Oracle Releases Updated Oracle AIA Foundation Pack

Oracle is continuing in its healthy cycle of acquisitions and product launches, despite the recession, with the April 6 release of a new series of solutions for its Oracle Application Integration Architecture business.

The new releases are an updated Oracle AIA Foundation Pack 2.3, a new Oracle AIA Foundation Pack for Communications, and six out-of-the-box Oracle AIA PIPs (Process Integration Packs). Oracle said these tools will integrate end-to-end business processes "across a broad range of custom, Oracle or third-party applications," thus leading to increased efficiency and lower costs.

"We started on this project two years ago, to address feedback from customers about lowering the cost and risk or integrating Oracle's and other's applications," Jose Lazares, Oracle's vice president of application development and product strategy for AIA, said in an interview.

The Oracle AIA Foundation Pack 2.3 includes new AIA Reference Process Models, which feature content for the communications and utilities industries. The pack also features six new composite business flows in support of the newest Oracle AIA PIPs, as well as developer productivity suites including an XSLT Mapper Document Generator. These aspects of Version 2.3 are all designed to increase rapid deployment, reusability and configurability of end-to-end business processes.

For the communications industry, Oracle drills down deeper with the Oracle Application Integration Architecture Communications Foundation Pack, which provides that sector with an industry-specific set of business objects and Web services to reduce the time needed to integrate business solutions. It includes EBOs (Enterprise Business Objects) and EBSes (Enterprise Business Services) compliant with Telemanagement Forum SID standards.

The six new Oracle AIA PIPs include the Process Integration Pack for Oracle Customer Hub, designed to support Customer MDM (Master Data Management) integration scenarios across the Oracle Customer Hub, Siebel CRM and Oracle E-Business Suite, and the Process Integration Pack for Oracle Product Hub, a collection of processes to support out-of-the-box Product MDM integration processes.

The other new four PIPs are the Oracle CRM OnDemand Integration Pack for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Lead to Order, Oracle Retail Merchandising Integration Pack for PeopleSoft Enterprise Financials: Financial Operations Control, Oracle Financial Accounting Hub Integration Pack for PeopleSoft Enterprise General Ledger and Agile Product Lifecycle Management Integration Pack for SAP: Design to Release.

Oracle has been performing steadily despite the recession, with third-quarter fiscal 2009 earnings per share up 3 percent over the same quarter last year.

Buoyed by its relative good health and strength in the enterprise IT market, the company has been releasing new products, including the March 9 rollout of Oracle Sourcing on Demand, a SAAS (software as a service) solution designed to make supply chain management more efficient.

It has also been pursuing new acquisitions, including the purchase of mValent, a company devoted to configuration management solutions that could promote efficiency within Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Relsys International, a company that provides drug safety and risk management solutions with advanced analytics.