Behind the Buzzwords
FOUR CORE PRINCIPLES GUIDE ORACLE’S FASTEST-GROWING BUSINESS: MIDDLEWARE.
It’s no secret that middleware is the fastest-
growing component of Oracle’s business and
is the foundation of the eagerly anticipated
Oracle Fusion Applications solution set. So,
it’s pretty clear that the company’s recent
announcement of Oracle Fusion Middleware
11g is its most important middleware
announcement in several years.
The high-level objective and vision for Oracle Fusion
Middleware 11g, as stated by Oracle, is a technology platform
that is “complete, integrated, hot-pluggable, and best-of-breed.”
Although an objective like this can be seen as just a “feel good”
universal statement of good intentions, the specific solutions
and plans outlined by Oracle contain some notable and real
advances that underscore these claims.
I see IT unification as the overriding vision behind those four
phrases. This is a natural result of the need to unify former BEA
technologies and existing Oracle technologies into an integrated
suite; but it is also a bigger vision, reflected in an architectural
approach to the suite that emphasizes sharing of resources and
user experiences.
Complete. Completeness of the middleware stack is a lofty and
evolving objective that must adapt to constantly changing
technology and new business demands from customers and
prospects. Although Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g offers a
large set of features and functions, the stated goal of functional
completeness is a predictor of a continuing acquisition policy
at Oracle, and a confirmation of Oracle’s ambition to be a universal IT solution provider.
Integrated. Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g reflects a real and
growing need for business systems to work together and share
data. For example, the new release of Oracle JDeveloper aims
to unify all development across Oracle Fusion Middleware
component products. Business process management (BPM) was
also announced as a unified function handling the orchestration of people, document, and system processes in a common
model and through one new development tool for business
users (Oracle Composer). Oracle Enterprise Manager aims to
provide the unified administration and management environment across the entire stack. Meanwhile, Oracle has built
one common metadata management architecture (Metadata
Service) and a common metadata repository (Oracle Enterprise
Repository) that provides a common foundation underlying
Oracle JDeveloper; BPM; and, over time, most other Oracle
Fusion Middleware products.
Hot-pluggable. “Hot-pluggability” was first introduced by Oracle
in 2005. Oracle has since expanded its focus from the early
priority of portability (the ability of Oracle Fusion Middleware
solutions to run on competitive underlying prerequisite technologies, such as non-Oracle Java application servers or messaging engines) to interoperability (the ability of third-party
tools, such as portals, business intelligence, rule engines, and
other tools, to run on Oracle platform technologies). Again, the
focus on interoperability fully supports the overarching theme
of unification.
Best-of-breed. But despite the vision of a complete and unified
(integrated) technology portfolio stack, Oracle also aims to
pursue best-of-breed opportunities in the market. Best-of-breed buyers do not select general-purpose technology suites
or brands, but rather evaluate individual technology offerings,
select them based on their strengths, and often mix technologies of multiple providers. Oracle’s technology products are
built to function as an integrated stack, but the products also
stand on their own as viable best-of-breed options.
Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g was promised as a convergence release, completing the integration of the acquired BEA
technology and Oracle Fusion Middleware 10g. But Oracle
Fusion Middleware 11g delivers more than just an incremental
set of new features and a sum of the acquired technologies—the
release also seems to function as an articulation of the company’s middleware strategy, featuring an acceleration of Oracle’s
aggressive investment in the marketing, engineering, and competitive positioning of Oracle Fusion Middleware technology.
In the end, Oracle’s real commitments to these four foundational elements could result in a middleware solution that
actually allows CIOs to achieve the elusive goal of simplifying
technology while improving business performance. <>
JOHN MATELSKI is CIO and director of IT services for Gwinnett County, Georgia, and
a member of the board of directors of the Independent Oracle Users Group.
