State of the OBIEE Market

Recession, what recession?

Ever since I started up Majendi (Now Rittman Mead), the market for Siebel Analytics (now Oracle BI) has been a roller coaster. Looking back, supply and demand for consultants / contractors / permies has either been heavily biased to supply or to demand. Getting the balance right has been difficult for both sides.

Siebel Analytics never had a huge following, and hardly any outside of Siebel projects. Customers were reluctant to put significant investment into the product and therefore there were (relatively few opportunities for consultants to learn).

Then Oracle came along and changed all that.

Customers are now investing heavily in OBIEE, and all of it's features - not just Dashboards and Answers, but Delivers, BIP, and briefing books.

This Oracle takeover caused many new consultancies to switch from Disco, OWB and other Oracle products

In the meantime the great rush to send development offshore took place. Despite the difficulties companies pressed ahead with moving vital code building offshore because of the obvious cost savings. One client I was at tried to pretend that development went to India because they were the best in the world at developing OBIEE. It was nothing to do with the 300 dollars per day rate! (Their project failed btw).

Then the agencies moved in. I cannot tell you how many calls I get every day from someone saying they are specialist in the OBI marketplace. All I can say is that they think there is a pot of gold n the market, but soon disappear when they discover there isn't.

But whilst all this market activity was taking place there was a real economy. With real booms and busts. A friend of mine who has been in business for 10 years says this is the worst ever.

Well I can tell you that so far this has been our BEST year ever. Good ole OBI market does it again. Lots of implementations and few skilled, experienced consultants available.
Last year we saw a dip. That's when the real recession started, way before the banks started to feel the pinch. (In my view the recession was inevitable due to record oil prices).

I have two vacancies right now - you can start next week.
There are lots of jobs on Jobserve
but Contracts are keeping their heads down, so supply is tight

But companies have made an error of judgment, slashing rates by 10% across the board has upset a lot of contractors.

If you are an independent consultant with good OBIEE skills then do not believe what the agencies and companies are telling you - You are still worth the same as you were two years ago. Do not accept rates below GBP 500 per day minimum. If you have the skills and experience then do not be afraid to demand the proper rate.

And if you have just had your rate cut by 10% come to me and I'll show you where to earn properly again.

Dont Try This At Home Kids

Having just spent some time on a prjoect with Christian Berg and Venkat, and seeing some of the presentations at the BI Forum, I have come up with my all time top 10 of 'Don't do this without an Adult Supervisor'


1. Implement Essbase in OBIEE
2. Use xml editors to create reports
3. Have your repository created by UDML from a dynamic source
4. BPEL (Leave that to Tony H)
5. Use custom Javascript to manipulate the dashboards
6. Implement WebSSO
7. Use LDAP Groups
8. Use Dynamic Go URLs (Particularly when you have finished the development of the RPD)
9. Integrate multiple stars and Multiple dimensional attributes in a single Subject Area
10. Integrate BI Publisher




Relatively easy compared to the above is:

Settings up delivers, installing BI Apps in a Unix environment, creating multiple instances on a Linux blade, Briefing books, Configuring the DAC, customising BI Apps

But do your homework before going on the client site

Do you have any?