Oracle's Ellison: SOA migration a slow process
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Scoffing at reports alleging the adoption of SOA is slowing, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said this week that moving to SOA is a slow process but one that presents an opportunity for Oracle.Speaking on Oracle's earnings conference call Wednesday, Ellison said he had read news articles about the slowing adoption of SOA. But he stressed that SOA requires a change in architecture, which takes time to implement."While I've read [these articles], people have to understand when you have a fundamentally new computer software architecture, SOA, it takes a long time for adoption," Ellison said. Moving to SOA is not as easy as flipping a switch, he said."It takes about 10 to 20 years before [you can] rewrite all of your applications," he said. But Oracle sees this process accelerating in its middleware business."We think it's a long-term growth story, it's a very rapid growth story," said Ellison. "It takes a long time for our customers to have a majority of their applications modernized and we think this is a growth story for a decade for us," he said.For the quarter ending November 30, Oracle reported revenues of $5.3 billion, a 28 percent increase over the $4.16 billion reported for the same quarter last year. Net income was $1.3 billion, a 35 percent increase over the $967 million reported for the same time period in 2006.
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NEW YORK - Oracle will release in 2008 a new applications suite, dubbed "Fusion," that will serve as a migration point for customers on all three of its applications platforms, executives said Tuesday in presentations at a launch event for Oracle's PeopleSoft integration.
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Oracle  customers will be able to get the delayed version of the company's E-Business Suite 11i.10 within 60 days, Oracle announced today.
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Oracle launched on Monday Oracle Data Integration Suite, which combines traditional data integration capabilities with an array of middleware and tooling for constructing a service oriented architecture.Data Integration Suite costs $60,000 per CPU for a package that bundles Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle/Hyperion Data Relationship Manager with the company's BPEL Process Manager, enterprise service bus, application server, business-to-business engine, and business rules engine, according to a statement."This is really Oracle attempting to go a long way toward providing a credible alternative to IBM Information Server," said James Kobielus, an analyst with Forrester Research. IBM released Information Server in October 2006; the product sits at the center of the company's Information on Demand Strategy.In turn, Oracle's suite aligns its data-integration offerings with its Fusion Middleware line for SOA.Additional options in the suite include a new pair of data quality tools, Oracle Data Quality for Data Integrator and Oracle Data Profiling, which the company developed with Harte-Hanks Trillium Software."Finally, Oracle now has best-of-breed data quality tools," Kobielus said.Also, Oracle is optionally offering its Coherence Data Grid, technology acquired through Oracle's purchase of Tangosol last year, and a number of adapters, including ones for applications and unstructured content, as options.The company did not provide pricing information for the optional items.Overall, the suite reflects the further integration of two key Oracle acquisitions, Sunopsis and Hyperion, into the company's core Fusion Middleware lineup, according to Kobielus. "There's a lot of Sunopsis and Hyperion DNA in this," he said.Oracle bought Sunopsis, maker of an ELT (extract, load, transform) tool in October 2006. The company plunked down $3.3 billion in March 2007 for Hyperion, which had a master data management product among its offerings.IBM, Oracle, and SAP are now the main industry contenders in terms of a truly broad data-integration suite, according to Kobielus. Other large enterprise stack vendors, such as Red Hat or Sun, might be wise to make some acquisitions in this space, he added.Marketing materials announcing the Oracle's release stress the suite's applicability to heterogenous environments, noting its support for a broad array of databases, including IBM DB2, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Teradata, and Oracle.This is telling, right down to Oracle's positioning of its own database at the end of that list, Kobielus said. "IBM is also strongly heterogeneous," he noted.
