Oracle OBIEE Reviews

Most of the use cases were related to financial reporting, project management, and operations.

One of its main features, which is a feature in pretty much every enterprise product these days, is the ability to see a single source of truth (SSOT). It means that of all the different pieces of information in today's contemporary enterprise, you can identify one set of financials, one set of production data, one set of sales, and one set of marketing data, and you can call that the truth or the gold standard. Everybody who accesses the application can refer to the same truth. This is a major benefit of not only OBIEE but many other products, but OBIEE has been doing that for a long time. Being able to access multiple data sources, being able to pull them all together, and being able to establish the same information that everybody can refer to are some of its benefits.

Its robustness is most valuable. It can handle massive amounts of data quickly. If it's properly configured and tuned, it can handle massive amounts of data very quickly to produce results. That to me is the number one feature. Everything else after 10 years becomes like second nature. 

I find it user-friendly, but some people would argue this point. It's user-friendly in the sense that if you have someone who's properly trained, then it has a user-friendly interface for self-service BI. I used to do training on that product. For someone who is not properly trained, it's difficult. 

When they converted to OAC, they made some changes that were good and some that were not so good. In terms of room for improvement, there is nothing that's perfect. One of the things that have been difficult with OBIEE during all the time that I've known it is that when something goes wrong, many times, the error messages are not specific, and you've got to spend a lot of time digging and digging and digging before you say, "Oh, okay. I figured out what it was." There should be more detailed error messages or troubleshooting messages.

I have been using this solution for 10 years.

It's generally rock solid. In fact, when I used to teach people, I used to say, "Don't worry, experiment. You can't break it." It can be broken, but most people with the access that they are given are not going to break it. I would rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of stability.

Its scalability is very good. It's definitely one of its features for the last several versions. In the last project, there were about a hundred users. I'm probably estimating high.

I definitely have plans to increase its usage because I'm getting certified and that's my experience. So, I would like more people to use it.

I would rate them a 4 out of 5.

Positive

I primarily worked with Crystal Reports.

It's complex to set up an entire installation, especially if someone has never done it before. You've got to know a lot of other things. You can't approach it cold and be easily or quickly successful.

You can deploy it with one person. I've deployed an entire OBIEE installation entirely by myself. It's not recommended, and it's not the best way, but it can be done. I know, I've done it. To administer or manage it once it's in place, the ideal team would be at a minimum a three to four-person team. Some companies, when they say, "We need to put in BI, and we need people to do that," they're also, without saying it, asking for someone to set up a data warehouse, run ETL, build and maintain that, run the BI, build the interface, do the reports, and teach or train the employees, which is something I've done. In that kind of situation, you need a three or four-person team at minimum to distribute everything from the data warehouse work, ETL, report development, training, and so on. If the person you're asking to maintain the BI system is not asked to train users, you don't need that skill either. So, it can be done by one person. It depends on what the client desires and is expecting.

There is absolutely a return on investment with this.

I have looked at its price, but I don't remember it. I would rate it a 4 out of 5 in terms of pricing.

Before going with OBIEE, I didn't evaluate other options. While using OBIEE over the last 10 years, I've evaluated several but not beforehand. The clients that engaged me already had made the choice and did the installation, or I did the installation for them.

Talk to another company that had to put it in place and maintain it. Get the straight story from the people who deal with it every single day—not the CEO who signed the contract, not the vice president or CIO or CTO, not the people who signed the contract and then gave it to somebody else. You should talk to the actual people who put it in place and did it every day. 

If you want to put it in place, do not believe that you must hire someone who has used this product before. What I mean by that is that if someone has used similar tools and knows the basics of BI, SQL language, and so on, with a little bit of time and training, they can become proficient in OBIEE. It's complex but it's not impossible. You don't have to find someone who has used it before. People who have used other things can learn OBIEE. I do training on that product, and I can train them.

I would rate it a 9 out of 10.

The centralized metadata model component is most valuable. 

We do like Oracle Visual Analyzer, but we do feel that it's quite immature in comparison to its competitors. There is still quite a lot of catch-up to be done, but it does still have some unique value add.

It is not very stable, and it is not consistently improved. There are a lot of gaps when it comes to design. The documentation and support from Oracle on the vision have been pretty bad over the last six years.

It is very biased towards Oracle infrastructure. One of the major red flags we have at the moment against Oracle is that it doesn't support deployment on other cloud providers. We're quite heavily vested in AWS as our infrastructure, and Oracle is yet to formally support deploying on those virtual infrastructure instances. That's quite disappointing, and it also cuts them out of over 70% of the market.

Its deployment is complicated in comparison to other solutions.

I have probably been using it since 2005. 

