Oracle OpenWorld 2009: Intel SOA Expressway for External Web Service Security

Phi Berman (Intel) talks about Intel's SOA Expressway solutions for External Web Service Security and Performance.

What Does the Oracle SOA Suite Provide?

Service Oriented Architecture SOA Oracle Software : What Does the Oracle SOA Suite Provide?

Oracle SOA Suite is a complete set of service infrastructure components for creating, deploying, and managing services. Oracle SOA Suite enables services to be created, managed, and orchestrated into composite applications and business processes. Additionally, you can adopt it incrementally on a project by project basis and still benefit from the common security, management, deployment architecture, and development tools that you get out of the box.

Oracle SOA Suite is a standards-based best-of-breed technology suite that consists of the following:

• Integrated Service Environment (ISE) to develop services
• Oracle BPEL Process Manager to orchestrate services into business processes
• ESB to connect existing IT systems and business partners as a set of services
• Oracle Business Rules for dynamic decisions at runtime that can be managed by business users or business analysts
• OracleAS Integration Business Activity Monitoring to monitor services and disparate events and provide real-time visibility into the state of the enterprise, business processes, people, and systems.
• Oracle Web Services Manager to secure and manage authentication, authorization, and encryption policies on services that is separate from your service logic
• UDDI registry to discover and manage the lifecyle of Web services.
• Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) to provide a complete Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.4-compliant environment for your J2EE applications.

Source: Service Oriented Architecture SOA Oracle software information at Oracle.com

Oracle SOA - Why the Shift to Service-Oriented Architecture?

Service Oriented Architecture SOA Oracle - Why the Shift to Service-Oriented Architecture?

Many companies are addressing the complexity of their application and IT environments with Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA provides an enterprise architecture that supports building connected enterprise applications. SOA facilitates the development of enterprise applications as modular business Web services that can be easily integrated and reused, creating a truly flexible, adaptable IT infrastructure.

Web services provide interoperability of proprietary software. Web services standards, including Web Services Description Language (WSDL), extensible markup language (XML), and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), have emerged as an effective and highly interoperable platform for publishing services. In addition, high performance binding frameworks enable enterprises to access legacy systems and native Java code without having to wrap them in a SOAP interface.

Making Web services work is a two-step process:

1. Publish the service.

Publishing a service involves taking a function within an existing application or system and making it available in a standard way.

2. Compose, or orchestrate, the services into business flows.

Orchestration involves composing multiple services into an end-to-end business process. The business process execution language (BPEL) language supports this orchestration.

Source: Oracle SOA, Service Oriented Architecture SOA Oracle software information at Oracle.com

Oracle's Fusion app suite may not ship until 2010

Oracle's Fusion app suite may not ship until 2010

Oracle demos another Fusion app in the area of project management and shows how BI will be a hallmark of the Fusion project By Chris Kanaracus

Oracle may not deliver the first suite of its long-awaited Fusion Applications until 2010, according to Steve Miranda, senior vice president of Fusion application development.

Back to special report: Oracle OpenWorld 2008
"We're going to be with early customers at the end of next year, and we're going to be very, very cautious on the [general availability date]," Miranda said in an interview following a session Wednesday at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. "We're going to make sure [the applications] are successful. Period."

On Sunday, another Oracle executive said in a panel discussion that early adopters would go live on the first suite in 2009 , but did not indicate in what part of the year that would happen.

Fusion Applications are supposed to combine the best capabilities from Oracle's various product lines, which include E-Business Suite, J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel.

To date, Oracle has shown only a handful of Fusion products, mostly centering on CRM (customer relationship management), and the project, first announced in 2005, has been dogged by concerns that it is behind schedule.

But Miranda demonstrated another Fusion application in the area of project management on Wednesday, and was scheduled to show modules for finance and human capital management later in the day.

His demonstration showed how Oracle is making BI (business intelligence) a hallmark of the Fusion project. The strategy makes sense given rival SAP's acquisition of Business Objects and its efforts to integrate some of that company's BI capabilities with SAP's software.

The embedded BI in Fusion Applications will be "truly pervasive," Miranda said. "In every transaction we have, we'll have some business intelligence information to help the business user make a decision. ... It's not after-the-fact reporting, it's in-line, in that transaction, what do you need to do."

For example, the system might be able to tell a user about to approve an invoice what the impact would be on the company's bottom line, Miranda said.

The project management module Miranda demonstrated also included a range of collaboration capabilities, from discussion forums to presence indicators for online chat.

