As Published In September/October 2005

Middle Matters
By Greg Karpain

As part of its middleware vision, Oracle rebrands components.

Middleware is an evolving term and product category. When the word was introduced more than 20 years ago, middleware generally referred to any programming that served to "glue together" or mediate two separate existing systems. Since then, middleware has evolved to encompass numerous technologies that reside between the application and database layers. The word "middleware" is now used to describe solutions as broad as application servers, portals, security, content management systems, and a host of tools that support the application development and delivery process. Middleware itself is especially integral to today's information technology systems based on XML, Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and Web services. Middleware, in many ways, is becoming the enabling technology of enterprises as they move beyond the functional limits of siloed applications—seeking the strategic flexibility and cost savings of a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Oracle's middleware offerings have evolved along with the definition of the word, often helping to redefine the space, according to Brian Dayton, product marketing director for Oracle's middleware family of products. "Oracle was one of the first software vendors to understand the potential role of middleware," says Dayton. "Oracle's vision has been a major force in evolving middleware, going beyond back-office 'glue' and into the arena of delivering frontline business value." According to Dayton, Oracle was a first mover in this direction by expanding Oracle Application Server into a highly integrated set of solutions. For example, Oracle was the first vendor to internet-enable and integrate the application server with a portal. Then, Dayton says, Oracle incorporated even more applications and functionality into this middle tier, providing components to manage business processes; handle object-relational mapping between J2EE applications and the database; provide business intelligence and security across all enterprise applications, and more.

The next step in Oracle's vision of middleware, says Rick Schultz, vice president of marketing for Oracle's middleware family of products, is to present a series of in-depth and cohesive service-delivery platforms. To better articulate this vision in the marketplace, the company earlier this year introduced Oracle Fusion Middleware, a newly created brand for the entire family of Oracle's middleware products. "Oracle Fusion Middleware includes capabilities such as the first integrated portal, security, business intelligence, and content management, thereby providing a strong value-added proposition for IT departments responsible for delivering, evolving, and maintaining service-oriented applications," he explains.

Specifically, Oracle Fusion Middleware consolidates a vast array of functionality and tools from Oracle's Application Server, Data Hub, and Collaboration Suite product lines under one integrated brand family. This family includes development and management tools for J2EE, database, and composite Web service applications; the highest performing J2EE application server on the market; identity management; portal; wireless; Web conferencing; content management; business intelligence; integration; business process management; and much more. According to Scott Howley, director of product management for Oracle Fusion Middleware, it's by far the broadest set of middleware functionality available on the market today and is designed to help IT meet increasingly tight budgets and service-delivery schedules.

"Oracle Fusion Middleware addresses head-on the fact that IT departments are becoming compressed by previously unseen time and productivity pressures," says Howley. "Oracle Fusion Middleware gives IT architects and developers a rich set of integrated middleware components, which allows IT staff to spend less time integrating multivendor solutions and infrastructure and instead dedicate time to more critical areas such as adding value to the business."

"Oracle Fusion Middleware is also tried and true," adds Vijay Tella, Oracle's chief strategy officer for Oracle Application Server. "It already supports all the components needed to implement a comprehensive SOA platform today; whereas competing companies are presenting a lot of what already exists in Oracle Fusion Middleware as future road map items. Its major value propositions are that it's cohesive by design; it assists companies dealing with heterogeneous environments; and it offers the broadest set of functionality on the market for SOA." Tella also points out that Oracle Fusion Middleware will soon be certified for PeopleSoft and JD Edwards and provide the base for future Oracle offerings.

Fusing Heterogeneous Environments According to SOA

Occasionally, a company has the luxury of building its IT systems from the ground up, and for these fortunate enterprises, the lure of an entirely Oracle-based, cohesive, single vendor design is strong. However, the reality is that most companies struggle with a preexisting IT environment consisting of a hodgepodge of heterogeneous solutions. IT environments are very diverse, using a myriad of best-of-breed applications, different types of databases, application servers, portals, and messaging systems.

To tackle these integration challenges while attempting to make better use of existing resources, says Tella, many companies are looking to implement SOAs. Applications built according to SOA are composed of loosely coupled components whose use is coordinated according to a standards-based management system. Standards that figure prominently into SOA are XML, SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL for creating and exposing application components, and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) for managing or "orchestrating" these components into workflows.

Enterprises look to SOAs to enable the rapid creation, deployment, and integration of new applications with existing applications. "Two principal goals of building an SOA are to build solutions rapidly while reusing and leveraging the preexisting environment," explains Tella. "Oracle Fusion Middleware supports both these needs. You can adopt new Oracle Fusion Middleware technology and build an SOA in a very integrated and agile fashion, without implementing a big-bang type of adoption."

"Oracle Fusion Middleware can be fully utilized as the most complete and cohesive platform available for delivering an SOA, as a single vendor solution, or it can be used as a list of best-of-breed standalone components," adds Tella. "Through Oracle's extensive third-party certification program and interoperability tests, these best-of-breed components—for example, Oracle Portal, or Oracle BPEL Process Manager—will run in an integrated fashion with a customer's existing environment, such as non-Oracle application servers and messaging systems." This enables customers to evolve their enterprises toward the benefits of SOA, while leveraging their investments in existing technologies and skill sets.

