21 JANUARY 2014

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SOA Partner Community Newsletter January 2014 Dear SOA & BPM Partner Community member, Our Fusion Middleware Partner Community Forum 2014 will take place in Malta February 2014. We have received more than 100 registrations so far and we are highly booked. If you are planning to attend, please book your place asap here! During the forum you will get the latest information on SOA Suite 12c, BPM Suite 12c, WebLogic 12c and our new upcoming mobile Suite. Hands-on bootcamps include IoT, ACM and Coherence.

SOA Blogs SOA on Facebook SOA on LinkedIn SOA on Twitter SOA Forum SOA Workspace

For SOA Suite developers Oracle has many presents for you in 2014! SOA Suite development licenses are free of charge, as they are now part of the OTN Free Developer License agreement. Also our new SOA Suite Bootcamp on-demand training - free! is free of charge, Thanks to Tom and team to develop this on-demand training, make sure you send us your feedback here! For any skillset improvements please make sure that you commend the course online! After successful completion of the course, you can be a certified Oracle SOA Suite 11g PreSales Specialist & Oracle SOA Suite 11g Implementation Specialist.

For all experts in SOA Suite, @RahejaRajesh has an shared an excellent present - SOA Blackbelt cheat sheets. I recommend you to study them! Last present comes from Simon the new O-Box - SOA Suite in a box.

Cloud integration become more and more important. Please read the latest Cloud Integration - A Comprehensive Solution,White Paper and OSB access to salesforce.com.

Scott and the b2b team published articles on B2B - AS2 Best Practices for MDN and Podcast Oracle SOA B2B Integration. On the governance side Open Group published articles on SOA Governance Technical Standard, Link consulting an super article and tool SOA Governance Through Enterprise Architecture and Luis and AIA Foundation Pack Architecture Overview.

Thanks for sharing all the additional articles within the community: Oracle WebLogic / Fusion Middleware puppet module V2 , Back-end to the Future: Using your Existing Oracle ADF Applications as a Pillar of your Mobile Strategy, white paper and Podcast Show Notes: Finding a Shorter Path to SOA.

Why is Oracle BPM Suite 11g excellent? - read the latest Ovum report.And BPM suite becomes even better with the latest version of the ACM UI. The patch is controlled availability and you need to create an SR to get access! For more information about ACM including use-cases read the paper Managing Unpredictability using BPM for Adaptive Case Management. A great deom or quick start for BPM are the Process Accelerators.

Business persons who want to learn more about BPM I recommend you to watch the on-demand training by Avio. The latest version of Business Process Intelligence Demo (To get access to the any OFM demo environment please contact Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN)!) is also available. Thanks to Ajay for the BPM marketing update & Process of Process Management article, and success in your new job!

Thanks to the community for all the additional material: BPM APIs revisited - DirectBinding and Facade APIs & Using Credential Store Framework when communicating with Oracle Human Workflow API.

In the architect section the user experience team shared many new articles about  Simplified UI for Oracle Cloud Applications and Simplified UIs for HCM, Applications and Sales! They all are great examples to build modern apps and mobile solutions!

I would also like to bring this to your attention that this is the last chance to send us your community feedback and I will see you in Malta 2014!

Wish you a great start in 2014!

Jürgen Kress

I am pleased to invite you to Oracle Fusion Middleware Partner Community Forum 2014 in the Hilton Malta on February 18th and 19th 2014 with hands-on training on February 20th & 21st 2014. Don't miss this opportunity and register now for the Oracle Fusion Middleware Partner Community Forum.

Like last year we expect that the conference is booked out - register asap! The event is a great opportunity to learn about:

• SOA Suite 12c & Cloud integration
• BPM Suite 12c & Adaptive Case Management 12c
• Internet of Things & mobile strategy & fast data
• WebLogic 12c the foundation of Oracle Fusion Middleware.

You'll also find an opportunity to:

• Learn how to sell the value of Fusion Middleware by combining SOA, BPM, WebLogic and ADF
• Meet with Oracle SOA, BPM, WebLogic and ADF Product Management
• Exchange knowledge and have access to competitive intelligence
• Learn from successful SOA, BPM, WebLogic and ADF implementations
• Network within the Oracle SOA & BPM Partner Community and the Oracle WebLogic Partner Community

Partner Marketplace
We want to facilitate the networking and exchange within the partner community. Therefore we would like to invite interested partners to exhibit during the community forum. On demo points you can present your solution or best practice around Oracle Fusion Middleware. The offer is free of charge for small partners, large partners are welcome to sponsor e.g. internet and networking dinner! If you are interested to exhibit then please contact to Jürgen Kress.

Social Media
Please make sure you use our social media channels to connect and network for the forum. For twitter please use the #ofmForum2014.

