The Oracle Business Intelligence Suite will be part of Oracle's Fusion Middleware product family and will be offered in three editions: an entry-level bundle targeting Microsoft Corp. at the low end, a standard edition, and an enterprise edition for high-end users. The enterprise edition, which targets BI vendors such as Business Objects SA, SAS Institute Inc. and Cognos Inc., will integrate analytic tools and applications from Siebel Systems Inc. with Oracle BI tools. It will use Fusion Middleware to link into non-Oracle applications, data sources and tools.

James Archuleta, director of CRM at Alaska Airlines Inc. in Seattle, said the Oracle tools will eventually help ease integration among his Oracle database, Siebel analytic applications and PeopleSoft back-office applications.

"We're looking at Oracle being able to sell us one package at one point in time where ... we'll have one set of developers who have one skill set -- Oracle Fusion," he said.

Still, Archuleta said he hopes Oracle will be receptive to the airline's suggestion that Oracle integrate the analytic tools from Siebel with a statistical tool for more heavy-duty analysis in the future.

"We trick Siebel analytics to do this, but it doesn't have the horsepower that a statistical package does," he said.