I had the chance to talk with... Hardeep Gulati at Oracle the other day about their integration strategy for PLM. Now that Agile is a part of Oracle, integration to the rest of the enterprise systems (whether they are Oracle or 3rd party solutions) is a very important issue. As you might imagine, the Oracle solution is not a one-off but a structured approach with applicability beyond PLM.



What do they Do?
I probably don't need to explain who Oracle is to most people, but a few key points to consider are the following:

• Oracle provides infrastructure software (including their flagship database product) to a lot of companies. I don't have any specific data on hand right now, but I would assume the number is in the 80-90% range, and (score one for Oracle Marketing) I have to admit I have seen more than a few signs in airports saying Oracle is in the "top x number of leading companies" across multiple industries.
• Oracle offers a broad suite of business applications, which include ERP products as well as acquired solutions such as Siebel CRM, Demantra SCM and Agile PLM.
• Oracle believes the enterprise applications market is a "best of breed" market, as opposed to viewing that companies will standardize on just one enterprise solutions (like Oracle or rival SAP.)

With those points made, it is pretty clear why enterprise integration is a key initiative for Oracle.

What do they Offer for Integration?
Oracle views integration as a platform capability, not a series of point-to-point solutions. Oracle's Application Integration Architecture (AIA) is part of a direction toward composite applications, where business processes are defined and managed across any number of underlying applications. The direction includes an open, standards-based approach to define and execute these business processes. Without going into the details of the integration approach, an approach that not every company is ready for, I would like to focus on the migration from today to this future state. But I will point out that there are some distinct advantages to a composite applications approach, where the business process is defined by the company who owns the process as opposed to the vendor that writes the underlying software (although the software vendors, like Oracle, will provide best practice templates).

How do Oracle Customers get to Web Services, Composite Applications, and Integrated Solutions?
In a word, evolution. Oracle is not pushing customers to move quickly. In fact, to their credit, Oracle is working closely with their customers to determine what and how they should enhance Agile's integration capabilities. Agile had integration capabilities far before the Oracle acquisition, or course. Oracle, however, is extending this by developing a suite of "Process Integration Packs" or "PIPs." A PIP includes vertical industry best practices to support a specific process, with prebuilt integration to supporting applications. For example, a PIP could support the "release to manufacturing" process, integrating PLM to the supporting ERP applications. A manufacturer would license the AIA (see above) and then add on the appropriate PIPs required to support their integration efforts.

The last thing I want to mention is the approach to prioritizing integration efforts (and the associated PIPs). Oracle is turning to their customer base to help them prioritize which processes should be integrated, and which are the highest priority. Upcoming Aberdeen research due at the end of April will highlight the priorities we have found across over 250 companies, and preliminary results match up well to the initial PIPs identified by Oracle and their customer base. I will not go into the priorities here, but instead leave that up to Oracle to announce (or supply as a follow up to this post) because some of this information is still privileged and I don't want to overstep my bounds.

So that's what I hear from Oracle on integration, I hope you found it useful. What do you think? What else should I have asked them? What do you think should be in their list of priorities for integration?