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IBM Watson Explorer vs Oracle OBIEE comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Watson Explorer
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (9th)
Oracle OBIEE
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (12th), Reporting (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Watson Explorer is designed for Data Mining and holds a mindshare of 3.3%, up 1.0% compared to last year.
Oracle OBIEE, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 1.7% mindshare, down 3.7% since last year.
Data Mining Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Watson Explorer3.3%
IBM SPSS Statistics16.8%
IBM SPSS Modeler16.5%
Other63.4%
Data Mining
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle OBIEE1.7%
Microsoft Power BI8.1%
Tableau Enterprise6.2%
Other84.0%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1319820 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
A data analysis tool that is scalable and includes keyword search functionality
The solution is used for a government company for data collection and analysis I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer. I have been using the solution for five…
AA
Analyst at Equifax Inc.
Unified semantic layer has driven informed credit risk decisions and real-time analytical insight
Performance-related issues are a concern, as in multiple reports I have seen, some reports were poorly performing. We can focus on implementation of performance so that reports are delivered within seconds. The user interface and self-service experience can be improved through modernization of the UI, addressing self-service limitations, and integrating with mobile. Technical and administrative complexities can also be addressed. Complexities such as system configuration require attention. In the initial setup of Oracle OBIEE, there are multiple things starting from infrastructure provisioning, database schemas, and WebLogic server installations. However, the RPD, the semantic layer, is the steepest hurdle. Security integration, integrating with LDAP or Active Directory, is rarely plug and play and requires deep knowledge of WebLogic. Deep knowledge is necessary when starting with the initial setup of Oracle OBIEE. Other dependencies include Java middleware and client tools. Since Oracle OBIEE deals with huge data, report performance is the biggest concern. The out-of-the-box setup is rarely optimized, so we need to manually check configuration files, such as nqsconfig.ini file settings. For recommendations in Oracle OBIEE, from what I have seen, we work with star schemas in the RPD. I always aim for the star schema in the business model, even if the physical source is normalized. This approach will impact the performance, speed of the data, and accuracy. Oracle OBIEE could improve to allow other schemas as well. Performance is a major area for improvement, and they should work on aggregating the persistence and improve the persistence wizard where we implement aggregations. Caching features have been given, including event polling tables where we can do purging and seeding, but the main focus should be with respect to schema designs.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The valuable feature of Watson Explorer for us is data entities, and to see the hidden insights from within unstructured data."
"Implementing the solution really helped with manual labor, it takes care of a lot of FT work."
"For me, as a user, the most valuable feature is the ability to ingest and then retrieve information from a range of separate sources; the ability to dissect questions in context and actually answer them."
"I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer."
"Ease of use is pretty good as is the standardization of not actually having to have my own natural learning algorithms, just to use the Watson APIs."
"The main use case is FAQ for the user; it works for almost 80% of the use case coverage."
"I really can't talk enough about the team."
"IBM has been working with Bradesco since 1968, I think, and the support is very good, with a team of 10 IBM employees working every day, 24 hours, inside the bank in Sao Paolo."
"It doesn't have many frills and is definitely older technology, but it is undeniably a workhorse."
"It empowers users to perform ad hoc analyses themselves rather than having to go to IT or somewhere else."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is its ease of use."
"OBIEE out-of-the-box has a great selection of visualization choices, and others can be greatly customized with the right technical expertise."
"The most valuable features are what you can do with it; it's the insight of the data that really gives the management the capability of looking beyond what they probably currently have within the transaction system."
"I have found the most valuable features are business intelligence and reporting."
"The main features of this solution are that it is easy to use, intuitive, and user-friendly. When I retrieve the data from the database it is in a very raw form, then when I use the Oracle Report Builder it has advanced intelligence features to allow me to view and make changes to the data easily."
"The centralized metadata model component is most valuable."
 

Cons

"More cognitive feedback would be good. The natural language analysis is great, the sentiment analyzers are great. But I would just like to see more... innovation done with the Watson platform."
"It needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."
"We haven't used it in production yet so I can't answer this."
"I would say, give some kind of a community edition, a free edition. A lot of companies do, even Amazon gives you some kind of trial and error opportunities. If they could provide something like that, it would be good."
"It is a little bit tricky to get used to the workflow of knowing how to train Watson, what can be provided, what can't be, how to provide it, how to import, export, and what it means every time you have to add a new dictionary or something of the like."
"It is a little bit tricky to get used to the workflow of knowing how to train Watson, what can be provided, what can't be, how to provide it, how to import, export, and what it means every time you have to add a new dictionary"
"More cognitive feedback would be good. The natural language analysis is great, the sentiment analyzers are great, but I would just like to see more innovation done with the Watson platform."
"I think we'll get it to a 10, but I think at the moment it's got to be a good eight or nine out of 10 at least."
"The web services are pretty weak. There are so many bugs in it and it doesn’t support that many features."
"Customer service/technical support gets five out of 10. Sometimes good, sometimes bad."
"The ability to migrate from one version to another, such as doing so from version 11 to an upgraded 12 of Oracle business environment, can be difficult."
"The main problem we face is migrating all of the reports into the solution."
"From the point of view of strategic management, I would like to have a feature, perhaps a form after we get to the KPI dashboard, to be used to note if something unusual happens in the operations. That way we could record extreme KPI situations, and track why a number is very low or too high."
"If you are using it for a small to mid-sized company, OBIEE doesn't make much sense."
"There are times we have slowness when processing the reports with Oracle OBIEE. Improving the performance would be beneficial."
"I wouldn't recommend it as there are many other product out there, as long as your database is covered with RDBMS or other warehousing database."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The price of Oracle OBIEE is expensive, it is difficult for a small business to afford."
"Be prepared to spend a lot of time and money."
"The licensing cost is based on the number of users using it."
"For the license in part of Oracle, my company makes yearly payments."
"I would rate it a 4 out of 5 in terms of pricing."
"I think to spread this across an enterprise will be a significant investment."
"Pricing is an area that could be improved."
"Its licensing is yearly."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
11%
Healthcare Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
8%
Construction Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise105
 

Questions from the Community

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How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
Which Oracle product is better - OBIEE or Analytics Cloud?
Oracle OBIEE is designed to be relatively easy to set up and has a helpful customer support staff at the ready to assist customers. These are two attributes that make this system quite valuable. OB...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle OBIEE?
Oracle OBIEE is quite expensive, especially when compared to Microsoft's solutions.
 

Also Known As

IBM WEX
OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RIMAC, Westpac New Zealand, Toyota Financial Services, Swiss Re, Akershus University Hospital, Korean Air Lines, Mizuho Bank, Honda
Banca Transilvania, BeckmanCoulter, Hong Kong Housing Society, HealthShare, Ivanhoe Cambridge Unifies, and Home Credit, and Finance Bank.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Watson Explorer vs. Oracle OBIEE and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.