• SOA & BPM:  Blog, Twitter and Facebook
• WebLogic & ADF:  Blog, Twitter and Facebook

Hands-on Bootcamps
In addition to the Fusion Middleware Partner Community Forum, you can also participate in technical hands on workshops on February 20th and 21st (for those attending the workshops, it is also required to attend the Community Forum on the 18th & 19th February). You can only choose 1 workshop which runs for two days:

Internet of Things (IoT) hands-on Bootcamp
Trainer: Harish Gaur, Director Product Management at Oracle
Agenda Highlights:

• Introductions, Workshop
• Oracle Internet of Things Platform Overview
• Overview of Business Context
• Setting up device, gateway & server
• Oracle Event Processing Overview & Demo
• Real-time Analysis with Oracle Event Processing
• Oracle BPM Suite Overview & Demo
• Process Orchestration with Oracle BPM Suite
• Monitoring & Management with Oracle ADF Mobile App
• End to End Demo
• Wrap-up, Feedback and Q&A

Coherence 12c hands-on Bootcamp
Trainer: Maciej Gruszka, Senior Principal Product Manager at Oracle.

Agenda Highlights

• Basic knowledge in Java and JavaEE
• Understanding the Application Server concept
• Basic knowledge in older releases of WebLogic Server

Mobile Platform Cookbook Concepts and Practices Workshop
Trainer: Frank Nimphius, Principal Product Manager at Oracle
Agenda Highlights:
The Oracle Mobile Development Framework provides a profound environment for application developers to build cross platform mobile applications based on the HTML5, CSS and JavaScript standards, using Java as the programming language for the mobile client and business logic. This workshop walks you through the oracle mobility platform and framework, explains concepts and strategies for you to learn about the technologies involved, best practices in Oracle mobile application design and development by example of common mobile use cases. This workshop is not hands-on driven but interactive and expects you to participate and join the discussions. Probably this workshop provides more information in 2 days than you would get from a month of self-studies.

Adaptive Case Management hands-on Bootcamp
Trainer: Niall Commiskey, Technology Architect
Agenda Highlights:

• Introduction to Case Management
• Case Design
• BPM/Case Management Interaction
• Case Management API

For details please visit the registration page!

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Oracle SOA Suite is now available as a part of the OTN Free Developer License Agreement.

New ‘no cost‘ OTN download for developer use only. For download please visit the OTN page.

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The SOA Suite 11g Implementation Boot Camp, a 4-day live course for Oracle Partners, is now available in a self-paced, on-demand form on the SOA Suite 11g Implementation Guided Learning Path (GLP).  The GLP contains all the lectures and hands-on labs from the live course.  A VirtualBox appliance is used to support the 15 hands-on labs.  The on-demand format allows students to experience a lecture segment or perform a lab exercise whenever they have time as per their ease.  Students can work through the materials at their own pace on their own computer.  Support is provided via an email link with the OPN solution specialist who developed the course.  In order to access this free course, you need to be an Oracle partner with an Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) login. 

After completion of the course, you can become certified Oracle SOA Suite 11g PreSales Specialist & Oracle SOA Suite 11g Implementation Specialist.

Do you like to attend the course? Send us your feedback here! For any feedback/improvements please make sure that you commend the course online!

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'This is the season of giving, so for this last post of the year, I am pleased to share and make available some of our most requested cheat sheets used internally and by various implementation partners world wide. These cheat sheets were created as a part of the Oracle SOA Black Belt training sessions - advanced hands-on workshops that are available only to experienced Oracle SOA practitioners to gain deeper insight into the workings of the engine, enabling them to architect scalable solutions. If you have gone through this workshop, or have been working with the BPEL engine, I hope you will find this as a handy resource.

In case you are curious about this "black belt" workshop, here is a day-by-day blog written by one of our attendee.

• SOA Black Belt Workshop, Day 1:Infrastructure Essentials
• SOA Black Belt Workshop, Day 2:Engine Internals
• SOA Black Belt Workshop, Day 3:Architecture Internals
• SOA Black Belt Workshop, day 4: Solution areas

And if you are wondering, yes, in some locations, we actually do hand out physical black belts - thanks to Jürgen Kress' SOA Community. Please feel free to follow the tweets for more pictures.

Click on the below links to download each Cheatsheet. In case of any errors or if you would like to see more such collateral, please do provide us your feedback.

• Weblogic Server Essentials Cheat Sheet(pdf)
• SOA Essentials Cheat Sheet(pdf)
• BPEL Service Engine Internals Cheat Sheet(pdf)
• SOA Diagnostics Cheat Sheet(pdf) - Thanks to Shawn Bailey for this one!

