The off again, on again pursuit finally came to an end when BEA announced its board had unanimously accepted Oracle’s offer. Discussions between the two companies became rancorous, as both firms fired off public volleys criticizing each other.

That’s all water under the proverbial bridge now. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said in a statement that Oracle Fusion middleware has an open ‘hot-pluggable’ architecture that allows customers the option of coupling BEA’s WebLogic Java Server to virtually all the components of the Fusion software suite.

Customers will get that opportunity possibly by mid-2008, when the two sides expect the deal to close. That opportunity looked like it could be a long time in coming late last year.

In October 2007, Oracle offered BEA $17 per share, a $6.66 billion valuation at the time. BEA subsequently rejected that offer, and held out for a better deal.

Once in place, BEA gives Oracle and Fusion a stronger product to go up against IBM in the application serving space. Both IBM and Oracle will woo potential middleware customers on the strength of their software stacks, which should give IBM customers a wedge in negotiating with Big Blue.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/oracle-closes-bea-deal-for-85-billion-2008-01/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/oracle-responds-to-realtime-events-2006-07 http://www.webpronews.com/oracle-responds-to-realtime-events-2006-07#comments Wed, 12 Jul 2006 16:37:28 +0000 WebProNews Staff http://www.webpronews.com/?p=30289 The company’s Event-Driven Middleware Suite debuted last month can complement service-oriented architectures with its pervasive messaging technology.

Popularity of service-oriented architectures (SOA) on standards-based platforms continues to grow. However, they are dependent on the input of the application user. Without that input, the SOA-based application is just the sound of one hand clapping.

Events happen frequently in a business, regardless of size. The movement of inventory, and its management, occupy business planners to a great extent. Technologies like RFID have helped in the administration of inventory levels.

But much more can be accomplished with the right technology solution. That’s what brought Oracle’s Kevin Clugage, product director of Oracle Fusion Middleware, to us via telephone today.

The product brings pervasive messaging to a business. It does so in a package that can scale from smaller companies to much larger enterprises. Since Oracle has based it on a standards-based platform, it should possess the extensibility a typical company needs to integrate it into existing operations.

Clugage provided an example of where such event-driven management can be of use. In an environment where certain sensitive products must be physically escorted out of a warehouse, the Middleware can track the RFID scan of a product unit and expect a subsequent scan of an authorized person’s ID to follow that within a few minutes.

If the preset timeframe between the product scan and ID scan passes without the second authorization, an event would be generated and communicated that a product may have left the facility without proper escort.

Oracle released the Fusion Middleware product in June. The Event-Driven Architecture consists of several components, which Clugage indicated would be hot-pluggable into an existing business’s processes:

•  Oracle Business Activity Monitoring – defines and analyzes event and event patterns;
•  Oracle Enterprise Service Bus – routes and distributes events between applications with no coding required;
•  Oracle Sensor Edge Server – captures, filters and manages events from physical sensors and automation equipment, including RFID;
•  Oracle Enterprise Messaging – delivers event messages reliably with configurable qualities-of-service; and
•  Oracle Business Rules – provides more flexible event routing and distribution via a high performance rules engine.

The automation that drives the real time responsiveness of Fusion Middleware can be an edge to those businesses that run a just-in-time inventory system. More information may be found online.

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HP (HPQ) and MySQL announced at the MySQL Users Conference that the support agreement will see HP offer MySQL support directly beginning in May, and through its channel partners starting in June.

MySQL will train HP Services personnel on the product line to prepare them for the consulting, integration, and support they will provide. HP plans to include MySQL in its Open Source Integrated Portfolio.

“HP is the only IT service provider that can serve as a single point of accountability for customers seeking to integrate and manage MySQL database software in an IT environment,” said HP’s Dan Socci, vice president, worldwide marketing and sales.

HP plans to include MySQL in its Open Source Middleware Stacks. The company announced those earlier in April, as part of the Open Source Integrated Portfolio; the Stacks include hardware platforms, Red Hat or SuSE Linux distributions, middleware like MySQL, JBoss, and BEA, and various management tools and other software.

MySQL Network will be the component delivered by MySQL and supported by HP.

This subscription service includes the MySQL software, updates/upgrades, tech support, and other assistance for database administrators and developers.

“For businesses, it means easier software integration, leveraging HP’s vast global support network, and ultimately lowering overall IT costs,” said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB.

