It’s good to see Cloud-based analytics taking off in the market place.  We’ve seen the overwhelming need for analytics and advanced reporting, with a common thread of “we needed it yesterday.” Cloud analytics give organizations an opportunity to quick-start projects, without concern for hardware procurement and installation, enabling a faster ROI than can be achieved with a traditional on-premise solutions.

Follow this link to see where Cloud Analytics are trending:  http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cloud-analytics-market-to-see-2629-cagr-to-2019-291029981.html

Oracle’s cloud analytics offerings (BI cloud services (PaaS) or OTBI-E (SaaS)) give flexibility and choices for analytics.  Cloud analytics will not completely replace the need for on-premise, as large organizations with massive amounts of data may be deterred by the cost investment for an enterprise solution in the cloud.  However it’s definitely an option for smaller parts of an organization such as a Benefits Department that has specific union requirements, or public sector organizations that need insight into their grants accounting.  Regardless, there are some good options out there, and as more acceptance of the cloud takes hold, we’ll see analytics solutions trending upwards as well.

Twitter:  Cloud Analytics are trending!

Let’s congratulate Gilbert J. for becoming AST’s Employee of the Month for February 2015. He has been named because of his positive, “get-it-done” attitude. He is also being recognized for the many weekends and hours he has put in to resolve technical and functional issues with the product as well as the client environment.  Keep up the good work Gilbert!

Assessments are a proven approach to develop, integrate and consolidate your Business Intelligence (BI) processes and objectives.  AST is an Oracle BI Pillar partner and we are Specialized in BI.  Our “BI Assessment and Roadmap” offering can quickly lay out your next steps to achieve a faster ROI.  Learn more here:

AST would like to recognize our employees who are newly specialized.  We had two advanced certifications this month: Congratulations to Mark H. for achieving his Database 11g Security Certified Implementation Specialization and to Erwin R. for earning his Hyperion DRM Certified Implementation Specialization.  In addition, our BI team has been busy with five new Business Intelligence Cloud Service Specialists: David B., Kevin N., Prabhu M. Gwen M. and Mohammad J.  Thank you for your hard work and diligence in pursuing these certifications!

Don’t miss the upcoming Pittsburgh OAUG Meeting on Friday, February 20, 2015 at The Chadwick in Wexford, PA.  Oracle Application Users from the Pittsburgh area will gather to learn about new Oracle solutions and network with other users.   AST will present a session on WebCenter AP Automation for Oracle E-Business Suite at 2:00 PM.  Don’t miss this opportunity for FREE training and collaboration!  

Get more details @ http://pittoaug.oaug.org/

Learn how your organization can leverage Oracle’s proven, industry-leading solution – Planning and Budgeting Cloud Services (PBCS).  This free webinar shares the features and functionalities of PBCS and shows how to effectively integrate with your financial systems, centralize your planning data, easily roll up your data, compare scenarios and ‘what-ifs’ on-the-fly and deliver reports for all user types.

Take a few minutes to view this free webinar and discover how you can deploy this solution in weeks with a zero infrastructure footprint.

BI cloud applications seem to be finally grabbing some acceptance in corporate environments as cloud ERP and other online applications are allowing business to be conducted off premise with the same control and security that CIO’s and IT would have with an on premise solution.  Most of us have been making purchases online, doing taxes online, and been getting so wrapped up in the social media scene that the evolution to Cloud based corporate environments has finally caught up.  Using a solution like Oracle BI Cloud Services (BICS) allows organizations to have a quick, up and running analytics solution that can they utilize against their on premise ERP system without having to go through an ERP upgrade and/or migration to Cloud ERP.  BICS just needs access to the data, and with its wizard-driven data import utility, it lessens the IT development time.  The interactive interface let’s business users and management get right to the issue of answering their data driven questions.