Oracle Corp. is developing a new component for its software integration stack to give enterprises real-time analysis of business events and the ability to kick off business processes in response to those events.
The technology, known generically as business activity monitoring, or BAM, is being built on Oracles 10g Application Server, putting it at the heart of the companys Web services integration technology. From that vantage point, it could gather real-time data from transactional ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems and aggregate data from data warehouses, said Thomas Kurian, Oracles senior vice president for application server development, in Redwood Shores, Calif.
Integration with ERP systems will allow Oracles BAM technology, in concert with the Oracle E-Business Suites Daily Business Close application, to combine summary and real-time analysis of business activity.
The integration will allow the BAM application to trigger business processes in transaction systems to react to a detected business problem automatically, Kurian said. “Youll be able to drill into the BAM system to find what was the root cause of a [performance indicator] becoming skewed,” he said.
The use of a data warehouse in the Oracle BAM software, which is due this summer, distinguishes itself from other BAM software because the warehouse lets Oracle BAM check the real-time data for accuracy, Kurian said.
The Oracle solution will support reporting and analysis of data against predefined key performance indicators and include data cleansing and filtering algorithms. In addition to hooking into ERP systems, it will support event processing from a number of data inputs, including RFID (radio-frequency identification), bar-code scans, warehouse events and system management information, Kurian said.
BAM will add value to Oracles application server but wont necessarily put it head and shoulders above competitors, said Mark Smith, an analyst at Ventana Research Inc., in Belmont, Calif.
“The big game in the enterprise is still IBM vs. SAP [AG]—WebSphere vs. NetWeaver,” Smith said.
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