More than 700 customers have been participating in three years of research around Fusion Applications, according to Miranda. Those companies include FedEx, Kodak, Sears, Target, Toshiba and Coca-Cola, according to a presentation slide he showed.

Floyd Teter of the Oracle Applications Users Group's Fusion Council -- which is trying to get the word out to members about how to prepare for Fusion Applications -- said Oracle might be taking longer than expected, but that it should result in better software.

"Most software projects are driven by schedule; in the applications software space, the market usually rewards the competitor who is first to release," Teter wrote in a recent blog post. "With Fusion Apps, however, product quality seems to be the driving factor and the highest priority that I continually hear about from the people building the apps ... even if achieving acceptable quality means some elements of the development effort take longer than originally planned."

"Those customers and users who have suffered through the pain of early software releases can appreciate this approach," he added.

Source: SOA Service Oriented Architecture news at InfoWorld.com

The SOA implications of Oracle's BEA purchase

SOA News : The SOA implications of Oracle's BEA purchase By Rich Seeley

This fall, leaves will turn bright colors in New England, Americans will elect a new president and what Oracle Corp. plans to do with BEA Systems Inc. after the $8.5 billion acquisition closes may be clearer.

Until then little is certain beyond the "do-the-math" facts that BEA shareholders, led by investor Carl C. Icahn, will make money on the sale and Oracle, led by CEO Larry Ellison, expects to make money from BEA's continuing software licenses and sales.

At a teleconference to announce the deal on Wednesday, Ellison said Oracle expects BEA software sales and license fees to increase Oracle's earnings per share by one to two cents per share in the first 12 months after the deal closes. That apparently assumes that BEA revenues will be robust even if there is a U.S. economic recession.

Dana Gardner, principal analyst of Interarbor Solutions LLC., suggests that recession fears may have played a role in convincing a reluctant BEA board of directors to accept Oracle's offer, which amounted to $19.38 cents per share in cash for shares that closed Tuesday on the NASDAQ stock exchange at $15.58. With the stock markets closing lower almost every day, there may have been a sense that this was going to be as good as it would get perhaps for several years.

"Just fear of a recession has whacked tech stocks, so it would be harder for BEA to hold out for more from any buyer for next year or two," Gardner said. "Second, BEA needs to show strong growth in revenues, especially new licenses, to validate the higher price it was seeking. Next one or two quarters might not work out to prove that in a recessionary or fearful climate."

With no other buyer appearing interested and Oracle offering a cash price significantly higher than the recent share closing in a market spiraling downward, Icahn, who owned 13 percent of BEA shares may not have wanted to risk a prolonged holdout.

"So the recession or just fear of recession made BEA's notions of getting much more than Oracle was proposing less and less likely," Gardner said. "Plus, we can assume that activist investor Carl Icahn also saw the writing on the wall for tougher times and probably put added pressure to sell when an Oracle deal was possible."

Source: For more informaiton on Service Oriented Architecuture SOA news, "The SOA implications of Oracle's BEA purchase" visit http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid26_gci1294494,00.html

Oracle Shakes Things Up with SOA-Based Data-Integration Suite

Oracle SOA Service Oriented Architecture News : Oracle Shakes Things Up with SOA-Based Data-Integration Suite by Loraine Lawson

Oracle may have just moved from a data-integration challenger to contend as leader this week with the release of Oracle Data Integration Suite.

There isn’t much buzz yet about the announcement. You’ll find tons of news articles if you do a search, but let me save you some time: They’re almost all the same article, written by IDG correspondent Chris Kanaracus.

Here’s the basics: Oracle’s $60,000-per-CPU suite is a middleware solution, which merges traditional data-integration functions with service-oriented architecture tools. It bundles Oracle’s Data Integrator, a BI/data-warehouse solution with master-data-management capabilities, with the Oracle/Hyperion Data Relationship Manager and Oracle’s BPEL Process Manager.

You also get an ESB, (which are practically free with every Happy Meal these days), a business-to-business engine and a business-rules engine, according to the Kanaracus article. Non-standard add-ons are Oracle Data Quality for Data Integrator, Oracle Data Profiling, Oracle’s Coherence Data Grid and various adapters. Tag, title and tax not included.

OK, so what does all that mean?

Vincent McBurney at IT Toolbox had this to say:

…a very interesting data integration suite from Oracle - the first vendor to put a business rules engine into a core data integration suite offering.

He compares each component to similar products from IBM and Informatica. Ultimately, he points out, Oracle’s success will boil down to how well the components actually work together.

