Oracle BI Mobile App for 11g – A First Real Look

After much anticipation by myself and I am sure many others for the arrival of the Oracle BI Mobile app for OBIEE 11g, I do believe the jury is still out on awarding its final verdict – thumbs up or thumbs down.  One can argue that there is not much that needs to go into a mobile application of this nature, that is Business Intelligence, to make it a winner with on-the-go functionality and a slight twist of awesome.  But on the other hand I think we all understand the growing pains and commercialization aspects that just like with Apple’s iPad they had to get the first release out the door in order to warrant producing the iPad 2 which has all of the amazing bells and whistles that iPad Gen1 owners wish they had in the original release.  Thus, the frustrating consumer perspective of Information Technology and product releases.

Oracle BI Mobile Field Test from ArtOfBI on Vimeo.

Not to be slight, but the Oracle BI 11.1.1.5 release brought an iOS only application to the the iphone and ipad via the Apple iTunes App Store.  It is free to download but if you haven’t purchased the OBIEE Foundation Suite license package from Oracle then you will get hit with at $350/user license fee in order to use the mobile application.  Next, there is the issue of what does that OBIEE Mobile App give you.  Let’s first just say that the iPhone version of the OBIEE Mobile app is basic though both are read only.  I’ll leave it there and move on to the iPad version.  Using the app in the iPad is more along the lines of how you want to use this sort of application.  I think the Oracle BI PM team had that in mind as well.  The problem I have with this is that they barely used any of the iOS4 functions that make an iPad more than just a enlarged iPhone.  I could go on and on but the short of it is that the sentiment around the campfire is that the end-users (not just me, I took a quick informal survey) aren’t that impressed and feel it is just a tiny upgrade from the 2008 release of the Oracle Indicators iOS app (which was also updated during the OBIEE 11.1.1.5 release).  The long of it is that I think the Oracle PM team should reach out to me (I’ll continue my rant) and a few customers to tweak the app for the next release which I presume will be another 2 years from now.

I truly hope that I can write an update on this post boasting with exuberant testimony that the next release of the Oracle BI Mobile App is astoundingly off-the-chain and worth the hype.  Until then, enjoy the very amateur video I threw together on the iPad Gen1 (damn those product release cycles).