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Cloud computing solutions are widely hailed as a way to reduce capital expenditures and move to an inexpensive, subscription - based IT model. However, many organizations don’t stop to consider all of the nuances of integrating cloud applications with their existing information systems. While deploying a cloud app or subscribing to a cloud-based service may be relatively straightforward, how will this new IT asset fit in with the rest of the enterprise, including on-premise systems and other cloud applications? What is the system of record from which data will be derived? Which business processes are involved?

Do you need an enterprise data model that is independent of the cloud data model? Read the complete white-paper here.

Coming Soon: New Oracle SOA Cloud Adapter for Salesforce.com Simplifying SaaS Integrations

Are Your Customers:

• Planning for Cloud Integration initiatives as a part of or beyond their Application Integration projects?
• Looking for a Strategic Integration Platform and Architecture (SOA) to simplify and secure connectivity?
• Keen to enable Flexibility and Developer Productivity for their On-premise to SaaS integrations?

We will be soon launching the new SOA Cloud Adapter for Salesforce.com.  Stay tuned to  our SOA Community to learn more about:

• Why Is It Important to Simplify Cloud to On-premise Integrations?
• How does the Adapter make it simple with a Declarative Modeling Wizard?
• How to learn more, where to download and who to contact about the shiny new SOA Cloud Adapter?
• Pricing and Licensing
• Q & A

To learn more or for any questions, reach out to Yogesh Sontakke at @yogesh_sontakke.

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In Manchester, UK, last month Simon Haslam and Lonneke Dikmans (for Veriton and Vennster), launched their new company O-box very first productc Products.

The O-box SOA Appliance, put simply, "Oracle SOA in a box". The hardware is Oracle's tried and trusted Oracle Database Appliance (now with up to 48 Intel cores!) and this is coupled with O-box provisioning software and its very easy "2 stick install" approach. This gives you fully HA, secured, appropriately sized and production-ready SOA platform in just a few hours!

The SOA installation itself is built to best practices (including those in Oracle's Enterprise Deployment Guides), is fully documented and is fully tested. It allows you to implement Oracle SOA Suite for your customers within a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost and at lower risk than doing it yourself.

O-box is looking to work with Oracle SOA Specialized Partners so if you think this product can help your SOA offering (and we think it can!) then please contact Lonneke.Dikmans@oboxproducts.com. Alternatively O-box will be part of the Partner Exchange at the OFM Partner Community Forum 2014 in Malta next month so you can talk to the team there.

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Some time ago I had a request to connect a file with salesforce.com. The tool of choice was Oracle Service Bus, first without any special adapter. So I had to investigate into the salesforce.com way of using web services and how I can approach this challenge.

First of all we need an account with salesforce.com. With this account we can access the Web Services API through Profile -> Setup -> API. Here we need to download the Enterprise WSDL.

You can find more details to this here salesforce.com Documentation.

Now we import the WSDL into the Oracle Service Bus. As written in the docs Before invoking any other calls, a client application must first invoke the login() call to establish a session with the login server, set the returned server URL as the target server for subsequent API requests, and set the returned session ID in the SOAP header to provide server authorization for subsequent API requests.

This means for Oracle Service Bus that we have to use an additional "Service Callout" before calling any other operation. With this in mind, it might be a good idea to store the session information for subsequent calls. As the Oracle Service Bus is stateless, this job could be achieved by using a java callout with a class variable storing the SF session ID. Read the complete article here.

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An MDN (Message Disposition Notification) is a transmission level acknowledgment used in the AS2 standard, so that the sender knows that the receiver successfully acquired the message in a B2B scenario.  B2B (Business to Business) is an integration term used to describe the sending and receiving of business messages between business partners.  When the business messages are being sent over the internet via HTTP or SMTP, it is critical to business operators to know that the messages were transmitted successfully to the right party.   In order to give assurance to the business operators, specific B2B transmission standards have been developed.  We call these standards "Message Exchange Standards". These include AS1, AS2, AS4, ebMS and RNIF, to name a few.  AS2 is a very common standard for EDI messaging.  It is important for everyone using the standard to do so in the same way, or else inter-operation becomes very difficult or impossible.  Here is a diagram showing a typical EDI interaction over AS2 between two fictitious partners named OracleServices and MarketInc.

AS2 provides features such as Non-Repudiation of Origin, Non-Repudiation of Receipt, and Message Protection.  When sending a message, the sender includes a digital signature, and the receiver replies with an acknowledgement called an MDN (Message Disposition Notification) that includes the receiver's digital signature.  Because each message is signed digitally, the receiver can be sure that original message has really been sent by the sender, and that the message has not been tampered with, which we call Non-Repudiation of Origin.  When the receiver replies with the signed MDN, the sender can be sure that the receiver obtained the message successfully, and that it was the correct receiver, which we call Non-Repudiation of Receipt.  When message encryption is turned on, then the message can be protected in flight because it can only be decrypted by the receiver. Read the complete article here.

