Intelligent Enterprise

Oracle is pushing a new product line that it hopes will cover companies' BI needs from top to bottom.

The new package from the enterprise software titan combines Oracle's database and Fusion middleware with analytics capabilities culled from Siebel when Oracle bought the formerly independent CRM firm.

If you've been reading Business Intelligence Pipeline since last fall, you know that Oracle was talking about Siebel's newly produced analytics functionality as the hidden jewel of its acquisition even before the buyout had closed. Siebel's beefed up analytics capability largely slipped under the radar of news coverage and Wall Street's notice alike when Oracle started expressing its desire for the company. Most of the focus was on the way the transaction would impact the CRM market. But the analytics side was worth more attention. At least one Oracle exec is now saying that analytical capability accounted for a quarter of Siebel's sales prior to the transaction.

I've already written plenty about how Oracle's moves threaten the stand-alone BI vendors, so I won't bother with that now. Perhaps it will be more interesting watch and see how the big, enterprise software firms -- IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP -- stack up against each other as they try to boost their BI abilities. It's a huge focus for all four companies now, and as Oracle's move demonstrates, business intelligence will remain a big area of emphasis for the software giants for the foreseeable future.