Introducing the Industry's First Analytics Machine, Oracle Exalytics

Analytics is all about gaining insights from data for better decision making. The
business press is abuzz with examples of leading organizations across the world using
data-driven insights for strategic, financial and operational excellence. A recent study on
“data-driven decision making” conducted by researchers at MIT and Wharton provides
empirical evidence that “firms that adopt data-driven decision making have output and
productivity that is 5-6% higher than the competition”. The potential payoff for firms can
range from higher shareholder value to a market leadership position.

However, the vision of delivering fast, interactive, insightful analytics has remained elusive
for most organizations. Most enterprise IT organizations continue to struggle to deliver
actionable analytics due to time-sensitive, sprawling requirements and ever tightening
budgets. The issue is further exasperated by the fact that most enterprise analytics
solutions require dealing with a number of hardware, software, storage and networking
vendors and precious resources are wasted integrating the hardware and software
components to deliver a complete analytical solution.

Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine is the world‟s first engineered system specifically
designed to deliver high performance analysis, modeling and planning. Built using
industry-standard hardware, market-leading business intelligence software and in-memory
database technology, Oracle Exalytics is an optimized system that delivers answers to all
your business questions with unmatched speed, intelligence, simplicity and manageability.

Oracle Exalytics's unmatched speed, visualizations and scalability delivers extreme
performance for existing analytical and enterprise performance management applications
and enables a new class of intelligent applications like Yield Management, Revenue
Management, Demand Forecasting, Inventory Management, Pricing Optimization,
Profitability Management, Rolling Forecast and Virtual Close etc.

Requiring no application redesign, Oracle Exalytics can be deployed in existing IT
environments by itself or in conjunction with Oracle Exadata and/or Oracle Exalogic to
enable extreme performance and best in class user experience. Based on proven hardware,
software and in-memory technology, Oracle Exalytics lowers the total cost of ownership,
reduces operational risk and provides unprecedented analytical capability for workgroup,
departmental and enterprise wide deployments.

Click here to learn more about Oracle Exalytics.

Five ways Oracle Exalytics is “different” from SAP HANA

The social media platforms are abuzz with comparisons between Oracle Exalytics & SAP HANA. Some of our esteemed colleagues from the other side have tried hard but failed miserably to differentiate between Exalytics & HANA. Frankly, you don’t need to be a PHD or a wine connoisseur to understand the differences; all you need is to invest some time. Here are the top 5 ways (David Letterman style) of how HANA imitates to be Exalytics but fails miserably:

#5: HANA is an “appliance”, Exalytics is an engineered solution: Ok, I am being generous here by classifying HANA as an appliance. My definition of appliance is hardware & software put together for a specific purpose. So, may be HP & Microsoft joined forces to offer a BI appliance but a piece of software running on a bunch of supported hardware platforms without any specific purpose, which HANA is, doesn’t qualify as an appliance. Exalytics on the other hand is an engineered solution. Engineered solution is one which is purpose built to solve a specific problem, think dental braces vs. metal wires. Exalytics is hardware and software which is purpose built to best handle analytical workloads. Unlike an appliance, Exalytics’ software has been designed from the ground up to best exploit the underlying hardware. Features like in-memory, parallelization, automated intelligent cache management, compression etc.  deliver the best analytics performance and exploit the abundance of memory and processing capability available on Exalytics.

#4: HANA does everything but analytics and Exalytics is purpose built for analytics: HANA takes on a new purpose depending on the day of the week. HANA is an analytics database today. In the future, it will be a transactional database. Well there’s nothing wrong in being opportunistic and finding a new purpose every day, experimentation is good. I would certainly like my 4 year old to experiment and figure out if he wants to be an astronaut, a scientist or an artist but how would you feel about experimenting with your mission critical business systems. My advice, please don’t innovate for the sake of innovation.

Exalytics, on the other hand, does only one thing – it delivers unmatched performance and user experience for speed of thought analytics. It super charges your existing BI deployments and enables a new category of smart analytical applications like yield management, revenue management, real time forecasting, virtual financial close, dynamic pricing etc. It integrates transparently into your existing IT environment and requires no manual data movement or costly changes to your application code or behavior – now this is true innovation without disruption.