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The “Oracle Fusion Middleware” products will be formally announced on Monday.

A CRMBuyer article says:

“In addition, the company is communicating well with customers. “Oracle seems to be doing a good job talking with customers and getting their feedback as they continue to assimilate the acquisitions,” Jason Corsello, senior analyst, Yankee Group, said.

Fusion, Oracle said, is an evolutionary plan to integrate all the companies’ products, but without forcing a migration. The rollout will occur slowly over the course of a few years. In the meantime, Oracle will continue to support PeopleSoft products, including Enterprise, J.D. Edwards and World, through at least 2013, as it had promised earlier.”

According to an InformationWeek article, Oracle plans to launch PeopleSoft integration in two phases starting in the second quarter.

Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

Continuous Computing announced that its popular upSuite High Availability (HA) middleware program has been successfully ported to the Linux operating system to support easy deployment of mission-critical telecom infrastructure and enterprise networking applications. upSuite HA for Linux has been optimized for modular communications platforms using Intel Xeon and Pentium processors on AdvancedTCA, CompactPCI, and rackmount server form factors.

upSuite HA is an award-winning middleware product that provides application-transparent high availability for essential telecom central office functions such as billing, OAM&P (operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning), call processing, and network element management. Employing a simple active/standby architecture, upSuite HA for Linux offers the following three primary capabilities:

– Provides real-time file replication at the file-system level;

– Provides sub-second detection of critical hardware, software, or network faults; and

– Enables sub-second failover from an active to a standby server to ensure continuous service operation.

A typical deployment application for upSuite HA is a “hot standby” backup server for a billing system. Using redundant connectivity over a regular TCP/IP network, upSuite HA enables the backup server to instantly become operational and active in the event of a failure of the primary server. Additionally, when the primary server is restored and brought back online, upSuite HA rapidly and efficiently synchronizes the file systems of the two machines with minimal impact on the performance of the main application, in this case the billing system.

A key distinguishing feature of upSuite HA is that it is extremely easy to install, maintain, and use because it is application transparent and can be easily integrated into a wide array of telecommunication and enterprise networking applications. In addition, upSuite HA is equally applicable to Continuous Computing’s AdvancedTCA product family as well as the Flex21 cPCI product line since the middleware was designed to work in heterogeneous hardware environments of dissimilar processors and disk storage methods.

“Carrier-grade Linux is becoming much more pervasive in Tier 1 telecom infrastructure, particularly for products like soft-switches and signaling gateways that support next-generation packet services,” stated Ken Kalb, chief executive officer of Continuous Computing. “upSuite HA is the right product at the right time to quickly and affordably enable 99.999% reliable performance for nearly any Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or 3G Wireless network element. The popularity of carrier-grade Linux coupled with the simplicity of high availability enabled by upSuite HA is a winning combination.”

“Continuous Computing recognizes the time-to-market value of modular communications platforms based on industry standards and built on Intel Architecture with the Linux operating system,” commented Anthony Ambrose, general manager, Modular Platform Programs of Intel Corporation. “Products like upSuite HA continue the momentum of solutions utilizing the open-source model and deliver on the demand for mission-critical telecom and enterprise networking applications.”

upSuite HA for Linux supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES 9.0. Additional product information may be obtained at the company’s exhibit within the Intel Communications Alliance Summit 2004 Pavilion of the Intel Developer Forum located at the Moscone South Convention Center in San Francisco, from September 7-9.

LinuxProNews offers both beginners and experienced Linux Pro’s tips, expert advice and the latest technology innovations that impact Linux.

Building Real-Time Enterprises

Another technically correct term associated with On Demand is the Real-Time Enterprise’.

A logistics operation that checks goods in and out of warehouse inventory systems holds second-hand, static data, in that the item might be later misplaced but the database will still reflect the old information. It’s not real-time data, it’s not live because it needs manual update to reflect reality, and that costs a fortune. Even one misplaced item can cost $’000′s, because the business process failures it causes, such as the customer orders that are based on this old, incorrect data.

Thus “organic IT” is achieved through models that harness literal information: RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags attached to stock items that utilise mobile Location Based Services’ transmit their location as it always is, literally. Therefore workflow designed to reference these services becomes a real-time process, and provides the foundation for self-managing networks. There is no need to spend $ and time checking in an item when its location is always known to a real-time IT environment.

