Art of BI: What is Oracle Analytics Cloud and Why Should You Care?

What is Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC)? Imagine a single yet comprehensive solution that can work as the foundation for any conceivable business cloud analytics requirement for your enterprise.

Now imagine Oracle Hyperion Essbase in the cloud!

That’s included in OAC – And, that is a good thing for you!

Imagine that you don’t have to worry about hosting the necessary infrastructure in terms of servers, software, and storage space, and can concentrate on using the functionality and getting results in an environment that is:

• Scalable
• Flexible
• Comprehensive
• Secure

The Oracle Analytics Cloud is all the above and much more. Simply put, it is a cloud-based platform that can take data in any shape or size from any source — desktop, enterprise, data center — and can provide capabilities such as:

• Collecting, consolidating, and transforming data, and creating transactional and analytical reports and dashboards
• Empowering users to visualize and discover data
• Providing users with self-service capabilities in what-if modeling and analysis with Oracle Hyperion Essbase on the backend
• Providing Big Data discovery capabilities

The term “platform” for describing OAC is not used casually. The entire set of offerings under the umbrella of OAC is bundled as a Platform as a Service (PaaS). You don’t need to worry about the physical infrastructure but you can have more control over the environment when it’s needed.  You no longer have to wait for your IT team to build out your infrastructure to have robust visualizations and the newest self-version-updating Essbase system.

The main component services of OCA are listed as follows:

• Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS)
• Oracle Data Visualization Cloud Service (DVCS)
• EssBase Cloud (EssCs)

BICS and DVCS have been available for quite some time now on a Software-as-a-Service (Saas) model and are proven solutions in business analytics and data visualization. Offering these services under the OAC umbrella gives your Line of Business (LOB) users the flexibility of signing up for these services under a public cloud environment hosted and operated by Oracle, and at the same time providing users with the flexibility to control the environment while migrating to the cloud.

Essbase Cloud (EssCs)

Designed specifically for business users and data analytics (BI) professionals, the traditional Essbase tool is the leading technology for Multidimensional Online Analytical Processing. It supports what-if analysis, budget analysis, forecasting, root cause analysis, and scenario planning amongst a host of other functions.

The tool has steadily evolved over the years. OAC offers the latest iteration of Essbase as a subscription-based cloud service called EssCs (Essbase Cloud Service). Datavail has great resources and training to get you started learning about the Essbase Cloud Solution and OAC..

If you are interested in learning more about the Essbase cloud or migrating your existing on-premise Essbase application databases to the Oracle Essbase Cloud Services let me know. Please note that this is not just the old Essbase product bundled as a cloud-based offering. There is significant reengineering, a revamped interface and a host of features not found in the on-premises version.

Two of the new features are:

Sandboxing with an in-built approval process

Users can save their cubes into sandboxes — a sort of a staging area — where these cubes can be tested, approved, and then moved into production.

Create on-demand Essbase cubes

A Cube Designer add-on allows the user to use templates to build cubes for given use cases such as margin or price analysis, budgets, forecasting, and cash flows.

Why choose the cloud for business analytics?

There are several compelling reasons to move business analytics functions to the cloud. One of the most important ones is to prevent the formation of isolated silos — independent efforts within the organization to analyze and visualize data and create reports and dashboards. Such efforts could result in duplicated and wasted effort, not to mention the fact that there could be inconsistency in results and standards. OAC offers a great avenue for a cloud-based BI solution that provides the benefits of low entry costs, fast implementation, and an elastic platform that can be configured in terms of CPUs and storage space.

How can Datavail help?

If you need help with any projects related to integration, consolidation, and migration of your existing Business Analytics initiatives or Essbase on-premise systems to cloud OAC offering please contact us today. Datavail is a specialized IT services company focused on Data Management with solutions in BI/DW, analytics, database administration, custom application development, and enterprise applications. We provide both professional and managed services delivered via our global delivery model, focused on Microsoft, Oracle and other leading technologies.

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