#3: HANA solves the problem which Exadata solved 2 years ago: HANA is supposedly a database query accelerator. It makes the database queries run faster. Dah, a ground breaking innovation from SAP, well SAP welcome to the party, you are just 2+ years late. Oracle solved the database query acceleration problem 2+ years ago with introduction of Exadata. We can debate the technical nuances like in-memory etc. but with 2TB of RAM and innovations around storage and data access, Exadata remains the fastest database machine on the planet.

#2: HANA is closed; Exalytics is an open solution: HANA is designed to work with SAP data and tools only. Now this is Database 101, you don’t design a database that is closed. The basic concept of a DBMS is to act as a data consolidation platform where data can be collected, stored, managed and accessed openly. OK, you can’t really fault the SAP development here; after all they are designing a version 0.1 of the product which Oracle has been investing billions for the last 30 years to perfect. Exalytics is a completely open middle-tier analytics platform. It connects to any or all commercially available databases like Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Teradata, Netezza and even SAP HANA and delivers high speed reporting and analysis. Besides, over 40+ pre-built enterprise performance management, ERP and CRM analytical applications are already certified on Exalytics.

#1: No BI software included with HANA; Exalytics is a single stop BI solution: In order to make sense of data or as the former CEO of Business Objects, Bernard Liautaud aptly put it to derive intelligence out of data; BI tools like dashboards, reports, scorecards and ad-hoc query and analysis tools are required. Looks like our able colleagues at SAP forgot this minor detail and didn’t include any BI tools with HANA. Exalytics on the other hand comes preloaded with Oracle BI Foundation. Oracle BI Foundation delivers the widest and most robust set of reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, OLAP, dashboard, and scorecard functionality with a rich end user experience that includes visualization, collaboration, alerts and notifications, search and mobile access. So, all you do with Exalytics is plug it in, connect to a data source and you are on your way to delivering pre-packaged or custom analytical applications.

Hopefully the above provides insightful context on Exalytics and its imposter SAP HANA. Exalytics is and remains the industry’s first in-memory analytics machine. You can learn more about Oracle Exalytics here. 

Forrester Study - 986% ROI, $100+ million in additional revenues with Oracle's Decision Management Solution

Analytics is all about analyzing data for better insights and decisions. Intuitively, it seems that more data analysis should equal better business results like higher revenues, lower costs, higher profitability and productivity. A recent study on “data-driven decision making” conducted by researchers at MIT and Wharton provides empirical evidence that “that firms that adopt data-driven decision making have output and productivity that is 5-6% higher than the competition”.

With this background, Oracle recently commissioned a study through Forrester Research to determine the total economic impact and potential ROI for Oracle’s Real-Time Decisions (RTD) platform. This article presents some of the interesting facts from the Forrester study.

For people not familiar with RTD, Oracle's Real-Time Decisions (RTD) platform combines both rules and predictive analytics to power solutions for real-time enterprise decision management. It enables real-time intelligence to be instilled into any type of business process or customer interaction. RTD was chosen for the study precisely for its ability to influence business decisions based on defined rules and more importantly insights derived through real-time data analysis.

The customer chosen for this study, a large financial services company has offices in all 50 states with over 20,000 employees and millions of customers. This company derives a significant portion of revenues via the online channel and hence RTD plays a major role in influencing the customer acquisition and retention process.

The results – A three year risk adjusted ROI of 986% with over $100 million in additional revenue generation. The numbers are astonishing by any measure so let’s dive deeper to understand how the customer achieved such amazing benefits.

• Increased Closure rate & incremental deal size: Imagine a Financial Services provider doing business with millions of customers over the web. If only every interaction could be tailored to the right offering for the individual customer need, this is exactly what the provider did. Using RTD’s predictive analytics capabilities, in real-time, the financial services provider was able to tailor its offerings to best meet the customer needs. The results an approximately 0.8% lift in closure rate in Year 1 which increase to 1% in Year 2. Besides, by targeting the right offering to match the customer needs and not the cheapest offering the provider was able to increase the average deal size by $10 in Year 1 and by $12 in Year 2. These two initiatives yielded roughly $54.4 million and $41.1 million in additional revenues over 3 years.
• Post cart abandonment follow-up campaign revenue: Another RTD initiative focused on sending personalized follow-up emails to potential customers who asked for the quote but didn’t buy (abandoned their cart). Using RTD’s rule based and real-time predictive analytics models, the provider customized things like email subject, email body and even the time of the day the emails were send to better suit the individual prospect profile. The results – an astonishing 1% point lift in the conversation rate compared to the control group who received static message resulting in $56.4 million in additional revenue over 3 years.
• Another point worth noting is that the benefits like uplift in closure rate and higher average deal size continued to improve year over year. Obviously, some of this continuous improvement is based on better hypothesis testing and campaign refinement work undertaken by the decision management team. But more importantly, RTD’s predictive models are getting better with time i.e. the RTD system continues to learn and improve with time.

