OBIEE 12c has been released and ready to download

OBIEE 12c released

What’s New

BI 12c delivers a major update to the Oracle BI platform, with enhancements across the entire platform, as well as new Data Visualization capabilities.  Highlights and benefits include:

1. Easy to upgrade:  BI 12c offers a radically simple and robust upgrade from 11g, saving customers time and effort in moving to the new version.  BI 12c includes a free utility to automate regression testing, the Baseline Validation Tool, which verifies data, visuals, catalog object metadata, and system-generated SQL across 11g and 12c releases.
2. Faster:  Sophisticated in-memory processing includes BI Server optimizations and support for multiple in-memory data stores, while in-memory Essbase on Exalytics offers enhanced concurrency and scalability, as well as significant performance gains.
3. Friendlier:  Usability updates throughout BI 12c demonstrate Oracle’s continued commitment to making analytics as fast, flexible, and friendly as they are powerful and robust.  A new user interface simplifies the layout for the homepage, Answers, and Dashboards, making it easier for users to quickly see what’s important; HTML-5 graphics improve view rendering; and it’s easier for users to create new groups, calculations, and measures, for simpler, more direct interaction with results.
4. More Visual:  A consistent set of Data Visualization capabilities are now available across Oracle BI Cloud Service and Oracle BI 12c, as well as the upcoming Oracle Data Visualization Cloud Service, offering customers a continuity of visual experience unmatched by our competitors.  Business users can point and click to upload personal data and blend it with IT-managed data in BI 12c, which automatically infers connections between data sets.  Visualizing data is as easy as dragging attributes onto the screen, with optimal visualizations automatically displayed – no modeling or upfront configuration required.  Related data is automatically connected, so highlighting data in one visual highlights correlated data in every other visual, immediately showing patterns and revealing new insights.  These insights, along with narrative comments, can be shared as interactive visual stories, enabling seamless collaboration that drives fact-based decisions.
5. More Advanced:  Predictive analysis is more tightly integrated, enabling customers to more easily forecast future conditions based on existing data points, group elements that are statistically similar, and expose outliers.  BI 12c includes the ability to run the free Oracle R distribution on BI Server, and extend existing analytics with custom R scripts, which can point to any engine (R, Oracle Database, Spark, etc.) without needing to change the BI RPD to deliver results.
6. More Mobile:  Keyword search (“BI Ask”) empowers users to literally talk to their data, asking questions and having visualizations automatically created as responses, opening up an easy entry point for authoring.  Additionally, the interface for iOS has been completely redesigned; and Mobile BI for Android offers sharing and following for nearby devices, as well as the ability to project any dashboard or story to GoogleCast-enabled devices.
7. Bigger Data:  BI 12c enables customers to use new data, from local, Oracle, and Big Data sources, including personal files uploaded by users; direct access to data in Hyperion Financial Management and Hyperion Planning applications; and ODBC access to Cloudera Impala.  Apache Spark will be accessible via native Spark SQL in an upcoming update.
8. Higher ROI, Lower TCO:  Streamlined administration and life cycle management reduce the time and resources required to manage BI 12c, decreasing costs and increasing value for this and future releases.  Enhancements include separating metadata from configuration; simpler, more robust security; easier backup, restore, and disaster recovery; hot patching of metadata; and many more.