While Kanaracus focused on how acquisitions contributed to the new suite, SearchOracle at TechTarget took a close look at how the suite handles data governance and integration in an SOA. And, not surprisingly for company known for its databases, that’s a key part of why Oracle’s Data Integration Suite is an intriguing offering.

In effect, Oracle is offering a middleware solution that offers SOA-based business-process management and change management and tying that to master-data management capabilities, which is where the Oracle/Hyperion Data Relationship Manager tool comes into play.

Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang told SearchOracle:

“What Oracle is trying to say is that in order for SOA to be successful, you need to have MDM in place. You also need to have the business processes and you also need to have some of the semantic rules built into all of that.”

Could this be the solution to SOA’s data dilemmas? Stay tuned.

Oracle also promises its solution will work in a heterogeneous environment, with support for IBM DB2, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Teradata and Oracle. As Kanaracus’ article notes, this is significant, since SOA capabilities in a heterogeneous environment has been one of IBM’s marketing tactics.

Obviously, Forrester and McBurney see this as a significant new offering. I’m curious to see what others say.

Last year, Gartner named Oracle a data-integration challenger and IBM a leader in its Data Integration Tools Magic Quadrant. I suspect this more robust offering may reposition Oracle in 2008.

Source: For more information on Oracle SOA Service Oriented Architecture News, please visit http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/mia/?p=309

Comprehensive SOA-Based Data Integration Suite Solves Data Challenges

Oracle SOA Service Oriented Architecture News : Comprehensive SOA-Based Data Integration Suite Solves Data Challenges

Integrating data across multiple tiers just got a lot easier for Oracle customers. The new Oracle Data Integration Suite provides a comprehensive end-to-end data integration platform that connects heterogeneous data sources and applications and delivers clean, accurate, and timely data across the enterprise.

"Our customers need to manage data integration in three different tiers: the bulk delivery tier, the business process tier, and the application tier," says Jeff Pollock, senior director of product management, Oracle. Now they can manage them all with a single comprehensive and powerful end-to-end data integration solution—using a standards-based SOA framework."

Oracle Data Integration Suite couples leading technologies for service-oriented architecture (SOA) with conventional data management components like extract, load, and transform (ELT); data quality; data profiling; and master data management.

The suite combines Oracle's core strengths in SOA-based business process management and change management with Oracle Hyperion's Master Data Management capabilities. "Unifying these suite components allows people with very different roles in the company to view the integrated data that matters most to them," says Pollock. "Whether the person is a business user, an enterprise architect, a process modeler, or a data administrator, the Oracle Data Integration Suite gives them the tools they need."

"This comprehensive approach is critical for lowering total cost of ownership and reducing the need for support and maintenance for companies facing today's data integration challenges," says Pollock.

Oracle Data Integration Suite components enable consistent data integration across data sources and applications that include IBM DB2, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Teradata, Oracle Database, and Oracle and other ERP applications.

Availability and Pricing
Oracle Data Integration Suite is available at a base price of $60,000 per CPU, which includes Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle Enterprise Service Bus, Oracle Application Server, Hyperion Data Relationship Manager, Oracle B2B Engine, and Oracle Business Rule Engine.

Oracle Data Integration Suite options are priced separately and include Oracle Data Quality for Data Integrator, Oracle Data Profiling, Coherence Data Grid, Legacy Adapters, Applications Adapters, B2B Adapters, and Unstructured Content Adapters.

Source: For more information on Oracle SOA service oriented Artchitecture, please visit http://www.oracle.com/newsletters/information-indepth/fusion-middleware/mar-08/soa.html?msgid=6346828

Oracle, BEA Systems in $8.5B deal

Oracle, BEA Systems in $8.5B deal - Activist investor Carl Icahn, BEA's largest shareholder, had been advocating a merger.

See all CNNMoney.com RSS FEEDS (close) By Aaron Smith, CNNMoney.com staff writer
January 16 2008: 9:57 AM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Software giant Oracle Corp. reached a deal to buy rival BEA Systems Inc. for $8.5 billion Wednesday, just months after its initial offer was rebuffed.

Oracle agreed to pay $19.375 in cash for each share of BEA, representing a 24 percent premium to where BEA's shares closed Tuesday.

Oracle said the deal is worth $7.2 billion, since BEA has $1.3 billion in cash on hand. The deal is expected to close in mid-October.

"For Oracle, this deal is a very big step towards completing our [goal] of being a strategic software vendor of choice for our customers," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said during a conference call with investors.

Ellison said BEA CEO Alfred Chuang was "a pioneer in middleware," a type of software used by big businesses. With BEA under its wing, Ellison said he intends for Oracle to become a leader in middleware.