Legacy transformation

Of course the key question is how you update the legacy systems that run the current logistics operations, the SAPs through to the old mainframe platforms.

Legacy transformation’ is the function of rejuvenating old, change-resistant environments, and will occur across three dimensions:

The hardware they run on
Their interoperation with other systems
How they are updated by programmers

The On Demand Services Architecture combines these to make IT inherently adaptable to change, and is achieved through the following foundations.

Self-created problems

The key principle of self-organising systems is to reduce, not increase, the manual workload and this is especially important for technology, a domain that continually gets strong pressure to demonstrate how it adds real value to the business for what it costs. This is accomplished through understanding how we create this workload in the first place.

IT is designed and deployed from a restricted, top down point of view, in that when a department or even an organisation decides it needs CRM or other functionality, another duplicated island of information is created when a package or new code is deployed.

Although there is only ever one actual physical customer or only one actual bicycle being shipped from China to Tescos in London, no matter the question in IT the answer is always to implement a new database. Another instance of static, duplicated data that already exists in multiple systems across multiple companies.

Middleware is dead. Long live shared services.

Therefore we create the workload for ourselves, we create the need for EAI, for the middleware needed so that “this system can talk to that system”. The most common source of cost, pain and change resistance in every IT project.

When we consider the desired end-result, we can see how this is a process of going one step back then one forward. That result is information singularity, data changes being universally reflected throughout all relevant value chain systems, so that when orders are placed or customers’ details changed it’s consistently updated everywhere it needs to be.

Multiple different applications are deployed, then enormous sums spent trying to re-unite them. We dig a hole, get in it, then try and fill it back in while we’re still in it.

Like all effective solutions, it’s one of simplicity: Don’t dig the hole to begin with. If there is only one customer, only one bicycle, then design business processes to reflect the physical reality. Ignore artificial organisational boundaries and think in terms of being only a part of broader, end-to-end workflow that spans from customer to manufacturer.

Logistics requires bulk shipping that is broken down incrementally as it tends towards a single user, but information about the contained items doesn’t need to work the same way. Information flow can be entirely frictionless. If we let it.

Don’t seek to create another copy of redundant data, access a single, real-time source.

Distributed, shared services

These single sources will be distributed, shared services. It’s what really underlies the appeal of Web services: A universal programming environment where we can create new applications faster by embedding patterns of calls to other remote services.

Ironically it’s been positioned as a new form of lightweight middleware but it’s this global plug and play modularity that has been calling out to us that will actually spell the end of EAI.

This taken for granted habit, and its solution, is outlined by Sun Microsystem’s Executive VP of Software, Jonathan Schwartz, who predicts the end of middleware with the rise of shared services (http://sys-con.com/story/?storyid=43550&DE=1).

Jonathan is correct. The purpose of middleware is to shuffle and translate data between numerous different systems that need to access correct information, and the IT industry has fallen into the habit of assuming all this pain and cost is necessary.

It’s not. Just design your system to use a universal shared service and you’re always working from live, real-time, up to date information. No more data-cleaning’, ever again. No more EAI, ever again.

The rational of shared services, and why they will prove so effective, is one of ultra-simplicity. If there is only one You, there only needs to be one version of the data, and one service to manage and access it. This is most pertinently demonstrated through the function of user authentication. Isn’t it frustrating that every web site you use requires yet another username and password, yet another copy of your personal information? Because, of course, they too are duplicating CRM and web site databases.

Therefore, a model where this authentication is a network based, central service that each e-business environment accesses to gain exactly the same function as if they logged in locally, solves everyone’s problem:

Users only have to log in once to any device to then gain access to any site or service running anywhere

Business and government saves enormous sums by eliminating the need for EAI in the first place, being able to re-use software components without developing them from scratch each time, and of course delivering streamlined service access for customers

With telecommunication and Digital TV providers using these same shared services, so we will gain these benefits across all media and devices we use. From our mobile phones to our TVs. Any service will be accessible from anywhere, On Demand.

Frictionless e-business, Amazon style, everywhere.

Introducing Model Driven Federation

What we have started working on at the On Demand Network forum is the implementation methodology for distributed shared service architecture, a program called Model Driven Federation.

Shared services is achieved through federated architecture’, systems that accomplish singularity through subscribing to shared information models. This membership subscription defines how distributed components unite to exchange and replicate data to effect global consistency, and thus delivers a local peer of a universal service.