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In the latest OTN ArchBeat podcast features a conversation with the authors of Getting Started with Oracle SOA B2B Integration: A Hands-On Tutorial, as they discuss various aspects of the interplay between Oracle B2B and Oracle SOA Suite, evolving integration standards, and more.

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This document describes a framework that provides context and definitions to enable organizations to understand and deploy SOA governance.

This document defines:

• SOA Governance, including its relationship between Business, IT, and EA governance; this assists organizations in understanding the impact that the introduction of SOA into an organization has on governance
• An SOA Governance Reference Model (SGRM) and its constituent parts, which assists organizations in specifying their appropriate governance regimes; and capturing best practice as a basis for a common approach
• The SOA Governance Vitality Method (SGVM) which assists organizations in customizing the SGRM and realizing their SOA Governance Regimen

This document is not intended to be used as provided; it is intended to be customized to create appropriate SOA governance for the organization. Many of the lists are non-normative and exemplary and intended to be filtered and as input to the customization process.

This document does not include an explanation of the fundamentals and value of SOA which is important for being able to understand and apply SOA governance. Many other specifications and books, some of which are referenced, are available on SOA basics.

Overview

Many companies have adopted Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to architecture to assist in closing the business and IT gap by delivering the appropriate business functionality in a timely and efficient manner. For more details on this, refer to available books and standards on SOA (see Referenced Documents).

Many companies that have approached SOA via a pilot project have not been seeing the same demonstrated SOA benefits once they have deployed a fully-fledged SOA project. While pilot projects achieved a level of re-use, they have tended to be within one division, but as soon as a project boundary crosses multiple divisions, new challenges are encountered.

One of the key disciplines to assist in addressing these challenges is governance. Whilst governance has been around a long time, SOA has heightened the need and importance of having a formal SOA Governance Regimen that sets expectations and eases the transition of an organization to SOA by providing a means to reduce risk, maintain business alignment, and show business value of SOA investments through a combination of people, process, and technology. The role of the SOA Governance Regimen is to create a consistent approach across processes, standards, policies, and guidelines while putting compliance mechanisms in place. Get the complete paper here.

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Achieving a global enterprise architecture vision that provides mechanisms and tools to enrich the information required for application, process, and project portfolio management Downloads Oracle Enterprise Repository.

Abstract

The ownership cost of technology assets can, and usually does, become significant. The need to centralize, monitor and control the contribution of each technology asset becomes a paramount responsibility for most organizations.

In Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), it is vital to manage the service, the main component of this architectural strategy, and its components. The service's reuse benefits can easily be diminished without correct analysis of its dependencies and impacts.

Using Oracle Enterprise Repository as the central point of SOA artifacts' cataloguing makes it possible to obtain a holistic vision and develop synergies between different SOA assets, empowering their re-utilization and analyzing the impact on the organization caused by IT changes. When the SOA domain is considered, the issue of governance should therefore always come into play.

Although SOA governance and its tools are mandatory to achieve any measure of SOA success, their value still passes incognito in most organizations, mostly due to the lack of visibility and the detached view of the SOA initiatives. A number of problems jeopardize the visibility of these initiatives, primarily understanding and measuring the value of SOA governance and its contribution: SOA governance tools are usually inadequate for anyone outside of the technical domain (business analysts, project managers, or even some enterprise architects), and are especially harsh at the CxO level.

A governance strategy is fundamental for SOA and cannot be complete without a global enterprise architecture vision that provides mechanisms and tools to enrich the information required for application, process, and project portfolio management.

By creating a formal, common, representational model, a language (graphic and textual), and standard viewpoints, and by extending the basic capabilities of a SOA governance tool, we can leverage the information for a greater scope and number of analysis possibilities (e.g., time-based, dependency).

To tackle those challenges, Link Consulting has brought Oracle Enterprise Repository's main functionalities and its own Enterprise Architecture Management System (EAMS) together in a full SOA governance + enterprise architecture solution. The Enterprise Architecture Management System - Oracle Enterprise Edition combines the architecture management solution with Oracle Enterprise Repository to deliver a product specialized for SOA governance. It gathers the best of two worlds (SOA and EA) in a solution that enables SOA governance projects, initiatives and programs, and provides an easier mechanism for exchanging information with the business, other operational areas and project management.

In this article, we describe how an organization can leverage the best EA and SOA governance practices and, with the help of adequate exploration and communication tools (like Oracle Enterprise Repository and EAMS), achieve and maintain the level of quality and visibility that is required for SOA and SOA governance initiatives. Read the complete article here.