Leveraging Cohesiveness, Availability

During the past three years, Lansing Community College (LCC), a public two-year college serving 40,000 students in Lansing, Michigan, has successfully evolved its middleware into a myriad of complete service-delivery platforms with Oracle Fusion Middleware components.

The college, like other institutions of its size, is driven by a need to be competitive and responsive to changing community needs. "Two-year schools must be transformational and able to turn on a dime in order to be competitive because job skills are changing daily," says Glenn Cerny, vice president and chief information officer at LCC.

LCC began its Oracle Fusion Middleware journey with Oracle Application Server 10g and Oracle Portal with the goal of increasing student accessibility. Oracle Portal enabled LCC to consolidate its systems, eliminate redundant Web sites, and provide a single location for students, staff, and faculty to find course information, send and receive e-mail, and share files. Working in concert with Oracle Consulting and Efficient Computing, a San Francisco-based Oracle partner specializing in higher education systems, Cerny reports that LCC met its goal of increased student accessibility in an aggressive time frame. In less than a semester (September to early January 2003), the great majority of the school's 40,000 students were registered Oracle Portal users. After that, it was simply a matter of education, LCC's specialty, to entice the remaining users to take advantage of its new services.

For students who previously had to visit the college to get information about schedules and availability, having access to real-time information via the Web is a huge improvement. "The registration process used to be frustrating and it was difficult to understand what classes were still available. Oracle Portal makes the process much smoother," says Cerny.

Snapshots Lansing Community College www.lcc.edu Lansing Community College (LCC) in Lansing, Michigan, is a public two-year college committed to providing excellence in education to 40,00 a0 students each year. Industry: Higher education Oracle products and services: Oracle Application Server 10g, Oracle9i Application Server, Oracle Portal, Oracle HTML DB, and Oracle Collaboration Suite, including Oracle Email, Oracle Web Conferencing, Oracle Files, and Oracle Voicemail & Fax.

Cerny points out that Oracle's integrated middleware components have allowed LCC to introduce new applications and processes, or modify existing ones, quickly. "Oracle Fusion Middleware components allow us to act fast and flexibly to provide a full plate of new services. Oracle's middleware strategy, in making a cohesive set of SOA delivery platforms that are also certified to run with major third-party products, means that we can successfully deliver in any existing environment."

Providing Collaboration Tools

As part of its step-by-step approach to implementing Oracle Fusion Middleware capabilities, LCC next deployed Oracle Collaboration Suite with the goal of creating the online college of the future. For example, using Oracle Collaboration Suite, LCC's online courses take on an entirely new and deeper dimension, by allowing students and teachers to share desktops and have immediate voice access to each other. "Using Oracle Web Conferencing," says Cerny, "we have completely eliminated the physical location barrier for online students."

Oracle Collaboration Suite also enables LCC to optimize its business processes and drive down costs by being more flexible and efficient. The suite is designed to include and take advantage of Oracle Database and Oracle Application Server and is the first complete suite on the market to integrate unstructured content, documents, e-mail, calendaring, and real-time tools directly into the enterprise's business processes.

"Through the use of Oracle Collaboration Suite and Oracle Portal, we've grown our virtual college by about 13 percent every year, which is now approaching 15 percent of the college's total offerings," estimates Cerny.

Cerny and staff aren't wasting any time collaboration-enabling the college. Today, metrics show that approximately 2,200 faculty and staff are using Oracle Web Conferencing and the Oracle Email and Oracle Files components. And, Oracle Files enables collaboration and supports document versioning so that students and faculty alike are now able to share documents over the Web, in the convenience of their own homes.

Built-in Security

While students and faculty are enjoying greater convenience, the IT staff is enjoying an increased sense of satisfaction—and system security. Cerny realized that implementing Oracle Fusion Middleware would significantly increase both data security, through the centralization of data, and update security, due to internal product integration. During an extensive security audit last year, security consultancies Neohapsis and Integrigy agreed.

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"Neohapsis and Integrigy told us after a comprehensive security audit that we're a step ahead of everybody else because we don't have a lot of interfaces built to legacy systems and a lot of conversions across boxes that are speaking to each other," says Cerny. "Any time you upgrade, integrations potentially become vulnerable to security issues. One of the main points of Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle in general, is to ensure that it all upgrades smoothly."

Differentiating the Business

Although Oracle's leading vision is an integral part of the current state of the industry, the real drive toward integration, of course, comes from companies in the trenches. Thousands of different kinds of businesses are trying to differentiate themselves in one of the richest competitive forests of all time.

"Based on our current Oracle infrastructure, which includes several Oracle applications, such as Oracle Human Resources Management System (HRMS), Oracle Financials, and Oracle Student System (OSS), as well as an expanding menu of Oracle Fusion Middleware components, we are able to accomplish 95 percent of our needed applications," concludes Cerny. "Not only does this rich Oracle ecosystem give us features that make life simpler and better for our end user— which is ultimately what gives us a competitive advantage as a college—but it makes life simpler for our management and IT staff. We're definitely getting our money's worth."