Shares of both companies moved on news of the deal. BEA (BEAS) soared 19 percent in morning trading, while Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) ticked lower 1 percent.

Oracle originally approached BEA back in October, when it made a $6.7 billion bid for the firm.

That offer was rejected by the BEA board, which said it wanted an offer of at least $21 a share.

But activist investor Carl Icahn supported a buyout. Icahn, who owns 51.8 million shares, or about 12.8 percent of the company, is BEA's biggest shareholder.

Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle has a market capitalization of about $110 billion and has acquired more than 30 companies over the last three years, including PeopleSoft for more than $10 billion.

Over that period, Oracle's stock has risen about 60 percent, while BEA's shares have soared more than 80 percent.

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/16/news/companies/oracle/?postversion=2008011608

Oracle Acquires BEA Systems for $8.5 Billion

Oracle Acquires BEA Systems for $8.5 Billion

01/16/2008

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and BEA Systems (NASDAQ: BEAS) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire all outstanding shares of BEA for $19.375 per share in cash. The offer is valued at approximately $8.5 billion, or $7.2 billion net of BEA's cash on hand of $1.3 billion. "We expect this deal to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 1-2 cents on a non-GAAP basis in its first full year after closing," said Oracle President and Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz.

ebizQ received the following:

"The addition of BEA products and technology will significantly enhance and extend Oracle's Fusion middleware software suite," said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. "Oracle Fusion middleware has an open "hot-pluggable" architecture that allows customers the option of coupling BEA's WebLogic Java Server to virtually all the components of the Fusion software suite. That's just one example of how customers can choose among Oracle and BEA middleware products, knowing that those products will gracefully interoperate and be supported for years to come."

"Over the past several months our Board of Directors, with the assistance of independent financial and legal advisors, has reviewed various ways to maximize stockholder value, including engaging in discussions with third parties about a possible sale of the company," said Alfred Chuang, BEA's Chairman and CEO. "This transaction is the culmination of that diligent and thoughtful process, and we believe it is in the best interests of our shareholders. I am confident our innovative products, talented employees and worldwide customer base will be key contributors to the success of the combined company over the long term. We look forward to working with Oracle toward a successful completion of the transaction."

"BEA is a pioneer in middleware, and this combination recognizes the innovation and customer success the company has achieved. Our joint customers have consistently suggested this deal for more than three years," said Oracle President Charles Phillips. "This transaction will accelerate the adoption of Java-based middleware technologies and SOA; advance innovation in enterprise applications infrastructure software; extend our strategic relationships with customers and partners; and increase our penetration in key regions like China."

The Board of Directors of BEA Systems has unanimously approved the transaction. It is anticipated to close by mid-2008, subject to BEA stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

Source: http://www.ebizq.net/news/8832.html

Oracle Acquires BEA Systems

Oracle and BEA

On January 16, 2008, Oracle announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire BEA Systems, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise application infrastructure solutions. The proposed transaction is subject to closing conditions, including regulatory, shareholder and other approvals. Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently, and it is business as usual.

The addition of BEA is expected to accelerate innovation by bringing together two companies with a common vision of a modern service-oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure and will further increase the value that Oracle delivers to its customers and partners.

There will be a conference call to discuss the transaction at 6:00 a.m. PT today, January 16, 2008. Investors can listen to the conference call by dialing 719-325-4780. A replay will be available for 24 hours after the call ends at 719-457-0820, passcode: 3644405. A live audio webcast of the call will be made available at www.oracle.com/investor and a replay will be available for seven days after the call ends.

Read the press release: Oracle to Acquire BEA Systems

Source: http://www.oracle.com/bea/index.html

Next-Generation Middleware Architecture

Oracle SOA Service Oriented Architecture News : Next-Generation Middleware Architecture

Fusion Middleware architecture for flexible, standards-based applications
During his Wednesday keynote at the JavaOne conference, Oracle Senior Vice President Thomas Kurian unveiled the next-generation architecture for Oracle Fusion Middleware—the world's fastest growing family of middleware products. This industry's first middleware architecture to support Grid computing, service-oriented architecture (SOA) and event-driven architecture (EDA) at "the core" delivers unprecedented flexibility, performance and scalability.
In addition, Oracle announced an enhanced Java application server and tools as well as a new development kit for Spring.

