Oracle predicts future: Business Indicators for iPhone

Apple’s App Store opened its doors a few months ago to help provide iPhone users with a myriad of mobile applications. Many of these come from small independent developers, and can range from games, to mapping to social networking applications.

Everybody’s after iPhone action

It’s no surprise that the big names want a piece of the action. Over the past few months, we’ve seen some of the technology giants launch applications that are targeted specifically at businesses. These applications will help to strengthen the argument for elevating the iPhone from a must have consumer gadget to a fully fledged enterprise level device.

Oracle started this trend as it was one of the first vendors to release an application through the App Store. Its Business Indicators for iPhone lets users access their company’s business performance information and manipulate the data based on what’s most convenient for them.

The tool isn’t meant to replace a full business intelligence dashboard and analytical applications at a company’s HQ, but has been designed to provide a mobile worker handy access to a core set of metrics that they may need while on the move. Users can therefore tailor the look and feel of the data they access through the software.

Going native

A neat element of the software is the way in which it makes use of the iPhone’s native tools. Oracle supports the existing iPhone alerting mechanisms, which means that users have no need to hunt for the information they need. Instead, alerts come through when data crosses a threshold that the user or someone else has set.

The application itself is a free download from Apple’s App Store, but customers must have licensed Oracle’s BI software, which generates the reports, analytics and alerts that get pushed to the phone. Therefore the opportunity here is for Oracle resellers who can look to offer an even better user experience for customers looking to implement or expand support for mobile workers.

According to Oracle, Oracle Business Indicators is the first in a series of business applications for the iPhone, so it will be interesting to see what the vendor brings to the App Store.