Topic: OBIEE Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS) Oracle Analytics Cloud Oracle Data Visualization Cloud Service

Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC): Your Questions, Answered!

by Charles Elliott

If you’ve been shopping around for a BI solution or, if you’ve been looking for a BI solution in the cloud, you’ve probably heard about the Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC).

If you’re wanting to learn more about OAC or you stumbled upon this page while searching for business analytics solutions, then this is the blog post for you.

We’ll cover the most frequently asked questions about OAC to give you a better understanding of what this tool can do for you.

1. What is the Oracle Analytics Cloud?

You probably hear the word “cloud” a lot while searching for solutions to optimize your business. It’s a very general term. If you want to truly understand the cloud and its many facets, check out this free eBook. At the same time you probably hear about "Oracle Analytics." What is Oracle Analytics? What solutions does that encompass.

Oracle Analytics Cloud is the newest, cloud-based analytics solution within the Oracle Analytics or Business Intelligence space. OAC isn’t an application, it’s a platform. Oracle touts this platform as offering “the most comprehensive analytics in the industry. Whatever your strategy, OAC can work with it at any scale and in every environment, whether that’s in the cloud, on-premises, or a data center.

Oracle Analytics Cloud features include...

Self-service visualization
Data preparation
Enterprise reporting
Advanced analytics
Dynamic user-driven what-if modeling
Self-learning mobile analytics

OAC was built to help you ask any question from your data with mobile-friendly features in OAC and DVCS — allowing you to access to your data and visualizations even when you aren’t in front of your computer.

2. What services do I get with OAC?

OAC includes five services…

Oracle Data Visualization Cloud Service (DVCS)
Oracle Business Intelligence Cloud Service (BICS)
Oracle Essbase
Oracle Smart View
Oracle Day by Day — a smart feed available on the mobile app with Siri integration

3. How are these services sold?

OAC services are sold in packages in two editions:

OAC Standard
OAC Enterprise

4. What services are included in each edition?

The OAC Standard Edition includes:

DVCS
Data Visualization Desktop (50 licenses per OCPU)
Oracle Smart View
Oracle Essbase

The OAC Enterprise Edition includes everything you get in the standard edition, plus:

BICS
Oracle Essbase Enterprise
Oracle Day by Day

5. What capabilities are included in the OAC Standard Edition?

Self-service data loading and blending
A growing list of data sources
Automatic smart data visualization and insights
Fluid analysis for every environment
Inline data prep and dynamic data flows
One-click advanced analytics
What-if analysis

6. What capabilities are included in the OAC Enterprise Edition?

In the enterprise edition, you get all the capabilities of the standard edition, plus…

Drag-and-drop blending between self-service data and enterprise data, i.e. data mashups
Data modeling to support enterprise business definitions and analysis
Sandboxing and partitions to external sources
Mobile app integrated with BICS and can learn based on your specific patterns
Self-learning insights in a mobile app that’s integrated with BICS

7. What is the pricing for each edition?

For non-metered services, the pricing is…

Standard Edition: $3,000/month/OCPU
Enterprise Edition: $6,000/month/OCPU

8. What are the differences between OBIEE licensing and OAC licensing?

A license for Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus, includes:

Oracle Business Intelligences Server Enterprise Edition
Oracle Business Intelligence Answers
Oracle Business Intelligence Interactive Dashboards
Oracle Business Intelligence Reporting and Publishing
Oracle Business Intelligence Delivers
Oracle Business Intelligence for Microsoft Office (Office Plug-in)
Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher
Oracle Business Intelligence Server Administrator
Oracle Hyperion Interactive Reporting
Oracle Hyperion SQR Production Reporting
Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting
Oracle Hyperion Web Analysis
Oracle Containers for Java EE (OC4J)
WebLogic Standard Edition (for use with OBIEE)
WebLogic Standard Edition (for use with Hyperion Reporting Products)
Oracle Internet Directory

A license for Oracle Business Intelligence Server Enterprise Edition, includes:

Oracle Business Intelligence Server Enterprise Edition
Oracle Containers for Java EE (OC4J)
WebLogic Server Standard Edition
Oracle Entitlements Server Basic

To learn more about what’s included in OBIEE licensing, visit the Oracle Help Center.

Unlike OBIEE, you get Essbase with your OAC licensing as well as Smart View. You also get DVCS and Data Visualization Desktop.

However, with a license for Oracle BI Foundation Suite (BIFS), you get server components more comparable to OAC, including:

Common Enterprise Information Model
- The semantic model of OBIEE accessed through an open API, providing a single version of truth of all BI users and applications.
Oracle BI Server
Oracle Essbase
Oracle Essbase Analytics Link
- This enables the delivery of financial analytic reporting by facilitating on-demand or real-time transfer of financial information from HFM.

In BIFS, end-user components, include:

Enterprise Reporting
Ad-hoc Query and Reporting
Interactive Dashboards
Scorecard and Strategy Management
Actionable Intelligence
Integrated Search
BI on the go

9. What are the prerequisites to running OAC?

Running OAC requires several services…

Any edition of Oracle Database Cloud Service
- You can choose from four packages…
  - Standard Package
  - Enterprise Package
  - High Performance Package
  - Extreme Performance Package
    - This package is equivalent to having a modern Exadata Machine at your fingertips.
  - Oracle Compute Cloud Service — Block Storage
  - Oracle Storage Cloud Service

10. I’ve heard news about the recent Data Lake Edition, what does that include?

The OAC Data Lake Edition comes with all the services of the standard edition, plus…

Support for creating scalable data flows — this includes ingestion, transformation, and persistence
Your data flow can also be executed on Apache Spark or the Oracle Database Cloud.

The OAC Data Lake Edition comes with all the capabilities of the standard edition, plus…

Provisioning and management with Oracle Big Data Cloud
Easy definition of data ingestion, preparation, transformation, and persistence using the Analytics Cloud Data Flows
Data transformation leveraging Apache Spark
Connectivity to on-prem data lakes
Sandboxing and partitions to external sources for Essbase

To learn more about the OAC Data Lake Edition, check out the blog.

11. What is it like to interact with OAC?

OAC allows you to use your mobile device to tap or talk to perform analysis, while remembering patterns to adopt your preferences. OAC was built to make your interaction with the platform more natural and intuitive.