Key innovations include:

• Extreme processing and performance. In-memory data grid technology, from Oracle's recent acquisition of Tangosol, enables extreme transactions processing and scalability.
• SCA-based service infrastructure. A new service infrastructure, based on the service component architecture (SCA) standard, will offer a new composite application development framework with built-in policy enforcement points and optimized intra-component messaging.
• Complex Event Processing (CEP) for EDA. CEP will support high-volume, programmatic analysis of complex event patterns derived from multiple, independent event sources.
• Enhanced Java Application Server and Tools. Instrumental in defining key Java standards since its inception, Oracle realized that simplifying development with EJB 3.0 and JavaServer Faces (JSF) 1.2 is vital to the adoption of the next-generation Java Platform, Java EE 5.

Also announced were free technology previews of Oracle's new standards-based tools, including the Java EE 5 compatible Oracle Application Server (OC4J) 11g, Oracle JDeveloper 11g and Application Development Framework (ADF).

New Development Kit for Spring.
Because of its highly flexible, layered architecture, the popularity of Spring's open source continues to grow. To meet the requirements of developers using Oracle Java products in conjunction with Spring, Oracle is delivering a new development kit for Spring, including productivity tools, pre-packaged sample applications and how-to-guides.

Source: http://www.oracle.com/features/hp/next-generation-fusion-middleware.html

Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)

Oracle SOA Service Oriented Architecture Solution : Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)

Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (Oracle BAM) is a complete solution for building interactive, real-time dashboards and proactive alerts for monitoring business processes and services. Oracle BAM gives business executives and operation managers the information they need to make better business decisions and take corrective action if the business environment changes.

BENEFITS

• Rich, visual dashboards—Highly-visual dashboards present information in real-time through a completely thin, browser-based client
• Powerful, real-time analytics—Process and analyze event data using advanced complex event processing technology
• Built for business users—Business users can personalize dashboards and build their own reports and alerts with near-zero coding

Source: For more information, please visit Oracle website http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-activity-monitoring.html

Oracle BPEL Process Manager

Oracle SOA Service Oriented Architecture Solution : Oracle BPEL Process Manager

Oracle BPEL Process Manager, a member of the Oracle Fusion Middleware family of products, enables enterprises to orchestrate disparate applications and Web services into business processes. The ability to quickly build and deploy these processes in a standards-based manner delivers critical functionality for developing a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Learn about the comprehensive Oracle SOA Suite and monitor your BPEL processes with Oracle Business Activity Monitoring.

BENEFITS

• Greatest Ease-of-Use—Design and deploy processes using productive development and management tools, part of the Oracle SOA Suite reviewed by InfoWorld as the "the most comprehensive and easy to use product on the market today"
• Advanced Scalability—Run mission-critical processes with high-availability and reliability utilizing unique Oracle Grid technology
• Hot-Pluggable—Leverage your existing IT invesments, deploy Oracle BPEL Process Manager with software from vendors such as IBM, BEA, and JBoss

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/appserver/bpel_home.html

Oracle Data Integrator - SOA Solution

Oracle SOA Service Oriented Architecture Solution : Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)

High Performance, High Productivity Data Integration

Oracle Data Integrator delivers unique next-generation Extract Load and Transform (E-LT) technology that improves performance and reduces data integration costs, even across heterogeneous systems. Oracle Data Integrator offers the productivity of a declarative design approach, as well as the benefits of an active integration platform for seamless batch and real-time integration. In addition, hot-pluggable Knowledge Modules provide modularity, flexibility, and extensibility.

Extend the existing inline Data Quality features of Oracle Data Integrator to provide more advanced data governance capabilities with Oracle Data Profiling and Data Quality for Data Integrator.

BENEFITS

• Deeper business insight, faster responsiveness—An innovative, modular design provides built-in connectivity to all major databases, data warehouse appliances, and analytic applications
• Low cost integration framework for better SOA deployments—An open, lightweight, and modular architecture substantially strengthens the overall SOA vision
• Accurate data sharing with reduced migration time and expense—Provides high-performance movement and transformation of data across heterogeneous systems in batch, real-time, synchronous, and asynchronous modes

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/products/middleware/oracle-data-integrator.html

Oracle SOA Service-Oriented Architecture

Oracle SOA Service-Oriented Architecture

Build, Deploy, and Manage SOA with Best-of-Breed Oracle Technology

Leading companies are tackling the complexity of their application and IT environments with Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which facilitates the development of modular business services that can be easily integrated and reused—creating a truly flexible, adaptable IT infrastructure. With an SOA approach, your IT organization will focus more resources and budget on innovation and on delivering new business services.

