GOVERNMENT

Oracle today announced general availability of Oracle Business Intelligence 10g, a comprehensive, standalone product designed to address the entire spectrum of analytical requirements facing businesses including query, application development, reporting and analysis, data integration and management. The release of this new product extends Oracle's leadership in business analytics and makes it easier for customers to purchase and deploy enterprise-class business intelligence (BI) solutions. Oracle Business Intelligence 10g removes the costly and tedious process of piecing together point solutions by delivering a complete product. The product comprises the following integrated components: -- Oracle Discoverer -- query, reporting and analysis with dashboard features; -- Oracle Spreadsheet Add-In -- direct access to Oracle OLAP from within Microsoft Excel spreadsheets; -- Oracle Warehouse Builder -- robust data quality and ETL functionality; and, -- Oracle BI Beans -- custom BI application development. According to the brief, Oracle's Enhanced BI Tools Impress Business Users and Cost-conscious CIOs, December 2004, Jacqueline Coolidge, Research Director, AMR Research, wrote, "With enhanced functionality and a streamlined UI throughout the suite, Oracle BI tools have come a long way. The cost benefits alone warrant a second look at Oracle's BI suite. Add in the upgraded user experience, and it throws a quick one-two punch at the competition." Louisiana's Office of Group Benefits Realizes Efficiency with Oracle Business Intelligence For years, the State of Louisiana's Office of Group Benefits has successfully run a self-insured and self-administered health plan for more than a 250,000 state and public-sector employees and their family. Louisiana's second-largest health insurance company, Louisiana Office of Group Benefits is financially strong with revenues exceeding $1 billion. The Louisiana Office of Group Benefits' performance is by design using an advanced BI system that helps its managers and actuary head monitor the health plan's financial health and forecast future opportunities for efficiency. Using the new release of Oracle Discoverer, Louisiana Office of Group Benefits will build customized dashboards for its constituents as well as enable access to both relational and multidimensional data from an Oracle Database. "Business intelligence enables us to provide proper information -- not the data, but the information to all our employees, to all of our customers, to all our vendors," said Rizwan Ahmed, Louisiana's CIO of Office of Group Benefits and Department of Natural Resources. "It's proper information that enables us to do business efficiently." "The initial positive customer and analyst reaction to Oracle Business Intelligence 10g is a clear validation of the significant efforts we've undertaken to deliver a compelling and comprehensive product," said Ray Roccaforte, vice president of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing, Oracle. "The combination of functionality and competitive pricing of Oracle Business Intelligence 10g will enable us to aggressively pursue customers seeking BI solutions."