Shridar Jayakumar, Program Director Business Analytics, Oracle Asia-Pacific

In the Gartner 2015 Business Intelligence and Analytics Magic Quadrant, the analyst predicts that a fundamental shift in the BI and analytics (BIA) market is on the horizon. There is a clearly discernible shift to cloud-based tools, with Internet of Things and data collected in real time from sensors leading the data explosion. The analyst also predicts investments around smart data discovery, and empowering users with better access and governability to self-service data.
 
This time around Data&StorageAsean editors invited Oracle’s Shridar Jayakumar, Program Director Business Analytics for Asia Pacific to discuss how Oracle is evolving in the BIA space to remain relevant to its customers in the region.
 
DSA – What’s the difference between Business Intelligence tools and Big Data Analytics tools?
Shridar Jayakumar: Many organisations have the equipment and expertise to handle large quantities of structured data, but with increasing volume and faster flows of data, they may lack the ability to “mine” and derive actionable intelligence. Big data analytics tools give managers insight into the business so they can make better choices.
 
Big data doesn’t always fit into neat tables of columns and rows. There are many new data types – structured and unstructured – that can be processed to yield insight into a business. The idea is to “reduce” the data so that it can be put in a structured form. Then it can be meaningfully compared to the rest of your data and scrutinised with traditional or cloud business intelligence (BI) tools by going a step further than Big data analytics tools to provide a deeper dive into data to enhance business performance.
 
Additionally, BI tools aggregate data into levels so patterns can emerge to deliver greater insight into performance and enable organisations to be more efficient, agile and competitive. The challenge is deriving answers to business questions from available data so that decision makers can respond quickly to changes in the business climate.
 
DSA – Should BI be put in the hands of ALL staff?
Shridar Jayakumar: Yes, however having multiple users and decision makers can pose challenges. The sweet-spot lies in how to ensure proper use and execution by all stakeholders without BI becoming a free-for-all, where everyone has access to analytics, and everyone is making decisions from different and inconsistent answers.
 
As such, it is important to have a solution that provides a secure, managed environment for users to load their own data, create their own analytics, and share their work. A centralised, cloud-based metadata layer such as Oracle BI Cloud Service ensures a single, consistent view of data. So even when users are uploading local and external content that isn’t curated, they leverage corporate definitions and standards in every analysis – because self-service analytics shouldn’t stand in opposition to security, quality and consistency.
 
With Oracle BI Cloud Service, self-service and governance go hand-in-hand, which means ‘Do It Yourself’ also means ‘Do It Right’.  Sharing insights is also the quickest way to create transparency and drive change, as well as harnessing collective business acumen of your workforce and apply it to your top challenges.
 
DSA – What Can a BI product achieve that a spreadsheet cannot?
Shridar Jayakumar: Primarily, BI tools convert live data intelligently and offer insights. An agile analytics platform lets you quickly create compelling dashboards by using intelligent defaults and easy drag and-drop composition.
 
With BI, staff can easily share their work as they go, or share completed dashboards and applications, simply by putting them in shared folders. Roles and permissions provide fine-grained control of what people can see, ensuring they have access to content appropriate for them, even if the original analysis includes data outside its scope. Through the use of mobile BI, hot new insights won’t go cold while people are away from their desks.  BI also empowers employees to work more directly with more data, which can radically reduce the resources needed.
 
DSA – What are the key considerations when choosing a BI product?
Shridar Jayakumar: Considerations will vary for different businesses depending on the size and industry. But as a basic level, there are three main areas to look at in order to determine the breadth and depth of a BI solution.
 
The first is to clarify and confirm the objectives of the solution and the sort of KPIs that should be achieved from implementing such a solution. Aside from the return on investment, decision makers can also consider other objectives such productivity improvements, increased customer satisfaction ratings, cost reductions, amongst others.
 
The second area is looking into the company's existing IT architecture and operational efficiency. This is to determine what extent of BI can be implemented without overwhelming those involved in the use of the solution. Last but not least, determining executive support and business involvement is key. All stakeholders should be in synch when it comes to goal setting, planning, developing and implementing the BI solution in order to ensure the earlier determined KPIs are met.
 
DSA – What’s unique about your BI offering?
Shridar Jayakumar: Oracle BI Cloud service is a comprehensive solution to create compelling business intelligence applications, combining the power of proven Oracle platforms with the speed, flexibility, and low cost of the Cloud.  It scales to empower users across your organisation, from small workgroups to the enterprise, making agile BI accessible to everyone. Users enjoy an extensive analytics platform which offers an interactive interface with built-in guidance and tutorials so your team can be productive.
 
For HR executives, senior management, and analysts, the Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) Enterprise for Human Capital Management Cloud Service delivers advanced analytics, designed to share meaningful insight immediately. Focused dashboards are easy-to-use and intuitively invite users to explore data faster, resulting in a self-service model that eliminates the need to have custom one-off reports.  
 
Users can also depend on Oracle Big Data Discovery, a single, easy to use product, built natively on Hadoop, which transforms raw data into actionable insight in minutes, without the need to learn complex products or rely on highly skilled resources.
 
Analytics are extended through the power of Oracle Database that is immediately available, predictable with system availability and patching so you have the latest features trouble free