BENEFITS

• Reduce development time and cost—SOA services are easily reused and can be rapidly assembled into new, composite applications
• Lower maintenance costs—Reusable services reduce the number and internal complexity of IT services
• Higher quality services—Increased service reuse creates higher-quality services through multiple testing cycles from different service consumers
• Lower integration costs—Standardized services know how to work together, enabling disparate applications to quickly and easily connect
• Reduce risk—Fewer, reusable services provide greater control over corporate and IT governance policies and reduce the overall compliance risk

SOA SUITE COMPONENTS

• Oracle JDeveloper 10g
• Oracle Business Rules
• Oracle BPEL Process Manager
• Oracle Business Activity Monitoring
• Oracle Web Services Manager
• Oracle Enterprise Service Bus

Source: For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com/technologies/soa/index.html

Oracle SOA Service-Oriented Architecture

Oracle SOA Service-Oriented Architecture

Build, Deploy, and Manage SOA with Best-of-Breed Oracle Technology
Leading companies are tackling the complexity of their application and IT environments with Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which facilitates the development of modular business services that can be easily integrated and reused—creating a truly flexible, adaptable IT infrastructure. With an SOA approach, your IT organization will focus more resources and budget on innovation and on delivering new business services.

SOA's BENEFITS

• Reduce development time and cost—SOA services are easily reused and can be rapidly assembled into new, composite applications
• Lower maintenance costs—Reusable services reduce the number and internal complexity of IT services
• Higher quality services—Increased service reuse creates higher-quality services through multiple testing cycles from different service consumers
• Lower integration costs—Standardized services know how to work together, enabling disparate applications to quickly and easily connect
• Reduce risk—Fewer, reusable services provide greater control over corporate and IT governance policies and reduce the overall compliance risk

Oracle SOA - Customers Embracing Oracle's SOA Approach

Oracle SOA - Customers Embracing Oracle's SOA Approach

Organizations throughout the world are using Oracle Fusion Middleware, the company's comprehensive, standards- based family of middleware products to adopt and manage service oriented architecture (SOA) in heterogeneous computing environments.

The service oriented architecture SOA market is poised for tremendous growth over the next few years. According to a recent Gartner report, "SOA will provide the basis for 80 percent of development projects, by 2008." Advanced Data Exchange, Cattles Bank, Griffiths Waite, the Mexican Government's Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, Neustar, Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Police, Spanish Regional Government, Universita di Bologna and Wyeth are a few of the growing number of organizations using components of the Oracle SOA Suite, part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware product family, to help maximize business efficiency, increase IT flexibility and lower costs.

Built on a hot-pluggable architecture, Oracle's SOA Suite enables organizations to rapidly deliver new business services -- based on a mix of old and new IT systems -- while avoiding costly rip-and-replace projects. The suite delivers a comprehensive service lifecycle management platform that enables services to be created, secured, monitored, managed and orchestrated into composite applications and multi-step business processes. Partners are using Oracle's products as the foundation for service oriented architecture SOAs, decreasing the time spent re-architecting entire systems and increasing the time dedicated to building competitive, vertical differentiators and solving customers' business problems. Oracle SOA Suite boasts some of the industry's most advanced and well-regarded SOA technologies, including Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), Oracle Business Rules Engine, Oracle Enterprise Service Bus, Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Web Services Manager.

Advanced Data Exchange (ADX) is a privately held, venture-backed company headquartered in Fremont, Calif., providing services to build and expand trading communities by building upon the benefits of electronic data interchange (EDI) and XML without the typical cost or complexity. ADX improves commerce process execution, enabling customers and suppliers to efficiently exchange business documents, streamline orders, track and manage changes, resolve discrepancies, improve the accuracy of payments and the timeliness of receivables. Its use of Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle's EDI B2B Gateway brings flexibility and agility to ADX's technology platform, resulting in improved response times to customers, minimal manual data entry and improved accuracy.

"ADX drives efficiency in the buyer-supplier relationship. Our Business Integration and Commerce Management services allow electronic order processing and related communication with trading partners regardless of technology capabilities or data formats," said Carl Lehmann, vice president of solutions strategy at ADX. "To build a service-oriented technology infrastructure to best support our clients, we selected Oracle Fusion Middleware's SOA service oriented architecture technologies, which allow for interoperability with our clients regardless of their business system or technology platform."

Cattles plc, one of the largest providers of financial services products to the non-standard consumer credit market in the United Kingdom, chose to work with Oracle partner Griffiths Waite (GW) to build an adaptive application processing platform to support their expansion into new markets, as well as an ambitious partner program. GW evaluated various SOA offerings and selected Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle BAM, key components of the Oracle SOA Suite. Using Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Cattles has the flexibility to easily change business processes as partner requirements change. Oracle BAM provides Cattles with immediate visibility into the application pipeline enabling them to monitor, manage and change their business -- in real time. This platform is successfully supporting an initial implementation of more than 2,000 users and processing upward of 25,000 applications per day. GW specializes in the design, development and management of business solutions based upon Oracle technology.

