Enterprise application integration has always been a challenge for businesses of all sizes. The approach of integrating 'best-of-breed' products definitely has its share of success stories, but for each successful implementation I am aware of, there are many more projects without a happy ending. The sheer scope and size of those integration projects make it difficult to get them to a successful completion within a given time frame and budget.
In the past few years, Oracle has gone on an acquisition spree. Starting with PeopleSoft, it keeps snapping up business software companies at a dizzying rate. With the acquisition of Sun, it now has a complete set of business application and hardware to support them. All it needs now is a good integration platform to link everything together in the Oracle world. Here comes Oracle Application Integration Architecture.
Through AIA platform Oracle aims to take a big piece out of the system integration market. AIA enables product-based integration of all applications in Oracle repertoire. It lets you abstract your business models, workflows, rules, exceptions... out of specific applications. The business rules are applied and business models translated into application specific data formats through a set of connectors. Even better, Oracle will group the most frequently used flows between its application into Process Integration Packs. So in the perfect world you just select the apps, buy the AIA platform and the specific PIP, then voila your business systems are up and running.
I'll come back to discuss AIA from Communication industry perspective, what can and can't be done using the standard PIP. Please stay tune.
