The central element in the unfolding of Business Intelligence history is predictive analytics and a shift has been underway in employing this technology among all BI Megavendors. Gartner expects that Big Data will drive $34 billion in IT spending worldwide this year. A Boeing jet generates 10 terabytes of information per engine every 30 minutes of flight, according to Stephen Brobst, the CTO of Teradata. Likewise, it is estimated that the number of devices connected to the Internet– currently 9 billion– will reach 50 billion by the end of the decade. These devices will be churning out heaps of data most of which are unstructured (videos, images, audios). Although Predictive analytics falls under Business Intelligence (some disagree), it is different than traditional BI in that BI embodies reports, visualizations, scorecards, dashboards whereas Predictive analytics uses machine learning algorithms to predict the probability of outcomes. Businesses that adopt predictive analytics can reduce risks, cut costs, and save.
Oracle has been the subject of harsh criticism in recent weeks on the grounds that it has acted too late on its Big Data strategy and its demise is a foregone conclusion. These are some of the headlines in recent weeks…
“Oracle’s Database Empire Facing Deadly Threat From SLI”
“Cracks in the Oracle Empire”
“Oracle is in Big Trouble: Big Data is to Blame”
“IBM’s New Big Data Solution Could Hurt Oracle’s New Sales”
“Big Data, Not Poor Sales Execution, Is Real Threat to Oracle”
Hardly anyone contests that BI landscape has changed, but to single out Oracle among the BI Megavendors seems contrived. It is reminiscent of the attacks on Oracle during the 90’s Database Wars. I started working with Oracle Database in 1990 right after finishing graduate school and I have been following its trajectory ever since. Therefore, I have the luxury of looking at these events from the hindsight perspective of knowing what has happened in the past. Hence, offer a starkly different narrative. The castigation of Oracle is untenable on several levels not the least of which is that Oracle performed better than Microsoft and IBM in last year’s Software Market revenue growth, According to IDC’s data. SAP’s revenue grew the most at 5.1 percent followed by Oracle at 3.9 percent, thus contrary to the claims that the company will end-up in the dustbin of history, Oracle has a healthy business. I can recall five major crisis that Oracle had to overcome in the past twenty three years and the omnipotent Oracle has demonstrated time and again that it is a strategic player, a master of brinkmanship, and can withstand Hurricanes and emerge with an unqualified victory. The swiftness with which it acted on its remarkably ambitious scheme that brought SUN under its wings is a case in point.
Oracle recently added new items to its Big Data appliance bundle to make it easier for businesses to jump-start their first big data initiative. The new additions are Oracle Big Data Appliance X3-2 Starter Rack and Appliance X3-2 In-Rack Expansion. The rack can be expanded to accommodate up to 18 nodes thereby giving businesses the option of scaling their implementations according to their needs. Oracle Big Data software stack comprises Oracle NoSql Database, Oracle Linux, Hotspot Java Virtual Machine, and Cloudera Hadoop. The company is also offering X3-2 Starter Rack expansion as an infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Oracle has added new capabilities to its Data Discovery software Endeca, and Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite. The users can access a wider range of data sources, including social media sites, Hadoop deployments, and spreadsheets. Endeca and the Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite run on Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine, which is Oracle’s business analytics Server. Its new Microsoft Office plug-in allows Oracle dashboards to be exported to Microsoft Excel. Moreover, users can analyze data within Excel using BI Foundation visualizations.
The point I am stressing here is that the winds of change will impact the BI Megavendors equally, be it IBM, SAP, or Microsoft. IBM’s crown jewel PureData or SAP’s darling HANA won’t tip the balance against Oracle because Oracle has the equivalent tools in its arsenal to place it on an equal footing. Furthermore, Oracle enjoys wide latitude in forging new alliances and/or spending its funds for acquisitions just as IBM has done. Behemoth IBM has spent $16 billion on Analytics acquisitions. The question is what will the landscape look like when the dust settles and where will Oracle stand when the Big Data revenues start to gush forth? The advent of Big Data technology hasn’t yielded significant revenues to date, but if we take Tableau’s fantastic IPO this month as a barometer, the future of analytics is bright. At this time the broader Business Intelligence market is maturing in diagnostic (discovery) phase and the prescriptive analytics has an infinitesimal share of the market.
The Open Source predictive analytics companies like Pentaho and JasperSoft won’t be able to meet the perplexing needs of the enterprise businesses. Amazon is a threat with its $798 million estimated revenue from AWS in 2012, but then again, the clouds hovering over the Megavendors is not confined to Oracle. An umpteen of startups have sprung up in the past a few years hoping to cash in their chips when Big Data is in full swing. Although Oracle’s plans are kept under wraps, factoring in its past moves, it’s not hard to guess how it will play its Chess pieces in the coming years. I know that some of the candidates for acquisition that I am listing make strange bedfellows, but I am weighing the pros and cons through the prism of technical relevance only: Fusion-io, Platfora, Splunk, Sisense, 10gen, Cloudera, MapR, Hortonworks, Enigma, Ayata, Attunity, Continuuity, Imfochimps, Rackspace, and Rightscale. My pick: Fusion-io, Platfora, Sisense, and Rackspace.
AUTOPOST by BEDEWY VISIT GAHZLY
