One-to-One: Oracle and PLM Integration

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?