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The Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack (recently renamed to just Foundation Pack) at is Oracle's accelerator framework for implementing SOA-based system integrations. AIA FP and its prebuilt integrations such as PIPs were originally created to facilitate and accelerate the integration between different Oracle applications such as Siebel, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards, among others. Customers looking to simultaneously implement and integrate several Oracle applications gain huge benefits from employing PIPs, as these significantly reduce the effort and risk involved with building interfaces to support business processes. Given Oracle's aggressive and continuous growth by acquisition, AIA FP and prebuilt integrations have become fundamental to rapidly integrate newly acquired products with their existing apps portfolio.

The AIA FP contains a variety of design-time and runtime artifacts that can be used when defining, designing, building, testing, and deploying SOA solutions. The following diagram presents an overview of the different components that build up the AIA FP: Read the complete article here.

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Got the same options as the wls module but optimized for Hiera, totally refactored and only for Linux and Solaris. For full hiera examples, see the usages below this page created by Edwin Biemond email biemond at gmail dot com

• biemond.blogspot.com
• Github homepage

Should work for all Linux,Solaris versions like RedHat, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Suse SLES, OracleLinux, Solaris 10 sparc and x86.

• Reference implementation, the vagrant test case for full working WebLogic 10.3.6 cluster example click here
• Reference Solaris implementation, the vagrant test case for full working WebLogic 12.1.2 cluster example click here
• Reference Oracle SOA Suite, the vagrant test case for full working WebLogic 10.3.6 SOA Suite + OSB cluster example click here or here.
  
  

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Mobility has been a significant trend in IT for several years now. Laptops have been outselling desktops since 2008, and it seems that tablet shipments will surpass desktops in 2013 and laptops in 2014. In that context, the real question for your organization is not if it will build mobile applications, but when. To negotiate this transition successfully, one cannot ignore other technology trends.

Read the white paper here.

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The OTN ArchBeat Podcast kicks off the new year with a conversation with three highly experienced SOA experts about strategies for dealing with some of the problems that can thwart SOA efforts within some organizations. One of those strategies involves a new collaborative venture that promises to remove many of the technical hurdles on the path to SOA implementation.

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Late present from Oracle to start in 2014 - A new version of BPM Suite 11.1.1..7 with the Adaptive Case Management User Interfaces is available for download. To access the software please login to www.support.oracle.com and search for Patch 17767877: CASE UI IN WORKSPACE
The software is controlled availability. For partners with ACM opportunities we can make the software available. Please contact us via twitter www.twitter.com @soacommunty or raise a support request.

Send us your feedback at www.twitter.com @soacommunty #acm

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A new ACM solution brief with three use cases have been published:

• Use Case #1: Investigative cases: Claims Management
• Use Case #2: Service Requests: Loan Origination
• Use Case #3: Long Running Services: Managed Health Care

Read the complete white-paper here.

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In some of the past discussions, we have talked about the Six Business Process Management best practices to start BPM journey.

They are as follows:

• Find the right process (Business Impact vs. Frequency of change vs. complexity)
• Identify KPIs and define success
• Involve business users
• Put governance in place
• Get executive sponsorship
• Achieve quick early wins

These are good pointers for a healthy start, but what's next? How can we make sure that the BPM practice in an organization is not just limited to automating one odd process? To reap its full potential, it should become a way of life, enterprise wide program. Companies that have developed a successful BPM program have gained immense benefits, not only from improved operational efficiency, better customer satisfaction but also reduced IT costs and time to solution. Adept organizations are known to deploy new process applications in a couple of weeks and make changes to deployed processes in real-time.

Once you have achieved the success with your first BPM project, start thinking about other opportunities that can benefit from BPM as well as about “Process of Process Management”. Think about other process improvement initiatives in your organization, how BPM can align with those. Are you running on lean, six-sigma methodologies? Do you practice TQM, have ISO certifications? Consider how BPM can help you achieve better quality results while you leverage the existing business improvement methodology. Read the complete article here.

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To get access to the demo environment please contact Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN)!

The Business Process Intelligence demo targets non-IT users, specifically process owners, and business analysts. The demo illustrates how to monitor performance and achieve visibility of a business process using Oracle BPM, Oracle BAM, Oracle ADF, Oracle Business Intelligence (BI), Oracle Real-Time Decision (RTD), and Oracle WebCenter. The demo scenario includes a call center company, ViMad, which is tasked with handling customer service for credit cards. Credit card companies such as Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, and Discover outsource their customer service to ViMad.

