AIA PIP's and Application compatibility

The AIA Foundation Pack (FP) 2.0.1 was released in mid-March 2008. There have been a number of PIP's that existed prior to this release of AIA FP 2.0.1. There are PIP's based on this release of AIA and of course a large number planned to be released on future releases of AIA.

It is important to note that the PIP's provide generic process integration functionality between major application suites, but these PIP's have specific application version compatibility implications. For example the popular Siebel CRM to Oracle EBS PIP which integrates the Quote to Order process flow was available as part of AIA 1.0. This PIP was certified for EBS 11i.10.2 and Siebel 7.8. The newer version of this PIP (built on FP 2.0.1) will, provide the same functionality but will be compatible with Siebel 8.0 and EBS 12.1. This leaves users of EBS Release 12.0 (12.0.1 through 12.0.4) without AIA certified PIP's for integration with Siebel.

There is a difference between certified and workable. Although, the older versions of the PIP can be retrofitted to work with EBS 12.0, it will not be explicitly certified or supported by Oracle. This does leave gaps in the AIA based PIP's that are certified for specific applications. It would be important to get specifics on the application version that are supported when deciding on the integration framework.

COLLABORATE 2008 - Complete, Open, INTEGRATED

The COLLABORATE 2008 in Denver lived up to its expectation of being a great networking and educational event. The sessions ranging from "Using Rich components in ADF" to "From OCP to CIO" covered a wide array of topics. It was also interesting to listen to the speech by Eric Burton on "How to get Volunteers" during the OAUG SIG coordinator luncheon.

Charles Phillips keynote speech centered around the key points of Complete, Open and Integrated.

Complete in terms of breadth of technology ie: Database, Middleware and Application, as well as breadth of functionality offered by the Oracle ERP packages.

Open in terms of the standards used and the ability to extend the applications.

In the "Integrated" space Charles Phillips detailed the Application Integration Technology (AIA) offering and explained how it formed the foundation for Oracle's integration initiatives. This area will receive renewed attention as a result of the announcements made at COLLABORATE 2008
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AIA versus SAP's Business ByDesign

There has been a tendency to try and equate SAP's Business ByDesign with Oracle's AIA offering. This is an unequal comparison as the two offerings are fundamentally different.

SAP's Business ByDesign is a SaaS based on demand offering for the SMB market. With this offering SAP provides a pre-built set of business processes built on a base of 2100 web services. The functionality that is provided is supported by SAP, and cannot be customized.

Oracle's AIA offering is a platform for integration and extension. It provides a set of pre-built integration solutions (PIP's), and the platform can also be used to build extensions and customizations. This offering is not targeted for a specific market segment.

The only common feature in these two offerings is that they are based on a SOA framework.

AIA and Intellectual Property (IP)

AIA provides Oracle partners the ability to build out extensions to core ERP. This raises the question of ownership of IP. Oracle has built out 3 models for AIA based development with corresponding IP implications:

1. Co-development: This is an invitation only model wherein Oracle will invite partners who have deep vertical expertise, to co-develop with Oracle. This model helps Oracle leverage the deep vertical expertise provided by a partner. The partner gets exclusive marketing rights to this co-developed functionality as well as the opportunity to build out a skill base in AIA. IP is owned by Oracle
2. Oracle Certified extensions: A partner would build out functionality based on the Oracle AIA framework. They would go through a certification process with Oracle. A certified offering would be co-marketed with Oracle. Oracle would own the IP and the solution would be eventually supported by Oracle.
3. Partner/SI owned solution: A partner would build out a solution on an AIA based framework. The solution would be owned and maintained by the partner. Partner owns the IP.

PIP as a starter-kit

The Process Integration Pack's (PIP's) that Oracle currently provides are built on the AIA Foundation Pack and are essentially aimed at building out end-to-end process flows across major Oracle product suites. This is partly a necessity based on Oracle's acquisition strategy. By creating the AIA framework Oracle has created an extensible integration/extension platform that it uses internally to stitch together process flows, and at the same time provide an extension platform for the wider partner community.

The current Oracle supplied PIP's create flows such as quoting in Siebel integrated to ordering in Oracle EBS. These PIP's essentially are a "starter-kit" providing base integration between major product suites. These PIP's will essentially be extended to fill out industry specific needs. The Oracle supplied PIP's provide an Oracle supported jump-start to integrating Oracle suites and providing end-to-end business process flows.

Extending Oracle ERP using AIA

The Oracle AIA offering fundamentally changes the manner in which functionality within the Oracle ERP Suites (Oracle EBS/PeopleSoft/JD Edwards) can be extended. It also provides a new mechanism for integrating with these ERP Suites.

Traditionally any extensions built to an Oracle ERP Suite, to support non-standard functionality were tagged as bespoke customizations. These were clearly not supported by Oracle and required the creating organization and/or vendor to support the customization. Upgrades to the core ERP got particularly complex in environments having extensive customizations, since these customizations had to be retrofitted for the new version of the ERP. Organizations did not proceed down the path out of choice. Their unique business processes gave them little choice other than to customize the "canned" functionality.

The Oracle AIA offering provides an Oracle supported platform to build extensions to the core Oracle ERP. AIA provides a framework that is supported and enhanced by Oracle. Using this framework and the defined design principles; extensions can be built to the core ERP to support unique business processes. These unique extensions would continue to be functional across upgrades and future releases of the core ERP. Essentially Oracle would continue to support the extension framework, and extensions built on this framework would in-turn be supported without requiring extensive rework.

With the AIA platform Oracle has created an "application" for integration and extensions.

The AIA platform also opens up a new ecosystem for ISV's and SI's to build extensions to core ERP. These can be industry specific or could fill out niche gaps in the core ERP. The fact that they are built on AIA implies inherent standardization and reusability. A hosted model for more complex functionality is also possible.

The AIA based development model allows Oracle to significantly enhance the development of highly niche functionality by farming out development to a new channel of developers. This arrangement helps Oracle by creating an ecosystem that produces highly specific vertical functionality which Oracle does not have the bandwidth to build, and provides Oracle partners the ability to create industry specific differentiated verticals.

Old AIA new AIA

The buzz around AIA has ben around since Oracle Open World (OOW) 2007. In fact during OOW 2007 there were about 10 PIP's that were announced. These were primarily built to integrate process flows within Siebel with other main line Oracle products such as Oracle E-Business Suite. However all of these "PIP's" were built using BPEL and had extensive installtion and configuration steps. They did not leverage the AIA Foundation pack which was essentailly still under development.

With the release of the AIA foundation pack in mid-March 2008, the ensuing PIP's are built on the using the true AIA framework. It is important to take this into account when deploying PIP's since the older generation PIP's are more complex to install and maintain.

The newer generation PIP's are extensible by leveraging the existing EBO's and EBS services.

BI or Portal front end to SOA applications

The benefits of SOA based component applications has been widely discussed. Having built these applications using reusable web-services, the next iteration is presenting this functionality via a user-friendly front end.

There are two choices to this from an Oracle perspective. A portal based front end, or an OBIEE based dashboard that presents a graphical version of the raw data. It could also be a combination of both.

In either case an SOA implementation requires a presentation layer to provide a UI to the functionality and integration that has been created. The right choice of front end is crucial to end user acceptance. BI based dashboards, where applicable, are the most intuitive for end users. Portal functionality is useful when multiple data sources are being brought together.

With Web 2.0 functionality providing yet another choice, this area of discussion will continue to be an area of healthy debate