Modern enterprise systems stretch from ground to the cloud and everything in between.
With plethora of diverse SaaS applications combined with existing home grown/legacy on-premise applications - each promising to solve a specific business problem, the integration problem has just got complicated.
IDC predicts that by 2018, SaaS-based enterprise applications would generate over $50 billion in revenue resulting in more than 27% of enterprise apps running on cloud.
Enterprises must equip themselves to embrace this change to integrate, secure and manage their "extended" enterprise on cloud.
Most traditional integration solutions have 2 shortcomings;
One, they require considerable DevOps efforts - think development, deployment, maintenance etc..
Two, they aren't built ground-up for SaaS integrations - lack of SaaS adapters, network latencies, firewall pinholes for SaaS connectivity etc..
Hence the need for an iPaaS - Integration Platform as a Service. For any iPaaS solution to be successful, there are 3 important considerations that enterprise architects must account for;
1. Ease of Use:
A cloud solution's first deliverable to business must be "Simplifying IT" and bringing IT closer to business. Oracle Integration Cloud Platform (ICS) is built for "citizen developers" and hence truly offers a "zero code" integration platform. This is a huge advantage for business and IT alike, as all technology complexities are hidden away. This means; there is no new technology to learn / ramp-up, no skill-gaps to fill, quicker turn-around times...
Oracle ICS also features a pattern-driven integration model with a bunch of common integration patterns to choose from, for a variety of integration needs including pub-sub, straight-on data mapping, orchestration etc.. all delivered just over a browser. No IDE, No installation & Zero Code.
2. Time to Market:
A huge impediment to any project plan is "TTM" delays that concerns the business.
Even for some of my customers who are on the bleeding edge of technology find it pragmatically difficult to staff, develop, administrate & manage their integration projects - partly owing to changing trends in technology but mostly because their DevOps can't scale to handle business demands. For instance, in the last 6-9 months, their sales department has bought into salesforce.com, HR moved to Fusion HCM cloud and Marketing is automating campaings on Eloqua. All of these are strategic initiatives driven by the line of business which offers feature-rich enterprise applications with lesser dependency on IT Ops at least to manage & maintain them.
However, care must be taken not to build silo'ed SaaS applications - there must be a robust integration platform to connect SaaS with On-prem systems without the complexities of a traditional middleware. Oracle ICS was architected ground-up with "Time to Market" as its principle goal. Integrations that typically take a few months can be up & running in a few days.
This is made possible with the ever-growing list of feature-rich SaaS, Apps and Technology adapters built for cloud, pre-built integrations and smart recommendations.
3. Deployment Choice:
Another integration decision is the "Integration Center of Gravity" which defines where the integration can be run for best performance. Let's say we want to connect 2 SaaS applications - does it make sense to run the integration on-prem behind your enterprise firewall? probably not. On the contrary, if you want to integrate 2 on-prem systems but still like to leverage the advantages that Oracle ICS offers, you have the flexibility to run ICS on-prem within your datacenter.
Oracle ICS is a truly hybrid iPaaS providing full deployment choice whether you want to run your integration platform on cloud or on ground.
With plethora of diverse SaaS applications combined with existing home grown/legacy on-premise applications - each promising to solve a specific business problem, the integration problem has just got complicated.
IDC predicts that by 2018, SaaS-based enterprise applications would generate over $50 billion in revenue resulting in more than 27% of enterprise apps running on cloud.
Enterprises must equip themselves to embrace this change to integrate, secure and manage their "extended" enterprise on cloud.
Most traditional integration solutions have 2 shortcomings;
One, they require considerable DevOps efforts - think development, deployment, maintenance etc..
Two, they aren't built ground-up for SaaS integrations - lack of SaaS adapters, network latencies, firewall pinholes for SaaS connectivity etc..
Hence the need for an iPaaS - Integration Platform as a Service. For any iPaaS solution to be successful, there are 3 important considerations that enterprise architects must account for;
- Ease of Use
- Time to Market &
- Deployment Choice
1. Ease of Use:
A cloud solution's first deliverable to business must be "Simplifying IT" and bringing IT closer to business. Oracle Integration Cloud Platform (ICS) is built for "citizen developers" and hence truly offers a "zero code" integration platform. This is a huge advantage for business and IT alike, as all technology complexities are hidden away. This means; there is no new technology to learn / ramp-up, no skill-gaps to fill, quicker turn-around times...
Oracle ICS also features a pattern-driven integration model with a bunch of common integration patterns to choose from, for a variety of integration needs including pub-sub, straight-on data mapping, orchestration etc.. all delivered just over a browser. No IDE, No installation & Zero Code.
2. Time to Market:
A huge impediment to any project plan is "TTM" delays that concerns the business.
Even for some of my customers who are on the bleeding edge of technology find it pragmatically difficult to staff, develop, administrate & manage their integration projects - partly owing to changing trends in technology but mostly because their DevOps can't scale to handle business demands. For instance, in the last 6-9 months, their sales department has bought into salesforce.com, HR moved to Fusion HCM cloud and Marketing is automating campaings on Eloqua. All of these are strategic initiatives driven by the line of business which offers feature-rich enterprise applications with lesser dependency on IT Ops at least to manage & maintain them.
However, care must be taken not to build silo'ed SaaS applications - there must be a robust integration platform to connect SaaS with On-prem systems without the complexities of a traditional middleware. Oracle ICS was architected ground-up with "Time to Market" as its principle goal. Integrations that typically take a few months can be up & running in a few days.
This is made possible with the ever-growing list of feature-rich SaaS, Apps and Technology adapters built for cloud, pre-built integrations and smart recommendations.
3. Deployment Choice:
Another integration decision is the "Integration Center of Gravity" which defines where the integration can be run for best performance. Let's say we want to connect 2 SaaS applications - does it make sense to run the integration on-prem behind your enterprise firewall? probably not. On the contrary, if you want to integrate 2 on-prem systems but still like to leverage the advantages that Oracle ICS offers, you have the flexibility to run ICS on-prem within your datacenter.
Oracle ICS is a truly hybrid iPaaS providing full deployment choice whether you want to run your integration platform on cloud or on ground.
Thanks for your very informative blogs. I have a question. My application was developed using Oracle Fusion Middleware products (ADF, BPEL, etc). Will I face any issues if I go with AWS cloud? Are there any constraints? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, AWS is just an IaaS provider. Technically, you would be running your application on AWS datacenter instead of your own. As long as the architecture (infra/OS) is certified for the Oracle products you choose to run, you should be good. Check the FMW certification matrix.
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