Oracle Integration Cloud Service

Many companies today are looking to remove costs from the bottom line by moving non-mission critical applications into the cloud. There are many advantages to doing this but the main being to lower the TCO (total cost of ownership). However, there still remains the problem of integrating these applications with other enterprise applications and with on premise systems. These new SaaS applications cannot function in splendid isolation!

I have spent some time recently investigating Oracle’s Cloud Integration Service (ICS). ICS is designed to simplify the task of integrating data between SaaS applications. It can also be used for SaaS to on premise integration using either Rest or Web service calls (currently).

Oracle has done a good job of abstracting the complexity of connecting to SaaS applications by introducing Application Connectors: all the user needs to do is to configure the endpoint and provide credentials. Once connected, the user can use the web based mapping tool to map data between the applications.

Oracle has been keen to boost the community aspects of the tool by providing recommended mappings based on what most users currently use. This can make the job of mapping much simpler and open up the possibility that integrations can be done by functional rather than technical experts. Nevertheless, Oracle also provides more advanced mapping functions where straight forward field mapping is not obvious or achievable.

Oracle is really pushing this area and they are providing many pre built application connectors to SaaS applications such as its own SaaS offerings (e.g Service Cloud) but also third parties such as SAP, Netsuite and Linkedin. The pace of development is very rapid in this area and new connectors are being provided almost monthly by Oracle. There are somewhere in the region of 2500 SaaS applications available in the market today and Oracle cannot possibly hope to provide connectors for all of them. So, Oracle are supporting third party developers to create their own Application Connectors using the shipped SDK.  Since ICS is based on the tried and tested Oracle Service Bus for its implementation, the same application connectors can be used on premise or in the cloud. Perfect for saving time and effort!

Security protocols are supported too. Web Service calls can be secured with basic authentication, WS-Security username/token, or other mechanisms, along with transport level security using SSL/TLS. Future releases will support the uploading of certificates. Integration Cloud Service runs on Oracle’s secure cloud infrastructure with each tenant getting their own dedicated environment.

The beauty of ICS lies in the fact that integration between SaaS applications can be packaged up and sold (or even given away!) on the Oracle Marketplace. This will help companies moving to the cloud to rapidly set up integrations that previously would have taken weeks or months via the more traditional software development lifecycles.

Oracle has made several announcements regarding the roadmap for ICS and they are quite exciting! These include the introduction of basic orchestration features in future versions to allow for enrichment of data prior to mapping. Also, to help with security issues, Oracle will provide agents that will execute on premise and talk back to ICS. These agents communicate via Rest so there is no need for complex firewall rules.

Oracle offers four main approaches to integration with ICS:

Cloud adapters, Technical adapters (for database, FTP, SOAP connections), on premise agents (to be introduced shortly) and finally the SDK/market place.

Further adapters will become available over the next few months to open ICS up to SFTP, databases and many other back-end systems.

Most importantly, Oracle also provides rich web based monitoring tools to provide visibility onto the performance and reliability of the integrations.

So one question I had was where does SOA Suite fit in now that more orchestration features are being built into ICS? I think that the answer lies in what you are trying to integrate. In much the same way as Oracle Service Bus can be used to provide orchestration (of sorts using pipelines), I would never recommend doing this. SOA Suite has many features that make this more suitable such as dehydration. In the same way, just because ICS can do something, doesn’t mean that it should be used if it is not best tool for the job. So, in summary, for more complex integrations, especially long running processes, SOA Suite is still the best choice – whether on premise or in the cloud. ICS however, is an excellent tool that provides an elevated user experience (meaning that it can be used by non-core techies) for SaaS to Saas and SaaS to on premise integrations.

Finally, I would not recommend using the tool for batch integrations either, as there are better alternatives, such as Oracle Data Integrator (ODI).