Oracle Analytics

Oracle Analytics, or Oracle Performance Analysis Services (formerly OSN Oracle Division), sometimes referred to as simply Oracle is a company focusing on data collation and analysis, particularly in sports.

History

Originally, "The Oracle" was a weekly column on the OSN website, named after the ancient mystic seers. The column typically featured a brief statistical analysis with some commentary, normally responding to a common question in the OSN mailbag that week. The column gained international attention during season three of NationStates College Football (NSCF), when responding to a query from a fan in Arkinesia, regarding the standings of the Woodlands Conference, and how they might be impacted in the final weeks of the season.

The lone editor working on the column -- James Greenwall -- was inundated with additional requests, and his column was given more resources, as OSN sought to capitalise on popularity. The column would later expand to take up its own section on the OSN website, with columns appearing three times a week. A team of seven -- including Greenwall, who still headed the team as lead analyst and editor -- took on the job of becoming OSN's Oracle. The column was particularly popular with NSCF fans, and as a result, OSN would move Oracle to a dedicated website. In 2204, Greenwall would devise a performance-based system for comparing NSCF teams in different conferences. This ranking system would later develop into Oracle Sporting Performance Index and become an integral part of NSCF procedure.

The explosion in popularity of OSPI brought large amounts of traffic and revenue to Oracle, allowing the team to expand and became more concerned with a deeper form of statistical analysis. By 2207, Oracle worked in partnership with Optimo, an established sporting performance analysis company within Osarius, and launched a new website. By combining their analysts, the curious readers' questions and their resources at OSN with Optimo's existing databases and software, Oracle was able to establish itself as the new leaders in performance analysis in Osarius.

In 2213, OSN purchased Optimo, and merged the company with the newly established subsidiary, Oracle Performance Analysis Services. OSN announced that Oracle would be given an independent brand sensibility and editorial point-of-view, while interacting heavily with other subsidiaries of Osarius Sports Network and affiliates. James Greenwall was effectively handed control of the subsidiary as editor-in-chief of the new Oracle website. Greenwall was quick to redefine Oracle as a "data journalism group", and actively sought to recruit talented writers to work with the data conclusions his team were drawing.

In 2214, OSN purchased a supercomputer for Oracle -- affectionately named Barbara -- for in-house computation, working alongside the acquired systems from the Optimo merger. Barbara is currently only used for deeper analysis, while the majority of the other workload is split among Optimo's operational systems; Emrys, Mycroft and Tenjin. A second deep analysis system, Genkaku, was added in 2216.

While sports would remain the primary focus of Oracle, the team branched out into other areas, such as politics and the development of simulation algorithms for computer games. The organisation was briefly embroiled in a controversy over the usefulness of one of their predictive algorithms, Oracle Predictive Performance Algorithm (OPPA), in a military context, when its specifications were stolen by a separatist movement in the south of Osarius.