Oracle Builds up Analytics in Agile 9.3

In its first major release since its acquisition ofAgile Software two years ago, Oraclerolled out an upgrade that builds on the PLM platform's already stronganalytics and useability capabilities along with enhancements that allow formore flexible and tighter integration with enterprise applications, includingthe Oracle business software suite.

One of the more prominent enhancements to Oracle'sAgile 9.3 is in the area of risk analytics, a feature set that has alwaysbeen strong in the Agile PLM suite. Borrowing from the standard Oracle businessintelligence model, this version now adds out-of-the-box analytics anddashboards for monitoring product risk, supplier risk, product quality andcompliance. "Financial situations across globe, market consolidation anddemand and pricing pressures are creating more requirements for companies tolook at different risk factors," says Hardeep Gulati, Oracle's vicepresident of PLM and PIM product strategy. "We're providing a view so companiescan look at new products and their existing products across a portfolio andprofile quality and expertise around suppliers so they can ultimately makebetter decisions."

For example, the product risk module lets companiestrack supplier performance changes, component shortages and price reductions whilethe part risk capabilities help categorize and identify newly introducedparts, parts that are lacking product record information (things like price,compliance and specifications) and any parts that are at risk for obsolescence.Other dashboard analytics can help detect which products are most impacted byquality issues as well as prioritizing customer complaints by urgency andseverity. The product design volatility analysis functions earmark the productsand product lines that have the most late-stage changes during the productrelease cycle, including a notation on the severity of those changes and theoperational impact, according to Oracle officials.

In the area of integration, Oracle has continued withits promise to expand the Agile platform as an enterprise PLM backbone, Gulatisays. Agile 9.3 supports service-oriented architecture (SOA), allowingcompanies to tap modularized Web services, event management and extensiblescripting to integrate various components and CAD objects. The platform alsonow integrates Product Master Data Management functions to improve data qualityand governance across heterogeneous systems and it leverages Oracle'sApplication Integration Architecture to support out-of-the-box openstandards-based integration to other enterprise systems, including Oracle and SAP.

The third focus of the new release is on userproductivity as Oracle builds on Agile's existing ease-of-use advantages byleveraging Web 2.0 functionality. Agile 9.3 sports new UI controls such asin-line table editing, context-aware pop-ups and new drag-and-drop capabilitiesalong with enhanced personalization features such as personalized context helpthrough the Oracle User Productivity Kit. Based on these enhancements, Gulati saysusers can expect to see as much as a 70-percent reduction in clicks when working withthe system.

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