"The Oracle SOA Suite is by far the most comprehensive and integrated SOA service oriented architecture offering in the marketplace," said Mark Simpson, architect at Griffiths Waite. "Cattles needed a solution that could not only orchestrate high-risk loan approval process, but could also provide the ability to monitor the key business metrics. Together, Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle BAM helped us create a robust platform, enabling Cattles to easily monitor processes and provide a feedback loop for process optimization."

Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Police is responsible for the maintenance and development of the basic guarantees of the rule of law throughout Norway. Established in 1818, the organization has approximately 17,700 employees across its three major subsidiaries -- the Police Directorate, the Prison and Probation Service and the Legislation Department. The organization selected Oracle SOA Suite to develop an IT architecture that would integrate its disparate applications and data.

"We chose the Oracle SOA Suite to serve as the foundation for our new architecture. All solutions developed within the Justice Sector will be based upon this architecture, and the software that is acquired will be of central value in prospective projects of development for the National Police Computing and Material Service," said Peter Hafskjold, technical project manager of National Police Computing and Material Service. "This is the first big SOA service oriented architecture project within the public sector in Norway. With service oriented architecture SOA principles, now the IT systems of the Norwegian Police, the Norwegian Courts and the Norwegian Correctional services will be connected in a most efficient way. All the central police solutions including, criminal records, private prosecution treatment, advertisement of loss and systems pertaining to center of operations and shift scheduling will be integrated."

Venting on SOA 2.0

Venting on Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0

I'm admittedly a big Oracle fan. I believe in the software. I also like the company's willingness to take risks. I'm a major envangelist for Oracle within my own organization and elsewhere when the opportunity presents itself. Nevertheless, I've ridden with a burr under my saddle for several months...a burr that Oracle put there. With apologies to my many friends within Oracle and elsewhere in the Oracle universe who may disagree with my opinion, it's time to vent.

In May, Oracle introduced the concept of Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 at JavaOne. They've continued to push this concept since that time. As I understand it, Oracle's flavor of Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 is the combination of their Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) Suite combined with an Service Oriented Architecture SOA suite of tools (preferably Oracle's). You can learn more about the features of Oracle's EDA Suite here, so I won't rehash the highlights in this post. Suffice it to say that Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 = EDA + SOA.

Now for my ranting. Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and Office 2.0 are all the rage. And, at least from my perspective, all those "2.0" versions represent change in the overall concept of each. But now it seems the marketing folks have concluded that any concept hung with a "2.0" will generate significant buzz. The "2.0" suffix seems to have developed some serious marketing mojo. But the "2.0" concept is really stretched with Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0. What changed from plain, old SOA? Nothing that I can see, other than we added on some EDA tools on top and tagged Service Oriented Architecture SOA with a "2.0". It's analogous to adding a set of socks to a pair of shoes and selling the package as "Shoes 2.0"...and if WalMart steals this idea, I want royalties!

So, why am I upset about Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0? First, because the term adds confusion to the marketplace. Enterprises around the world are struggling to implement and master Service Oriented Architecture SOA as it is. In fact, if we're going assign version numbers, most are still struggling with "SOA 0.5" or less. Pushing SOA 2.0 at this time is like telling me that I really need to be on the summit of K2 when I'm still struggling to get halfway up Pike's Peak. Second, Oracle's flavor of SOA 2.0 essentially combines EDA and SOA technology...not much real innovation happening to benefit my enterprise, as I can buy both tools sets and integrate them without all the SOA 2.0 smoke and mirrors. In business terms (better, faster, lower cost - those types of tangible benefits), what benefit does SOA 2.0 provide over plain, old SOA Service Oriented Architecture? The business-oriented value proposition is not clear (at least, not to me). If there's no measurable business benefit, why bother with it?

Now, I know that Oracle is not the only organization jumping onto the Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 bandwagon. Nevertheless, I have higher expectations of Oracle and I'm disappointed with that they're "stirring the pot" with the fuss they're making over SOA 2.0.

It could be that I just don't understand Oracle's version of SOA 2.0, and so my post here only demonstrates my lack of understanding. If that's the case, somebody please set me straight by commenting on this article. On the other hand, if you find yourself on my side of the fence, there is an on-line petition protesting the confusion surrounding the term "Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0" here. You may want to consider signing the petition yourself.