We're using Oracle Analytics Server, which is the latest version of the solution on site. We have a trial OAC which is the cloud version, but we're primarily on 12.2.1.4 which is the previous release on site.

The platform could definitely be more stable.

It is scalable, but it is very biased towards Oracle infrastructure. The biggest pain point is the alternative cloud support. They're very Oracle cloud-centric. If I need to do anything on our infrastructure that is AWS-centric or Azure-centric, there are loads of issues.

There are thousands of users, but right now, it's suffering from losing its users to Tableau and Power BI because of its various shortcomings.

The documentation from Oracle and the support have been pretty bad over the last six years. We also use Power BI and Tableau. Oracle is very poor in comparison to Power BI and Tableau with regard to user engagement, documentation, and roadmap.

They've got a lot of gaps in the community, support, and documentation. If I try and look up how to do something complicated in Oracle Analytics, I'd surely find it hard to find the information, whereas if I look up the equivalent in Tableau or Power BI, I'll find solutions pretty quickly.

I find their support model very outdated. In order to get support, I have to raise a ticket, and then I have to talk to someone who may or may not very quickly understand the problem, whereas quite often with the other products, the solution is in the community. That's where Oracle is falling behind. Their community is very poor when it comes to finding solutions, and their support is quite traditional. It's very old-fashioned.

The deployment can be done in a day. Once you understand it, the deployment isn't too bad, but the deployment complexity is still very high in comparison to other solutions. 

We did it ourselves. For its deployment and maintenance, we need a whole team of people. We probably have about three or four managers, and we've probably got 15 to 20 technical personnel or developers because many different business units are using it.

Its licensing is yearly.

I can recommend it under certain circumstances. It depends on your deployment, and whether you are starting from scratch. It is heavily dependent on what infrastructure you have and what your current people have. I would recommend it if you're a fully Oracle house. If you're not a fully Oracle house and you're heavily based on Azure or AWS, then I'd be hesitant. I'd need to do an architectural review.

As an end-user, I would rate it a seven out of 10. For an Oracle house, it would be a seven out of 10, and for a non-Oracle house, it would be a five out of 10.

We are in a restaurant business and our primary use case is for analytics, specifically for areas such as sales forecasting, sales reporting, and measuring key performance indicators.

I am highly satisfied with Oracle OBIEE as it delivers the desired results for our business. We found it to be effective for our needs.

The installation process and the ability to resume customer reports could be improved. The functionality to customize and modify reports has been removed, and it would be beneficial to reinstall it, as it allows greater customization and flexibility in creating reports.

We have been using it for four years.

It provides excellent stability. I would rate it nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability six out of ten.

The initial setup was straightforward. We haven't had any issues.

The installation process was quick. The deployment was handled by the vendor.

It helps to remove inefficiencies and improve the decision-making process, so it does deliver a return on investment.

It is an expensive solution. We have an annual license with Oracle.

It offers impressive functionality and it is an intuitive and beneficial tool. However, the pricing is quite high. I would rate it eight out of ten.

With Oracle OBIEE, business intelligence can be used in any kind of technology you have. A person always wants to see parts like visualizations and intelligence when it comes to what an application can do, the workflow, and everything related to the application, not in Excel sheets, letters, or reports. The reports will be visualized, so it will be easier to connect to any area of any application while also overlaying all your applications. With Oracle OBIEE, you can proceed with overlaying your applications. Oracle OBIEE helps you make the right decision to help achieve accurate results with all the scenarios the product offers for your applications.

The most valuable features of the solution are the various scenarios the product offers and its stability. Oracle Financial Services Risk Management is a useful area in Oracle OBIEE.

Oracle OBIEE is a product that is not easy to implement. The product is also not easy to use. The aforementioned details about the solution can be considered for improvement.

I have been using Oracle OBIEE for eight years. My company sells the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight to nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight to nine out of ten.

When it comes to those who have enterprise accounts and have purchased a subscription for advanced customer support, it is possible to get the best customer service from Oracle.

The time for the setup phase of the solution depends on the client and how big the project is, along with another factor, which is the partner who will be a part of the implementation phase of the product.

The solution is deployed on a hybrid cloud.

There are no licensing costs attached to the solution anymore. A person only needs to pay towards the subscription costs since it is a cloud-based solution. I use the free version of Oracle OBIEE.

I recommend the solution to those who plan to use it. I also recommend Microsoft Power BI to others as an alternative to Oracle OBIEE. Microsoft Power BI is very powerful and very easy to use, making it easy for anyone to implement it.

I rate the overall solution an eight to nine out of ten.