In conclusion, the Forrester study confirms beyond doubt the power of RTD in particular and data mining based automated decision management systems in general. Besides the Financial Services provides there are number of customers like a leading Credit Card provider and Ecommerce site of a large retailer who are using RTD to improve customer interactions and deliver additional revenues. We believe that the demand for solutions like RTD will continue to increase with trends like big data, automation and increased competition and as more and more businesses began to use analytics as a competitive differentiator. You can learn more about RTD here.

Are you underutilizing your most important corporate asset, data?

    It’s a fascinating time to be in the data management business. Pundits are using terms like “oil” and “soil” to describe the business value of data. The Economist magazine in a special report on managing information published in 2010 featured a quote from a computer expert describing the current times as the “industrial revolution of data”. The same report stated “data as becoming the new raw material of business: an economic input almost on a par with capital and labor”. To say data is important to running a business is an understatement, looks like storing, managing and analyzing the data could well be difference between success and failure.

          

    Pundits agree that across all the data available in an organization, 20% is structured and 80% unstructured. Structured data refers to the human generated data like orders, leads, support calls etc. which is generally well stored, managed and analyzed. Unstructured data refers to machine generated data like RFID sensors, web logs, application logs, emails, click streams etc. which is loosely stored and infrequently analyzed to drive business decisions. This is not to say that the unstructured data is not analyzed at all, it is generally used to drive technological decisions like improving applications and systems performance. So, in essence, organizations are using only 20% of their data to run the business. This means that organizations are leaving a lot of money on the table by under utilizing one of their most important corporate asset, data, which is comparable to other assets like capital and labor. Imagine running a business where 80% of your labor or capital is not utilized…how terribly unproductive, yet leading organizations around the world are doing just that day in and day out.

          

    Lot of businesses takes comfort in fact that they are really not data oriented business. Conventional wisdom states that structured and unstructured data is definitely relevant to online e-commerce businesses like Google, Facebook, eBay etc. but the unstructured data is of not much use to traditional businesses like manufacturing, utilities, consumer goods etc. Nothing could be further from the truth.

        

    So, how can a manufacturing business like automobile manufacturer benefit from analyzing both structured and unstructured data? Automobile buying just like any big ticket item purchase involves the traditional buying steps like need recognisition, information search, and alternative evaluation and purchase decision. The buyers spend a lot of time on the manufacturers or 3^rd party information provider websites generating unstructured data around making selections, gaining information and comparing alternatives. This user behavioral data can be constantly analyzed and combined with the structured “compare vehicle” section of the websites to make the comparative selection dynamic and based on user behavior vs. a static list. Similarly, the attitudinal data generated by the customers around a vehicle’s features can be used as an input to improve the vehicle design process.

     

    Another example is around achieving balance between mass customization and mass production with a service like NIKEid. NIKEiD is a service provided by Nike allowing customers to personalize and design their own Nike merchandise. NIKEiD offers online services as well as physical studios in different countries around the world. Mass customization provides personalization but without mass production the cost and lead time is prohibitive. NIKEid can use the unstructured user generated design data to identify the top selling merchandise and sell them as innovatively designed, semi-mass produced items at lower cost, with less lead time and at higher volumes generating better profits. E.g. NIKEiD’s unstructured personalization and design data can be used to identify major trends like demand for “shoes with a smaller carbon footprint” or “green shoes” and can be used to launch a new mass produced product line.

    

    These are just a few examples on how data can be used as a strategic asset to drive profitable business. In closing, as Rollin Ford, CIO of Wal-mart says “ Every day I wake up and ask, how do I flow, manage and analyze data better?”, data is your most strategic asset which could well be way underutilized.

