No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM Watson Explorer vs Oracle OBIEE comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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 (17th), Reporting (12th)
 

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 3.5%, up 1.9% compared to last year.
Oracle OBIEE, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 2.1% mindshare, down 2.4% since last year.
Data Mining Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Watson Explorer3.5%
IBM SPSS Modeler15.5%
IBM SPSS Statistics14.9%
Other66.1%
Data Mining
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle OBIEE2.1%
Microsoft Power BI7.6%
Tableau Enterprise6.3%
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 being able to see hidden insights from within unstructured data."
"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."
"Implementing the solution really helped with manual labor, it takes care of a lot of FT work."
"Previously we'd have a set of health and safety analysts who would be the key focal points for doing work to understand health and safety risks; so a very small number of people, but through WEX and through our Watson HSEQ solution, we've managed to get engagement across at least one-third of our workforce, so over 1,300 people, and a 25% reduction in health and safety incidents."
"We take natural language that was happening in our repositories and our application and then feed it to the Watson APIs. We receive JSON payloads as an API response to get cognitive feedback from the repository data."
"What impressed me more about Watson is that it is easy to use it, not for the technical people, but for business people."
"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."
"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."
"Oracle OBIEE allows for automation, saving time, with estimates suggesting it saves about twenty-five percent of time previously spent on manual tasks."
"It allows us to providing our customers an excellent solution for their business requirements."
"The main features of this solution are that it is easy to use, intuitive, and user-friendly, and 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."
"I think the most valuable features are the ability to drill down, the graphs, and the scheduling for the reports to be received in Excel on a daily basis. Users like Excel, so it's good for them that they receive the reports by email, that they don't have to specify the schedule."
"The visualization is very good."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly set of tools that the customer can use to develop their own business dashboards."
"OBIEE is an enterprise Business Intelligence tool, the semantic layer is very organized which helps to provide the subject areas and how the end-user visualize the data."
"I like the cloud deployment feature. There are about 20 new features, and they are available on mobile and more. I haven't used any of them, but these features are highly attractive."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"Sometimes the service stops."
"Much of IBM operates this way, where they have sets of tools that are in the middleware space, and it becomes the customer's responsibility or the business partner's responsibility to develop full solutions that take advantage of that middleware. I think IBM's finding itself in that spot with Watson-related technologies as well, where the capabilities to do really interesting and useful things for customers is there, but somebody still has to build it. Is that going to be the customer? Are they going to be willing to take on that responsibility themselves"
"No, it's not yet stable."
"It needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."
"We were disappointed with Oracle OBIEE, because of the performance."
"When evaluating cost, Tableau and Power BI are less costly compared to Oracle OBIEE, which is an important consideration when assessing cost-effectiveness and return on investment."
"n the beginning it had it's stability issues, but it became stable."
"The platform's interface needs improvement."
"It needs a better security management system."
"Customers are expecting many out of box things, which, currently, OBIEE doesn't support."
"I find I prefer Oracle OAC over OBIEE. It's more advanced, has artificial intelligence, and there's more that we can do with it in general. OBIEE is lacking features."
"From a developer's standpoint, it's a bit tough to develop the code and progress the code to the next environment like that. There's a lot of redundancy, especially in relation to creating the code."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
"It's expensive."
"The price of Oracle OBIEE is expensive, it is difficult for a small business to afford."
"I would rate it a 4 out of 5 in terms of pricing."
"All products from Oracle are very pricey."
"Simplifying the data integration process would save our clients considerable costs."
"Its licensing is yearly."
"Compared with the other products in the market, I feel Oracle OBIEE is an expensive product."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Mining solutions are best for your needs.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Construction Company
15%
Healthcare Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Performing Arts
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 Knime, IBM, Weka and others in Data Mining. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.