Oracle joins the cloud-integration party late, but says its wizard-driven SOA Suite will appeal where on-premises apps prevail.
Oracle introduced the Oracle Cloud Adapter for Salesforce.com on Thursday, vowing that it won’t be too little, too late on the subject of cloud application integration.
Oracle says its SOA Suite have been used to construct one-off, Web-services integrations into cloud-based applications for years. However the Adapter for Salesforce.com is the primary of many packaged integrations that the seller says will broaden its choice of greater than 300 pre-built adapters heretofore fascinated about on-premises application integration.
“We’re making things easier so as opposed to having to read documentation and work out which APIs to name, we package all of it in a graphical, wizard-driven adapter,” Demed L’Her, VP of product management for Oracle integration products, said in an interview with InformationWeek.
[Want more on cloud integration? Read Informatica Adds Integration Options As Cloud Demand Multiplies.]
The Cloud Adapter for Salesforce.com works with the Oracle SOA Suite wizard-based integration tool, so admins simply enter the perfect Salesforce.com credentials. Then the tool looks after the connections to APIs and divulges all available standard and custom objects which might be tied to other data sources and targets.
It’s pretty surprising that Oracle is introducing its first adapter for Salesforce this late inside the game. Much more surprising is word that the following cloud adapter — release date unspecified — would be for Oracle’s own RightNow service CRM application. Also at the horizon is a brand new software development kit for cloud integration work.
Packaged adapters for integrating Salesforce.com to Oracle data sources and applications were available for years. Informatica, for one, introduced cloud integration options back in 2009. IBM followed a year later by acquiring Salesforce.com partner Forged iron. There also are literally dozens of alternative options available, from Actian, Dell Boomi, and iWay, to Jitterbit, MuleSoft, and SnapLogic.
So why is it customers will search out this new option in a cloud world awash with integration options?
What Oracle is making an attempt to assist customers avoid, said L’Her, is a Balkanization of middleware, wherein they need to use multiple products to support on-premises and cloud-based applications.
“We’re making it simple enough in order that people needn’t herald third-party tools,” L’Her explained. “The majority of customers still have nearly all of their applications on premises, so we expect you should have your integration layer toward nearly all of your applications.”
The vendors that support integration of cloud apps don’t are likely to have depth in on-premises application integration, in line with L’Her. That’s true of a few, however it cannot be said of the likes of IBM, Informatica, and iWay — integration veterans which have packaged adapters for the gamut of on-premises applications. What’s more, a lot of these vendors offer many more cloud integration options. Informatica, for one, supports integration to Oracle Eloqua, NetSuite, and Workday in addition to Salesforce.com.
Oracle’s promise is that buyers can use only one tool to do all their integration work. But until the company’s list of packaged adapters for cloud applications gets longer, it probably is not the one tool that a customer would use unless it’s truly an Oracle-centric shop with few cloud integration needs.
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