ViMad is trying to improve the following key performance indicators:

• Efficiency of its call center with processing credit line increase requests
• Customer satisfaction
• Number of offers (such as 0% balance transfer offers) accepted by customers

Highlights

• Leverage BPM to orchestrate credit line increase request, rather than the manual, email-based process.
• Embed a BI dashboard in the Call Center Agent's task list interface so s/he can analyze a customer's behavior and also take immediate actions, such as approve or reject the credit line increase request.
• Utilize Oracle Real-Time Decisions to address customer satisfaction: customers that are rejected will be provided with a personalized offer (such as % Balance Transfer Offers or Free Account Review) based on their spending habits.
• Enable real time analysis of the call center performance with Oracle BAM.
• With Oracle Real-Time Decisions, provide the ability to monitor the offer acceptance rates

Products included in demo:

• Database 11.2.0.2.0
• Weblogic Server 10.3.6
• SOA Suite (SOA Infra) 11.1.1.6
• WebCache 11.1.1.6
• Webtier (OHS) 11.1.1.6
• WebCenter Portal 11.1.1.6
• WebCenter Content 11.1.16
• WebCenter Collaboration 11.1.1.6
• BAM 11.1.1.6
• Business Intelligence 11.1.1.5
• Real-Time Decisions 11.1.1

Demo Details | 2 minute Video | Demo Script

BPM marketing update

Short Film: Retiring in the Spirit of Alaska – Alaska Department of Retirement and Benefits:

Webcast: Adaptive Case Management – Delivering Right Customer Experience
Customers today demand an experience that is both contextual and personalized. They do not want to be forced to follow a one-size-fits-all process and instead expect processes to adapt to their needs. This video, hosted by Integration Developer News at BPM-CON, describes the challenges that rigid or structured processes present, introduces Adaptive Case Management (ACM) to address those challenges, and describes how Oracle BPM Adaptive Case Management empowers knowledge workers to progress through unstructured and unpredictable processes to meet the needs of the current situation, or case. The webcast recording is hosted on You Tube.

Content and Collateral

• Whitepaper: Avio Consulting BPM Product Analysis: A Comparison of IBM BPM and Oracle BPM
• Whitepaper: Increasing the Quality, Efficiency and Accountability of Care
• Solution Brief : Managing Unpredictability using BPM for Adaptive Case Management
• Solution Brief: Business Driven Process Optimization

References: BPM Suite Customers in Action

• Snapshot: Japan Petroleum Exploration Saves Operating Costs with Automated Business Processes that Improve Data Accuracy
• Snapshot: Hong Kong Housing Society Shortens Expenditure-Approval Time by 30% and Strengthens Governance Control Through Automated Business Processes

Blog Series

• A Primer on Process Accelerators
• Keep Your Applications Agile with Business Process Management

Upcoming Events

• For BPM Events go to link

Resource Kits

• BPM Resource Kit
• Financial Services: BPM in Financial Services
• Public Sector: Transforming Public Sector with Process Excellence
• Horizontal Solutions: Horizontal Process Accelerators

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Just wanted to let you know that AVIO has come out with a completely new online self-paced version of the Oracle BPM 11g Designer Workshop. This is a unique Oracle BPM training offering specifically designed for business analysts and managers, and it is the result of our experience from dozens of successful Oracle BPM engagements. For the last 14 years, I’ve conducted this business oriented workshop in a variety of forms - training hundreds of business people on this version of the product and every preceding version of the product.
It's different than any other Oracle BPM training because:

• It's self-paced and flexible
  • You have two weeks to complete the hands-on portion of the training.
  • It is on-demand. You can start whenever you have time and there are no formal scheduled start and end dates.
  • Once you register, you can view the videos and do the hands-on lessons any time during the day or night that your schedule allows during the two weeks.
  • The hands-on portion of the training is done using a dedicated environment I will have running for you on an Amazon EC2 instance on the cloud with the latest version of Oracle BPM 11g already installed on it.
• Although it is online virtual training, AVIO has a mentor available to help answer questions and assist with the lessons during the two weeks.
• There are 4 hours of videos that accompany each lesson designed to teach both the core concepts and best practices that business people need to know on an Oracle BPM project.
• The 12 hands-on lessons all reinforce the best practices and ensure that you leave with the knowledge you will need on your first project (click here to see a description of the 12 hands-on lessons in the class).

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Direct Binding Invocation -
A common way to invoke a composite is to use SOAP over HTTP. This is enabled by creating a SOAP service for your composite using web service binding. You can also use direct binding, which provides a tighter integration alternative. 

Direct binding enables Java clients to directly invoke composite services,  bypassing the intermediate conversion to XML required with web service binding. 

Direct Binding Invocation API - Here we leverage oracle.soa.management.facade.Locator. The following composite contains a BPM process that can be invoked via direct binding.