Oracle OBIEE can be used for reporting. It also gets used for some analytics-related work, like dashboard reports and subject areas. Additionally, the solution's bursting options, scheduling and sending reports across while having some dashboards created on the reports on the subject area.

The solution's performance and the bursting options when you generate the reports, after which you want to burst it based on criteria, are two valuable features of the solution.

The documentation in Oracle OBIEE can be more user-friendly. Oracle should include more videos rather than simple text. Also, adding some examples will help users with quick learning.

I have four years of experience with Oracle OBIEE. Since we use cloud services, it is the latest version of the solution we use in our organization.

In terms of stability, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. However, there have been occasional issues with the reports crashing, although this happens rarely.

Both the vertical and horizontal scalability of the solution is good. In terms of scalability, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. More than 300 employees in our organization are using Oracle OBIEE.

Once we work on implementing dashboard reports, the user base will likely increase.

The solution's initial setup is a bit complex. However, since it's only a one-time thing, it shouldn't be an issue.

The solution's deployment is something we do manually in our company. We were wondering if there is a tool for automated deployment.

For the solution's deployment and maintenance, we need three resources, including the deployment team in our organization. So, we don't need a manager for this.

The solution's implementation process was carried out by an integrator who helped us.

In our organization, we implemented it a year and a half ago, and I can say that the ROI is not that great. So, we are still trying to stabilize the system and improve it.

In our organization, we use a user-based license for Oracle OBIEE, and I've heard that the license cost is based on the number of users. Also, I cannot comment further since I am not involved in the solution's cost-related part.

Since we use Oracle, we have implemented ERP and then Oracle ERP Procurement Cloud, which is a cloud software. We also have a cloud database, including OCI infrastructure.

I can recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We are using Oracle OBIEE for creating interactive dashboards and reports.

The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is the security of the solution.

Oracle OBIEE can improve the ease of use. It is a lot to learn and it could be made easier.

I have been using Oracle OBIEE for approximately five years.

Oracle OBIEE is a stable enough solution.

Throughout the versions we have used of Oracle OBIEE, they have been scalable.

We have more than 20 people using the solution. We have plans to increase usage in the future.

The support is good from Oracle OBIEE.

I rate the support from Oracle OBIEE a four out of five.

Positive

I have previously used Microsoft Power BI. I have used different solutions due to the company's requirements I worked.

The initial setup of Oracle OBIEE is straightforward. Once it is deployed then we can add other modules. The installation process took approximately two hours.

The implementation of Oracle OBIEE can be done in-house. If the company implementing the solution is not experienced then a consultant can be used.

We have multiple technical staff working on Oracle OBIEE. However, the exact number is based on the needs of the project. In our previous project, we had three to four technical staff that was needed; in the current project, we have more than 20.

The licensing cost is based on the number of users using it.

I would recommend the solution to others.

I rate Oracle OBIEE a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for pulling data analytics from our source systems through the enterprise data warehouse provided by Oracle. We also use it to provide dashboard solutions for analytics and operations for the businesses from various departments; operational, finance, marketing, sales, legal, everyone. We are partners with Oracle.

This solution is very easy for people who are building ad-hoc things. It's an enterprise solution so it can be deployed for a lot of users. There are some great new features that come with the 12c like data visualization, desktop BI Publisher, automation and interactive dashboards. The product has good features. 

This solution needs a better security management system and I think there is room for improvement in terms of giving access to people in a more effective way. I'd like to see additional features and performance can be improved too. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

There are no issues with day-to-day activities so it's pretty stable. The new versions have improved and even with a lot of people logging in, it's solid. 

The solution is made for enterprise companies and is scalable.

When we have issues that need Oracle support we reach out to them. The response is sometimes very slow but better at other times. It's a mixed bag even though we have dedicated support. We recently did an upgrade and that went smoothly. 

OBIEE is definitely for enterprise customers. If you have a big user base of say 500,000, then this is the kind of solution you'd want to have. I would definitely advise people to go for the latest version rather than install an old version and then try to do an out-of-the-place upgrade. 

There's room for improvement so I rate OBIEE seven out of 10.

Oracle OBIEE is useful for data solutions.

The solution is user-friendly.

Oracle OBIEEE's performance and licensing costs could be improved.

The solution is stable. I rate it an eight out of ten.

The solution is scalable. Currently, we have ten users. We plan to increase the usage by next year. Overall, I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I implemented the solution in-house.

There is a Return on Investment.

The licensing cost for Oracle OBIEE is expensive. We pay an annual licensing fee, and there are no additional costs beyond the standard fees.

Oracle is a globally recognized company, and its products are considered satisfactory. You can't go wrong with Oracle products. I rate the product an eight out of ten.