Oracle to offer composite applications

Oracle has announced details of a new integration architecture and plans to create composite programs based on elements from individual applications. Although the firm poured cold water on speculation that the project represented a diversion from the Fusion applications development approach to unite disparate applications lines, the new plans could help retain customers by helping them exploit current assets.

First referred to as Project X, the Application Integration Architecture is a standards-based platform based on the business process execution language (BPEL) to deliver application solutions that use a common object and service model.

“It’s a way of allowing applications to talk to each other,” said Paco Aubrejuan, Oracle applications strategy vice-president.

“This will be a non-persistent object layer that transforms and enriches applications.”

Although primarily aimed at Oracle applications, the architecture could also be used with home-grown and third-party programs, Aubrejuan added.

Oracle will also offer Process Integration Packs that are intended to solve common scenarios by leaning on functionality embedded in individual programs. The first of these will be launched at the end of May with an order-to-cash program that uses elements from Siebel and the Oracle E-Business Suite, and an opportunity-to-quote program that uses elements from Siebel CRM On-Demand and the E-Business Suite.

“It’s not a one-shot deal but what we want to do is offer our governance model and a how-to guide,” said Aubrejuan. “We’re saying, ‘here’s how we did it’ because we’ve been faced with the same challenges as customers.”

Separately, Aubrejuan said that contrary to speculation, Oracle has not changed its roadmap for Fusion applications. However, some watchers argued that the integration plan could act as placeholder.

Neil Macehiter of analyst Macehiter Ward-Dutton said, “The Fusion applications are still some way off and, even when they do arrive, customers are not necessarily going to migrate from the Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft and JDE solutions. The Application Integration Architecture provides customers with the means to support business processes which span those application stovepipes, so it does plug a pre-Fusion gap.”

Although Oracle said the architecture was a higher–level initiative than SAP’s xApps, Macehiter said that plans to bring partners into the mix meant that “the overall vision bears a striking resemblance to xApps, allowing the partner ecosystems to build out from the Oracle applications platform to address horizontal and vertical market requirements. Getting the buy-in from the systems integrators will be key in this regard.”