Introducing Business Intelligence 2.0

Every technology undergoes innovation, evolution and experimentation to best meet the needs of changing times. It seems like the time has come to move beyond Business Intelligence (BI) 1.0 and start talking about BI 2.0. MIT-Sloan Management Review in a recently published survey titled “Analytics: the New Path to Value” identified the top 3 analytical techniques creating value for the organization evolving from historical trend analysis, standardized reporting and data visualization to simulations and scenario development, analytics applied within the business processes and data visualization. Other analyst firms like Gartner are validating this view and have identified one of the key future trends in business intelligence as a shift in the use of the BI system. According to Gartner, BI practitioners today are increasingly using their BI systems beyond measurement or reporting and more for the purposes of analysis, forecasting and optimization. In my view this is a “tipping point” in the evolution of BI technology and hence the coming of age of BI 2.0.

So, what does a BI 2.0 system look like? I think a BI 2.0 system is best described by outlining the top 5 capabilities that such a system exhibits. From my perspective, here are the top 5 BI 2.0 capabilities in no particular order:

•  Beyond measurement to scenario modeling, forecasting and optimization: BI 2.0 systems will include capabilities beyond standardized reporting, dashboards and ad-hoc query to scenario modeling and simulation capabilities like what-if analysis, forecasting and optimization. As organizations evolve and mature in the use of BI technologies, it’s only natural to move away from reactive to proactive mode of doing business and hence the shift in system capabilities from historical to forward looking predictive analysis.
•  In-business process analytics: As businesses realize the benefits of better insights, better decisions and faster actions; BI capabilities will be more pervasive and better integrated within the business processes. The next evolution of the ERP systems will be around “intelligent” process automation driving BI capabilities within business process. As organizations become efficient and learn to do more with less, BI will no longer be an afterthought and would be directly embedded with the business process making the process more efficient.
•  Support for “Big Data”: Businesses today are generating data at tremendous volume and speed. The so called “machine generated data” e.g. the data generated through web logs, RFID sensors etc. far out paces “human generated data”. A number of new technologies like Hadoop, columnar databases, NoSQL databases have come to age to solve the big data storage and analysis problem. The various data management technologies like relational, multidimensional, distributed file based data management systems solve specific business problems and would continue to thrive within the enterprise IT infrastructure. Big data presents interesting opportunities like analyzing the customer behavioral and attitudinal data to identify new revenue opportunities. BI 2.0 systems will provide ubiquitous access to multiple enterprise data sources via enterprise wide semantic layer ensuring conformance, single version of the truth and federation.
•  Insight to Action: BI 2.0 systems will deliver a closed loop analytics cycle by not only delivering the insights but also providing the ability to act on the insights. The BI and business process management technologies will come together delivering capabilities to initiate a business process directly from the BI dashboards. So, how does the Insight to Action Framework delivers value? Well it makes it easier and faster for your Business users to take the next step from gaining insights to acting on them. E.g. an accounts receivable manager might notice on his dashboard that DSO is trending up, and by drilling down, may see a late payment trend by few customers. By placing a credit hold on the problem customers he/she can take action on his/her DSO trending up problem. In this scenario, the account receivables manager never had to send out emails or call people or access different systems to figure out the next steps. The next steps are pre-build in the analytics system and just a click away.
• Always on, collaborative and consumerized BI: Personal tools and productivity devices like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Smart phones and Tablets are changing the way we consume information. Information is available 24*7, on the go and from the convenience of your mobile device. Gartner’s term “iphonesque” illustrates the simple, mobile and fun aspect desired by users off of their BI systems today. BI 2.0 systems will embrace the changing paradigm and will be simple, easy, mobile, collaborative and fun.

In conclusion, exciting times lie ahead for the BI community. BI 2.0 systems with some of the exciting new capabilities outlined above will change how businesses gain insights, take decisions and act faster. BI 2.0 offers new promises to better analyze disparate data sources and identify opportunities for top line and bottom line growth. Stay tuned as we continue to innovate and evolve.

New flash demo titled “Achieve Strategic Alignment with Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management” is now available on Oracle.com

Want to learn about how to achieve strategic alignment with Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management?

 If you are interested in Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management and how it helps you define strategy, establish objectives, undertake initiatives, monitor performance, and take actions to achieve strategic alignment; check out the 3 minute flash demo posted here on Oracle.com