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For connecting to Oracle Human Workflow Engine via the provided client API, username and password of an admin user are needed. These credentials could also be useful during task processing, when actions on a task has to be performed on behalf of a user, for example in case of holidays or illness. But how can to manage the admin users credentials in secure way, independent from the target environment?

A first approach is to use a mechanism where the credentials were provided as context parameters in the web.xml, of a Facade Web Service in front of the client API to hide complexity and to force upgrade protection in case of API changes. When deploying this Web Service facade, the parameters are replaced using a deployment plan. This solution works, but has the disadvantage that username and password of the admin user are contained in the deployment plan as clear text. From a SysOps perspective this mechanism is not appropriate.

So another possibility must be found to manage user credentials in a consistent and secure way. An approach to ensure the secure management of credentials is to use the Oracle Credential Store Framework (CSF), provided by Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS). Configuring and using CSF is quite simple and done in a few steps: Read the complete article here.

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In yesterday's post, Ajay Khanna, Senior Principal Product Director at Oracle, discussed the merits of abstracting out processes from applications into the middleware layer with Business Process Management. That's Oracle AppAdvantage, the advantage of using Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies strategically with Oracle and other enterprise applications to extend and enhance business value. By abstracting process management out of the applications, organizations can adopt flexible processes, newer technology trends, improve user experience and eliminate disruption in application migrations, upgrades and maintenance.

Today's post is about Process Accelerators and the value these add to speed time to market for organizations.

Built on Oracle BPM Suite, Process Accelerators are pre-built, best practices processes that are customizable and extensible to fit specific customer requirements. Oracle Process Accelerators leverage best practices and domain knowledge. Industry process accelerators embody industry-specific best practices and patterns in addition to Oracle BPM Suite best practices. Horizontal process accelerators provide instant functionality and reuse for processes common in most organizations and can be easily modified to fit your requirements.

Oracle Process Accelerators simplify implementation and reduce time-to-value for an organization’s business process management initiatives.

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Catalyst
Oracle’s BPM offering is one of the market leaders, and Oracle BPM Suite 11g is the latest generation of Oracle’s portfolio of business process management (BPM) technologies, bringing a number of the company’s BPM products together as an integrated suite. Oracle has done a good job of the integration, and can now boast one of the most complete BPM offerings in the marketplace. Other notable elements to the suite include the provision of a common runtime platform (which acts as an execution environment for BPMN and BPEL models, as well as business rules) and the introduction of Process Composer, a web-based environment intended as a tool for business analysts. In the latest release of the suite, Oracle has added adaptive case management capabilities.

Key messages

• Market-leading BPM platform and toolset.
• Excellent integration with Oracle’s Fusion middleware stack.
• Business Process Accelerators offer a broad (and growing) set of pre-built assets targeting both horizontal and vertical processes.
• Strong investment in R&D to develop platform and toolset for target market.

Ovum view
Oracle’s continued investment in its BPM offering is paying dividends in the form of significant improvements in ease of use, better integration between the different components, and very comprehensive support for the key BPM notation standards. The improvements that Oracle has made to Process Composer (which is a web-based tool intended for non-technical users) mean that the transition from “business focus” to “implementation focus” is now relatively smooth, and the business-focused tooling does an excellent job of shielding non-technical users from some of the underlying complexity inherent in BPMN.

Read the complete report here.

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Visit the Voice of User Experience, or VoX, blog for a new post about the strategy behind Oracle’s Human Capital Management (HCM) simplified UI. Learn what’s new from the Oracle Applications User Experience team in Release 7, and find links to new video demos on simplified UI for self-service users and managers.

Floyd Teter, of EiS Technologies and an Oracle ACE Director, also writes about simplified UI and Oracle Fusion Applications HCM in his recent blog post, “Oracle Fusion HCM - The Kettle Is Beginning To Boil.”
There are also a few new posts about Oracle Sales Cloud, such as a post  on the Oracle Applications Blog called “Wow Sales Managers and Reps with An Unmatched User Experience.” A separate post published on VoX last month about Oracle Sales Cloud focuses on what’s new with simplified UI in Release 7.

Also on VoX, Oracle partner Anne Meyer, of MIPRO Consulting LLC, talks about seeing the direction of the Oracle user experience, including simplified UI, in “Partner Gives a Thumbs-Up to Insight on Oracle User Experience.” She says, “I’m anxious for these products to make it to the marketplace. Some may be game-changing for Oracle, and how people view Oracle products.”

Exploring new user experience concepts
Oracle invests a great deal in creating a user experience for its applications that empowers customers to be more productive and efficient. One way that investment is made is by exploring new technologies and looking for ways to use them so that the Oracle user experience continues to evolve. Much of that research takes place among the ranks of the Oracle Applications User Experience (UX) team.

