Colleague Mike Larimer has started a blog, http://projectrenegade.blogspot.com/. In this project he talks about Smart Space, a very innovative new Oracle product in the BI and EPM family. Here are a few sentences from his blog entries, that set the scene:
Smart Space is a radical departure from the traditional BI/EPM application. For years the BI/EPM market has been focused on providing more and more features. These features are added to backend services bringing us to the 'system' we have today. However most of these features are simply added to existing user interfaces. Over time these interfaces, though packed with features, have become difficult to use, underperforming and nearly impossible to customize. [...]
With Smart Space, we have taken a completely new approach. It is simple and elegant.
Smart Space uses "gadgets," directly placed on the desktop. Mike defines gadgets as:
Gadgets (or Widgets) are mini applications that expose key content(bits of data) or features generally from an larger (full) application and they deliver these feature or data in a simple and visually pleasing manner.
Typical gadgets on the desktop could be the weather forecast, stock prices, a to do list, and a web cam checking on the children in the day care center.
Gadgets are a true innovation, when it comes to Oracle's objective to make BI pervasive. For many operational users, who are not sitting behind a pc all day, even opening up a web browser and start a report or dashboard can be too much hassle already. I've been using the following example for a while now. Imagine you are the manager of three fast food restaurants. You're probably busy the whole day helping out everywhere. Sitting down in an office, and checking "sales per hour" in a real-time fashion simply won't happen. Yet, it is important information. Having a screen somewhere in the back of the kitchen, with 3 simple dashboard gadgets on the desktop, showing sales per hour, combined with 3 webcam gadgets showing how many people stand in line in each restaurant, may help you to manage the other 2 restaurants while you are working in the 3rd. You can call the other and tell them to open up a new cash register, if it is busy and the sales per hour drops.
Or imagine you are operational manager in a zoo, and you need to decide if you will put icecream in front of the entrance store, or a load of umbrellas for sale. A simple weather forecast gadget combined with real-time visitor numbers, somewhere on a screen where you have a look at once in a while makes a great difference.
In short, using gadgets helps you use entirely new audiences with your BI investments.
In his blog, Mike also shows a few examples of gadgets, I copied one below. One thing is certain, Mike has a great taste in music!
--frank