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Although SOA efforts are still early-stage at most organizations, systems integrators who work for government agencies are concerned that SOA efforts might put them out of a job. So says the Input Executive Forum, a trade organization representing federal contractors and agencies. Instead of hiring systems integrators to add new capabilities into existing IT environments, "agencies with a SOA environment can just acquire the services they need," says Deniece Peterson, a senior analyst at Input whose study examined the impact of SOA on IT contractors.[ What is SOA? Watch the InfoClipz primer to learn more. ]Only a few federal agencies -- including the Defense Dept., NASA, Treasury Dept., SEC, and FBI -- have significant SOA efforts under way, Peterson notes. Elsewhere, SOA efforts are typically small test projects or still in the research and design phases, she says. That slow uptake means IT providers haven't yet seen much shift away from traditional integration efforts in federal project proposals. "But they can see it coming," Peterson says. "When that time comes, they'll need to offer SOA services."While IT contractors are beginning to worry about possible loss of systems integration work, federal agencies that have a SOA agenda have their own concerns, Peterson notes. Many of the SOA-enabling technologies being sold to them contain proprietary components that interfere with SOA's promise of standards-based modularity. "The agencies are looking for standards, so this is slowing them down," she says.The other concern is a lack of SOA-skilled IT talent within the federal agencies, many of whom are facing a brain drain across the board due to the high percentage of retirement-age employees. Ironically, this lack of inside talent may help IT contractors -- if they can fill the gap by providing SOA-savvy architects, developers, and project managers, Peterson says.Although Peterson's research focused on the implications of federal SOA efforts, she suspects a similar set of issues exists in corporate IT environments. There, too, is an ecosystem of systems integrators accustomed to a series of integration projects in large enterprises -- particularly in finance and telecom -- who are looking at SOA as a way to reduce the integration need.
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Although real comparability to Oracle and IBM databases could still be some time away, MySQL's new authorized hosting program might help broaden out the niche for the open source database a lot more quickly.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Oracle on Wednesday will introduce Oracle Application Server 10g Release 2, which is being characterized as a significant upgrade to the product with improvements in Java, Web services, and identity management and the addition of RFID backing.
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Mainframe systems are playing a key role in many SOA (service-oriented architecture) projects, according to a study released this week by IBM user group SHARE.Mainframes like IBM&#39;s System z are integral to SOA almost by default because they contain a large portion of the world&#39;s business information, the study suggests. Thirty percent of respondents who work for companies with 10,000 or more employees said between 51 percent and 75 percent of their company&#39;s data is managed and stored on a mainframe, according to the study.Meanwhile, nearly 23 percent of respondents said their company is undergoing a SOA project, and another third said a SOA is in the planning or consideration stages.Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they are pursuing an enterprise-wide SOA, but in most cases, the projects are confined to niche instances, such specific lines of business or divisions or within applications.&quot;Many of the applications that need to be SOA-enabled are mainframe applications,&quot; said Pamela Taylor, vice president of strategic development for SHARE and a solutions architect for a subsidiary of a Fortune 50 company. &quot;System z tends to be absolutely critical to deployments.&quot;While mainframes play a dominant role in hosting an enterprise&#39;s data, companies&#39; interaction with that data faces constraints. At least 50 percent of the companies surveyed use hand-coded scripts to push mainframe-based data to other databases or platforms, according to the study. Such scripting is hard to maintain, particularly if the programmers who wrote it leave the organization, the study notes.IBM has aligned System z with SOA.The study notes that SOA can strain systems, such as through its use of XML-based messaging. &quot;Rather than acquire more server hardware to attempt to address growing SOA performance issues, mainframes may represent a more cost-effective option for leveraging existing resources,&quot; the study states.In turn, the abstraction layer a SOA provides can help enterprises more easily tap their existing mainframe applications and data, the study notes.Sales for System z fell last year but IBM is banking on the launch of its next-generation mainframe in February.Some 431 SHARE members responded to the survey, which was conducted by Unisphere Research. About 48 percent work for companies with 1,000 or more employees, and 26 percent of respondents&#39; firms have more than $1 billion in revenue.
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I got an interesting teaser in the e-mail this week: âStudy Suggests Nearly Half of All Leaders See a Disconnect Between Strategy and Execution.â I wonât say who sent it because they blew the execution: The so-called study wasnât posted anywhere online, and when I called the number, theyâd already left for the weekend.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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The tool makes it easier for Oracle users with limited programming experience to build, deploy and manage secure Web applications with information contained in Oracle databases.
