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BI Market: OLAP (Vendors and Products) – 2011

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On-line analytical processing (OLAP) solutions provide advanced techniques for rapidly visualizing and analyzing business metrics across different points of view. OLAP is a term used to generically refer to software and applications that provide users with the ability to store and access data in OLAP cubes (also called a ‘multidimensional cube’ or a hypercube) with this “cube” being made up of numeric facts, called measures, and text values, called dimensions.

Moreover, OLAP systems provide users with insight into past performance and they enable a deep understanding of the reasons behind why previous events have occurred. Fundamentally, OLAP systems allow users to rapidly view and analyze data from many perspectives or dimensions and allows the users to conduct sophisticated “What-If” analysis.

In 2011, the market leading vendors for OLAP systems include: SAP Business Objects, Oracle, IBM Cognos, MicroStrategy, Microsoft, SAS, Pentaho, & Jaspersoft.

BI Vendor Products - OLAP (2011)

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New Product Names within SAP BusinessObjects Version 4.0

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The latest version of SAP Business Objects, released in 2011, has been officially named SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 with the title “XI” being removed from the release number. Many of the client tools in the SAP Business Objects application suite will also have a new name in the new version.

Business Objects Application Names for BOBJ XI 3.x vs. BOBJ 4.0

Business Objects (BOBJ) 4.0 - New Application Names

Source: http://bit.ly/gVurCF

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Primary Components of Business Intelligence Systems

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Business Intelligence (BI) systems are software applications that enable better understanding of organizational data and provide the information organizations need to make enlightened decisions. Moreover, business intelligence systems are primarily focused on reporting, querying, and analysis of data residing in an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), and both dependent and independent data marts.

Primary Components of Business Intelligence (BI)

Primary Components of Business Intelligence (BI)

Fundamentally, there are five categories of business intelligence applications…

•  Operational Reports:  Displays data with rich presentation and within a structured layout (i.e. rows and columns).
•  Query and Analysis:  Interactive methods to query data, present data in an ad-hoc manner, and to find information on an as-needed basis.
•  Dashboard Management:  Graphical interfaces and real-time methods to provide guided analysis and to intuitively monitor organizational metrics.
•  On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP):  The capability of manipulating and analyzing data from multiple perspectives in a rapid fashion.
•  Data Mining & Predictive Analytics:  Utilizing statistics, algorithms, and sophisticated data search capabilities to discover hidden patterns and relationships in data and project future results.

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Business Intelligence (BI) Maturity Model - Level 4

BI Maturity Model Level 4 – Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

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Level 4 – On-line Analytical Analysis (OLAP) Systems

On-line analytical processing (OLAP) is a technique for rapidly visualizing and analyzing business metrics across different points of view. OLAP is a term used to generically refer to software and applications that provide users with the ability to store and access data in OLAP cubes (also called a ‘multidimensional cube’ or a hypercube) with this “cube” being made up of numeric facts, called measures, and text values, called dimensions.

Sample On-line Analytical Analysis (OLAP) Application

Moreover, OLAP systems provide users with insight into past performance and they enable a deep understanding of the reasons behind why previous events have occurred. Fundamentally, OLAP systems allow users to rapidly view and analyze data from many perspectives or dimensions and allows the users to conduct advanced “What-If” analysis.

Characteristics of OLAP Applications

•  Retrieves data from OLAP cubes rather than database tables
•  Enables advanced insight into past performance
•  Provides accurate and precise “What-If” analysis
•  Queries perform extremely rapidly
•  Primarily used by business areas concerned with financial and resource planning
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