The computing environment in large organizations characteristically consists of many applications distributed over various platforms. As companies strive to decrease cycle times and cut costs, it is imperative that executives be able to apply key business metrics to data locked up in the myriad applications so they can make better, more informed decisions.

MetricStream's Enterprise Business Management (eBM) suite gives business and IT management the ability to monitor performance and integrity of enterprisewide business processes. The product provides a Web-based interface for reporting, management, and system administration.

The eBM suite focuses on exception-based enterprise reporting, expediting the time it takes for users to detect and resolve problems. The product currently ships with a business cartridge that contains thousands of predefined metrics designed for use with Oracle Applications 11.0 and 11i. Users can customize the predefined metrics according to their requirements, as well as create new metrics. Essentially, a metric consists of a SQL expression that targets specific activities (within one or more applications) that users want to measure, monitor, identify, or correct. For example, one metric might monitor the number of orders processed in a day, while another might execute a corrective action (probably, through a PL/SQL stored procedure) whenever a particular metric reaches a threshold value.

ROLE IN THE BI MARKET

The business intelligence (BI) market includes tools that focus on enterprise monitoring. This class of tools includes Categoric Software Corp.'s Xalerts, WorkWise Inc.'s Data Agent Server, and Metagon's DQagent. (See Resources for related articles.)

MetricStream takes the concept of database monitoring and extends it with reporting and analysis capabilities similar to what higher-end analytic tool vendors such as Business Objects SA, Brio Technology, and Cognos Inc. offer. For example, MetricStream provides users with a customizable dashboard and drilldown capabilities. Moreover, it also follows the trend among analytic and monitoring tools to provide a "connector" module to major ERP solutions. MetricStream targets Oracle Applications users, whereas Categoric Software offers alerting capability to SAP users.

MANAGING METRICS

MetricStream provides a fairly intuitive Web-based interface for creating metrics. (See Figure 1.) Users can either type in the SQL expression required to create the metric or use the Expression Wizard. You assign users to groups that determine their access privileges to metric groups. Composite metrics combine or compare the elements of two or more different metrics, within the same or different applications. For example, you can set up a composite metric that compares the revenue an ERP application reports to the gross margin derived from a profitability data mart. You can run metrics on request or schedule them to run as often as you need.

Metrics are the main link between the enterprise applications and the other MetricStream components. Metrics gather information from user applications and present it to users via alerts, tasks, and reports. Reports can be rendered in text, XML, or HTML formats.

MetricStream Dashboards allow users to view the results of metric runs in graphical and report formats. The dashboard feature helps users create charts that identify metric activities over specified periods of time. Users can customize their dashboard to contain charts they and other users have created. You can filter the data by column and present it in a dashboard chart.