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(InfoWorld) - OracleÂ is integrating one of its applications with Google's mapping service to help service providers locate customers more quickly. On Tuesday, Oracle said it had integrated the API (application programming interface) for Google Maps for Enterprise with the Field Service piece of Oracle E-Business Suite 12. Field Service helps companies manage the process of sending staff on service calls and predict when those employees will arrive at the customer sites. Using the Google Maps API, dispatchers should now also be able to find routes for their field service personnel to reach customers more quickly. At the same time, technicians can get a better sense of the location of their jobs by viewing those destinations on Google's map or its satellite images Bringing together content from a number of sources in an application or a Web site is proving very popular among software vendors and is often referred to as a mashup. Google Maps is one of the most frequently used APIs in mashups since it adds a useful visual element to applications. Oracle began theÂ rollout of E-Business Suite 12Â in January. Other new features in Field Service 12 include support for tasks lasting multiple days and the ability to track customers confirming their service appointments. There's also an administrator's portal to assist schedulers in handling jobs assigned to in-house or to third parties across time zones and geographies. The Google Maps integration is also available for Oracle Field Service 11.5.10. In other Oracle news, the vendor announced Symantec is an enterprise storage management partner for its Unbreakable Linux support program. The program providesÂ support for users of Red Hat's Enterprise LinuxÂ distribution, regardless of whether they are Oracle software users, at aggressive pricepoints. Oracle and Symantec have certified Symantec's Veritas data center software with Oracle Enterprise Linux and guaranteed to provide enterprise-level support for both the storage and the Linux offerings. The agreement covers six Veritas products -- Storage Foundation 5.0, Storage Foundation for Oracle 5.0, Storage Foundation Cluster File System 5.0, Cluster Server 5.0, NetBackup 6.0 Client and i3. While Oracle claims demand is growing for its support program, the vendor has yet to provide precise figures on user uptake. In March,Â Oracle CEO Larry Ellison saidÂ publicly that Unbreakable Linux had got off to a "very strong start" and committed his company to building a Linux business, while cautioning that such a process would take time. Â
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Branching out in the SOA space, MuleSource will introduce Tuesday its Mule Galaxy software, an open source SOA governance platform with an integrated registry and repository.The company also will refresh its Mule open source ESB (enterprise service bus) and offer Mule Saturn, a lightweight BAM (business activity monitoring) tool that works with the ESB.Mule Galaxy 1.0 stores and manages SOA artifacts and provides governance and lifecycle management. MuleSource is positioning Galaxy, Mule, and Saturn as products that make SOA infrastructure software more accessible to enterprises. The Community edition of Galaxy is available now, and a fully tested enterprise edition is due in the second quarter of this year."Basically, [Galaxy] makes services? available through kind of a subscription, like an RSS feed, and it allows you to define [service levels]," Dave Rosenberg, MuleSource CEO, said.Working with Mule software or as a stand-alone component in an SOA infrastructure, Galaxy features a RESTful Atom Pub interface to simplify integration with frameworks such as Apache CXF and Windows Communication Foundation, MuleSource said. Support for artifact types is provided for Mule configuration, WSDL (Web Service Definition Language), policies, and custom artifacts. Enterprises can set their own policies.Governance, MuleSource said, will become increasingly important as the number of in-use services grows. Galaxy increases reuse and lowers application development costs, improves collaboration, and enables centralized control of policies and management, the company said.A Mule ESB user, while not planning to adopt Galaxy, nonetheless applauded its release."I think that's a great idea because the fact that it's open source allows a lot more transparency into what the code is doing and how it is doing it," said the user, Eugene Ciurana, director of systems infrastructure at LeapFrog Enterprises, makers of LeapFrog educational toys. LeapFrog has no plans to use Galaxy because its transactional systems do not leverage its Mule software.In the ESB space, MuleSouce is offering Mule 1.5 Enterprise Edition, a subscription-only enterprise packaging of the company's ESB integration platform. "This is the first time that we're splitting the community and enterprise versions," Rosenberg said.Mule's ESB moves and manages data between disparate systems. It supports multiple transport protocols, including Java Message Service, MQ Series, FTP, and HTTP. The ESB, MuleSource said, can process as many as 30 million messages per minute."We have higher performance at this point, we believe, than anybody," Rosenberg said. The enterprise-level product features remote diagnostics, patch management, and provisioning via the MuleHQ tool as well as support for BPEL and streaming of very large files. Remote diagnostics capabilities allow MuleSource support personnel to assess a