ability to easily pull together lots of different pieces of information and drill down in a smarter way than has been possible with other analytics tools is key."
"The most valuable features of Oracle OBIEE are the ease of logging in, the dashboard, and showing the problems in the data. Additionally, the reports are well integrated and it has good technology."
"For building charts and graphical representations, we don't have to do much work, so in that area it's good."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is the security of the solution."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"Management and operational teams have access to information as and when they need it, insights pop up on a daily basis, and the business has transformed into a knowledge-empowered operation, with decisions at all levels being made on facts rather than guess work."
"Go ahead it is a very good, stable and reliable product."
"Flexibility, scalability, and the speed that you can pull these reports are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is its ease of use."
 

Cons

"Stability is actually one of the areas that could use improvement. Setting it up is always tough; setting Explorer requires experts, and the underlying platform is not that stable, so it really needs a good expert to keep it running."
"Much of IBM operates this way, where they have sets of tools that are in the middleware space, and it becomes the customer's responsibility or the business partner's responsibility to develop full solutions that take advantage of that middleware."
"It is a little bit tricky to get used to the workflow of knowing how to train Watson, what can be provided, what can't be, how to provide it, how to import, export, and what it means every time you have to add a new dictionary or something of the like."
"It needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."
"The solution is expensive."
"Stability is actually one of the areas that could use improvement. Setting it up is always tough. Setting Explorer requires experts, but also the underlying platform is not that stable. So it really needs a good expert to keep it running."
"Small businesses will probably have a little harder time getting into it, just because of the amount of resources that they have available, both financial and time, but it really is a solution that should work for them."
"Sometimes the service stops."
"We needed some technical expertise during setup."
"The integration with SAP BW is not so easy, but it's possible through XMLA, so if your data warehouse is under SAP BW, you have to be careful in your choice of OBIEE because you will face integration and performance issues."
"They should make the dashboard more intuitive."
"The pricing of the solution should be bettered."
"I would rate its current performance as a five out of ten because a lot of features are missed out in OBIEE."
"One feedback would be that their upgrade is not as easy as other cloud solutions."
"If you cannot satisfy the Excel needs, it doesn't matter how cool or how technically focused, consistent, compliant data you have; you can't use that if you can’t integrate it."
"The documentation in Oracle OBIEE can be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The licensing cost is based on the number of users using it."
"I would rate it a 4 out of 5 in terms of pricing."
"There are no additional costs, but there might be some charges for the Java feature."
"The licensing cost for Oracle OBIEE is expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The cost of this solution is a little bit high compared with other products like Zoho, so reducing it would make OBIEE more competitive."
"Pricing is an area that could be improved."
"The company had twenty-five Oracle OBIEE licenses and never expanded. Price-wise, the solution is expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Healthcare Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Performing Arts
11%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise103
 

Questions from the Community

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How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
Which Oracle product is better - OBIEE or Analytics Cloud?
Oracle OBIEE is designed to be relatively easy to set up and has a helpful customer support staff at the ready to assist customers. These are two attributes that make this system quite valuable. OB...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle OBIEE?
Oracle OBIEE is quite expensive, especially when compared to Microsoft's solutions.
 

Also Known As

IBM WEX
OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RIMAC, Westpac New Zealand, Toyota Financial Services, Swiss Re, Akershus University Hospital, Korean Air Lines, Mizuho Bank, Honda
Banca Transilvania, BeckmanCoulter, Hong Kong Housing Society, HealthShare, Ivanhoe Cambridge Unifies, and Home Credit, and Finance Bank.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Watson Explorer vs. Oracle OBIEE and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.
892,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.