Companies ready to talk up SOA 2.0

Companies ready to talk up SOA 2.0 By Paul Krill

It seems that we just can't wait for a new buzz-phrase. While most of the world is trying to come to terms with service oriented architecture SOA and what it means, Oracle is trying to ignite interest in service oriented architecture SOA 2.0.

The company was setting out its vision for the next-generation version of SOA service oriented architecture at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. "service oriented architecture SOA 2.0 is the term that we're using to talk about the combination of service-oriented architecture and event-driven architecture," said Steve Harris, vice president of Oracle Fusion middleware.
Oracle is not alone. The phrase is also being championed by Gartner's Yefim Natis, a vice president and distinguished analyst at the firm. Natis stressed event-driven architecture as the main distinction between SOA 2.0 and the first, client-server driven iteration of SOA service oriented architecture.

"SOA service oriented architecture as we know it today, deals with a client-server relationship between software modules," with services being subroutines serving clients, Natis said. "However, not all business processes and software topologies fit this model."

With service oriented architecture SOA 2.0, an event-driven architecture is deployed in which software modules are related to business components, and alerts and event notifications are featured. The initial SOA concept has not been event-driven but instead has featured direct calls from one piece of software to another in a client-server process, Natis said. SOA service oriented architecture implementations have focused on web services and subordinates to clients, he said.

SOA 2.0 service oriented architecture applications could include order processing systems, hospital admissions processes or bank transactions, Natis said.

Oracle is positioning its Fusion middleware components as a solution for service oriented architecture SOA. Oracle sees the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5), SOA 2.0 and Web 2.0 coming together to produce a more productive application platform, said Thomas Kurian, Oracle senior vice president. Web 2.0 features more dynamic clients.

Additionally, the company plans to soon release some of its AJAX technologies for rich Internet application development to an open source organisation. The technology to be submitted includes a set of JavaServer Faces components and an AJAX rendering kit.
The company, however, still is not climbing aboard the Sun Microsystems-driven NetBeans community for open source tools, but is sticking with its strategy of accommodating the rival Eclipse platform and Oracle's own JDeveloper tool.

"We have a lot of customers where we see Eclipse come up in accounts," said Ted Farrell, Oracle chief architect and vice president of tools and middleware.

"If we saw a similar push for NetBeans for the industry, we'd probably address that as well," Farrell said.

At a jointly held public session with Sun in January, Oracle acknowledged NetBeans but did not actually decide to participate in it.

Oracle hails event-driven middleware for SOA 2.0

Oracle hails event-driven middleware for SOA 2.0 - Company again promotes concept that has raised the ire of some By Paul Krill

Oracle continues to boost the concept of SOA 2.0 with the release of the Oracle Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) Suite, featuring Oracle Fusion Middleware products.

Announced on Monday, the middleware allows customers to identify, analyze, and respond to business events in real-time. EDA is a key component of SOA 2.0 which is the next-generation of SOA that defines how events and services are linked together to deliver a responsive and flexible IT infrastructure, according to Oracle.

The suite features:

* Oracle Enterprise Messaging, to deliver event messages;

* Oracle Enterprise Service Bus, to collect and distribute events;

* Oracle Business Rules, for defining business policies on events;

* Oracle Business Activity Monitoring, to monitor and analyze events;

* Oracle Sensor Edge Server, supporting RFID and managing events from physical sensors and automation equipment.

The package is for companies looking to become a real-time enterprise, said Ashish Mohindroo, senior product director for Oracle Fusion Middleware. "In order to become a real-time enterprise, they have to be able to respond to real-time events," such as stock transactions, he said.

Mohindroo acknowledged that most of the products in the suite have already been available, but they are being enhanced with an events correlation and events processing infrastructure. A common metadata repository is featured to handle changes in business rules.

Oracle pitched the concept of SOA 2.0 at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco in May. The analysis firm Gartner also is promoting it.

Not everyone is happy with the creation of the concept, SOA 2.0. An online petition against it is in circulation. Mohindroo said people are reading too much into the naming. "We're trying to add value to the customer and the vision is to turn them into a real-time enterprise," he said.

Yefin Natis, a Gartner analyst who also has been using the term SOA 2.0 said the negative reaction is good in that it has demonstrated the interactive nature of Web 2.0.

He said Oracle's EDA suite is mostly about marketing since it features primarily products already on the market. "The primary impact of this announcement is marketing but as far as marketing, it is a very important move on their part," Natis said.

SOA 2.0 features SOA plus EDA, Natis said.

Oracle EDA Suite is priced at $60,000 per CPU.