system.Nested routers in the ESB decouple service implementations from service interfaces. Multiple models are supported to manage runtime behavior, including SEDA (staged event-driven architecture), pipeline, and streaming.LeapFrog has based its integrations on Mule."It?s the backbone for all the integration for all the Web platforms that LeapFrog has," said Ciurana. "LeapFrog is planning to do over 10 different Web sites and Web applications, and the Mule ESB ties all of them together across different environments and different countries, and it also ties [to] our third-party service providers," Ciurana said.Saturn, meanwhile, can track transactions that go through Mule. It works with Version 1.5 of the enterprise ESB. Saturn is a BAM tool for business processes and workflow. It complements SOA infrastructure by providing detailed logging and reporting on transactions.To provide visibility into transaction flows, developers and operations staff can drill down on transaction details and set message-level breakpoints for deep log analytics, according to MuleSource.Other features of Saturn include process visualization, root-cause analysis, and reporting on service-level agreements.Other companies, such as Iona, also have offered open source ESB technology. The open source ESB market, Rosenberg said, has made ESB more accessible by lowering the barrier to entry.LeapFrog has found that, even though it must pay for support for open source software, it still saves money on it compared to commercial software. The company last year spent almost $400,000 in open source subscriptions, but this figure would have risen to $1.6 million if commercial licenses were required, he said.Support for open source software also is superior to support on commercial software, Ciurana said. "That's the only way these guys can make money. They tend to be more customer oriented," he said.Mule 1.5 Enterprise and the beta version of Saturn are available Tuesday. Mule 1.5 prices start at $7,000 per year. Galaxy 1.0 Community, the untested version, will be offered Tuesday at no cost. The supported Galaxy 1.0 Enterprise product expected in the second quarter will feature subscription support, but no price has been set yet.
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Open-source database to jump from beta testing to production within three months.
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Oracle may be willing to spend a record sum -- over $6 billion -- to acquire a middleware provider it believes will give it a permanent leg up on Microsoft's SQL Server. Does it still take a huge M&A like this to stay on par with Microsoft?
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Customers will be able to get their hands on the delayed version of Oracle Corp.'s E-Business Suite 11i.10 within 60 days, the Redwood Shores, California, company announced Monday, at the opening day of its OpenWorld conference in London.
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(InfoWorld) - On Tuesday, Unisys plans to announce an expansion of its relationship with Oracle to move mainframe and Unix deployments over to Linux and SOA. Unisys and Oracle have partnered before, but the new arrangement features joint engineering, sales, and marketing activities to boost system migrations. Featured in the expanded arrangement are specific blueprints that demonstrate how to redeploy applications. For example, the companies have been building a blueprint, or "proof point," on moving from an IBM CICS environment onto Linux running Oracle Fusion middleware and the Oracle 10g database on Unisys ES 7000/one Enterprise Servers. These servers are powered by Intel-based multi-core processors. Also in this particular mix would be Micro Focus MTO (mainframe transaction option) software for CICS compatibility. The blueprints are horizontal and not industry-specific. Critical to the arrangement is use of the Unisys 3D-VE (3D Visible Enterprise) methodology, which features a knowledge-mining and abstraction service. Through the extraction of business rules and policies, users gain a better understanding of their applications. "One of the key areas that's different about our approach compared to some of the others is our story is not just advocating moving the applications over from one platform to another. What we've seen from customers is a desire to understand what the applications do in the first place," said Ali Shadman, Unisys vice president and general manager of open-source solutions, systems, and technology. Through 3D-VE, users can see the impacts of applications changes at the technology and business layers more clearly, Shadman said. The bulk of Unisys's alliance with Oracle will be geared toward moving z/OS and MVS mainframes over Linux. But the company has seen instances of users moving over very large Unix systems, said Shadman. Unisys can move over applications without rewriting code in some instances. Code conversions can be done manually or automatically. There are tools, for example, to convert over Addabas code. Other Oracle products featured in the alliance with Unisys include Oracle applications and the Oracle Enterprise Manager tool for application management as well as Oracle On-Demand outsourcing services.
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Work hard for the money IBM today rolled out 23 updated product and 11 professional services offerings for service oriented architectures (SOAs). Some use technology from recent and recent-ish acquisitions, Webify, BuildForge and Bowstreet.â¦