Recent posts on the Usable Apps blog and on TheAppsLab blog look at what and how members of the Applications UX team are exploring new concepts. We invite you to join the conversation! Tell us about your experiences with new technology, and how you think they could be used. To read more about what we’ve found, head over to the Usable Apps blog for new posts on Voice, social network integration, and Google Glass. Then check out Jake Kuramoto’s new post about exploring new concepts on TheAppsLab blog.

Support for building your own good usability practices
Visit the Voice of User Experience, or VoX, blog for a new post from Misha Vaughan, an Oracle Applications User Experience director, to see what she writes about “Six Things You Can Do Today to Jump-Start Your User Experience for Enterprise Applications.” Her post tells you how to build in good usability practices, even on a small budget.

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New Content

Several Simplified UI videos have been updated and released recently. In this list, you’ll also find a VoX blog post and links to new videos about the PeopleSoft and Siebel user experiences. All of these links may be shared with customers.

• Oracle HCM Cloud: Simplified UI for the Employee
• Oracle HCM Cloud: Simplified UI for the Manager
• Tailoring Simplified UI in the Oracle Applications Cloud
• Oracle Sales Cloud: Simplified UI for Sales

Check this post on the Voice of User Experience (VoX) blog for more on the strategy behind the Simplified UI for Sales in the Oracles Sales Cloud.  Tim Warner, an implementation consultant and Oracle ACE, writes about Release 7 in his post , “Simplified User Interface in Fusion HCM.”

Peoplesoft and Siebel: These videos from OpenWorld 2013 showcase the user experience highlights in Oracle product families.

• Video on the PeopleSoft user experience between Jeff Robbins, Senior Director, Product Development, and SAMBA Jim Marion
• Video on the Siebel user experience between Uma Welingkar, Senior Director, Product Management, and SAMBA Michael Klein

Looking ahead to the Nex-Generation UX: Applications UX Communications & Outreach team members Misha Vaughan and Ultan O’Broin explore the possibilities in wearable technology with two posts on new technology and how it will change the user experience. Read Vaughan’s post on Google Glass in the Voice of User Experience, or VoX, blog, “Will You Be Wearing Your Enterprise Application Data?” Then head over to O’Broin’s post on the Usable Apps blog, “Dress Code 2.0: Wearables.”

Oracle UX Know-How: Ultan O’Broin led a webcast through ODTUG in November. You can read about the topic and get the answers to questions that were asked on the Usable Apps blog post, “Visual Design for Any Enterprise UI with ODTUG: UX Questions Answered.”

O’Broin also writes about new tools and resources available for developers working on mobile applications on the Usable Apps blog. Check this post to read about “Building Mobile Apps with Oracle UX and ADF Mobile Made Easy: Design Wiki Available.”

Amy Lee of Cruxial CIO writes about user experience practices and the Oracle user experience process in her online article, “Faulty Design Causes Sales To Plummet.”

Floyd Teter of EiS Technologies, a longtime friend of the Applications User Experience team, heads to the top of the list of “25 More Twitter Feeds Every Oracle User Should Follow.” Visit the Forbes.com blog to see who else is on the list.

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• Upgrading BPM Process from PS5 to PS6 - Documentation
• Keep Your Applications Agile with Business Process Management
• Increasing the Quality, Efficiency and Accountability of Care BPM for Health Care Organizations
• Become a Better Architect There is no magic potion or wonder drug that will instantly turn you into a great architect. But that doesn't mean there aren't steps you can take today, right now, to become a better architect. And you'll be happy to know that those steps simple. Read the article.
• Old Habits Die Hard in the New SOA World A panel of community SOA experts discusses the maturity of Service Oriented Architecture technology and tools, the lingering and often self-imposed problems that prevent some organizations from realizing SOA's full potential, and what SOA means in the era of *aaS, mobile computing, and big data. Listen to the podcast
• Video: Matt Brasier on Oracle SOA Suite Performance Tuning C2B2 consultant Matt Brasier, co-author of the Oracle SOA Suite 11g Performance Tuning Cookbook (2013, Packt Publishing) discusses performance tuning challenges and best practices. Watch the video.

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On-Demand Trainings

In-Class Trainings

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Please feel free to invite your colleagues to join the SOA Community and to participate in the SOA Assessment tests. For registration please login the Oracle PartnerNetwork and go to: www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa.

For any questions on the above or concerning SOA and Oracle in general please contact the Oracle EMEA Alliances & Channels SOA Team.

Best regards,

Jürgen Kress SOA Partner Adoption EMEA Tel. +49 89 1430 1479 E-Mail: juergen.kress@oracle.com	Tara Palmieri North American Partner Contact Phone: +1 978-621-8693 E-Mail: tara.palmieri@oracle.com Linkedin Profile

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