It defines that it both accepts and publishes updates, so that the ultimate user/owner of the data can change their information via any network member anywhere to see it consistently replicated throughout the network.

For example, change their address in their Microsoft Outlook and it will be changed on their friends’ mobile phone.

This distributed system approach will allow previously locked away process data on mainframes to be intelligently replicated out onto grid computing platforms provided by the virtualisation of lots of little hardware units, like blade servers’, operating in Internet colocation centres.

Ultra rapid development

MDF is based on Model Driven Architecture, pioneered by the OMG (omg.org), where faster, more effective development of software is possible through the re-use of pre-defined patterns’ of code. Since IT architecture is a function of design, then best-practices in terms of how application environments are constructed can be encoded into models that can be repeatedly applied given that all technology scenarios feature common requirements and structures.

MDF builds on this in that because the purpose of IT is to facilitate business processes, and that shared services are instances of federated workflow, then so the same model driven approach can be used. For example, user authentication is a workflow service that provides the mechanism to allow access to a systems resources, generating billing data from its usage and so forth.

Therefore establishing how this can be blended into an SAP, mainframe or other legacy environment means that this development can be re-used for any SAP installations since these are common modules in all of them.

When we look at any business model and enabling IT functions we can see that there are relatively few workflow building blocks. CRM, content management, ERP, might be complex and unique in each scenario, but cutting across each of them are the same lego bricks of authentication, messaging, information store and so on.

Therefore creating composite applications’, where new functionality is built by factoring together these universal components not only makes software engineering lighter and faster, but with pre-defined nested patterns of code with the shared services embedded, so naturally customer-centric applications will be built.

Instead of creating another instance of customer data and related processes like authentication, the singular methods they already use can be harnessed. Better software, cheaper and faster.

The primary characteristic of the Service Oriented Architecture is as it sounds, the service is logically separate from common network methods such as user authentication, meaning that developers will be freed to create only the new service. Only the new process itself, with all other common components provided by the network. With these shared services implemented universally by distributed computing, then they will be available locally so that they can be harnessed for ultra customisation’: Creating workflow specifically unique to each and every customer.

Process programming

Because these services are defined at the business process level, then so programming tools will come into effect that tackle the primary “change bottleneck” in corporate adaptability.

Graphical drag and drop style tools that allow non-technical users to modify workflow code will remove the constraint on change implementation that is caused when the software development team are the only resources in the company who can change the business systems. With every new business initiative, from a simple marketing campaign to launch of a new product, requiring changes made to these systems then so this constraint causes queues of workload to build up and thus profit growth programs are held back.

The business is exposed to threats of competitors exploiting market opportunities quicker and feedback from customers cannot be reflected quickly back into the infrastructure. In general, it’s the lack of an adaptable IT platform.

When front-line staff, non-technical managers and personnel, can directly change the systems themselves via these tools, then so the business can respond to the need for change in real-time. The two step process of stipulating business need to IT design can be eliminated and change implemented on demand, allowing actions such as call-centre agents responding to change requests then and there, and marketing teams capable of quickly exploiting opportunities without delay.

With services architecture including network as well as application level functions then so totally unique customisation can be applied to any and all processes. A call centre operator could create workflow for a customer so that when they phone their call avoids the touch-tone greeting and routes it straight to them instead. Marketing teams cold create e-brochures that locally adapt themselves to each customer, by embedding only services into the documents that dynamically combine with local, distributed preference and profile data. Therefore presenting contextually relevant actions such as generating and presenting a one-click hyperlink to order the product based on this being relevant to their customer profile.

Conclusion – The Adaptable Enterprise

With singular, universal shared services pervasively consistent across all businesses, and these graphical drag and drop tools available to frontline staff and the customers themselves, so that process services from any organisation can be easily composed into new workflow, then so Plug and Play business integration will replace EAI.

The ability to implement change in real-time is fully distributed to every touch-point where the business meets the market and so it becomes an inherently adaptable enterprise, changing on demand.

Neil McEvoy is CEO of the Genesis forum (http://www.webservices-strategy.com), an
industry initiative of Service Oriented Architecture vendors describing the
business benefits of their technologies. He is the Chief Architect of the On
Demand framework, the platform for autonomic business models that match demand
and supply perfectly. Neil provides unique consultancy solutions to enterprise
end-users and vendor suppliers customised to deliver ROI within the On Demand
market. He can be reached at http://www.ondemand-strategy.com