Oracle OpenWorld 2012 was Advanced Systems Concepts first time exhibiting at this long-standing industry event and the first time many Oracle attendees had the opportunity to view ActiveBatch up close. We spoke with a diverse range of IT professionals, ranging from DBAs to application architects to developers. But if there was a common theme amongst everybody, they saw the value in a more robust automation solution, whether they were looking to automate strictly Oracle processes, or integrate and automate those same processes across other, non-Oracle applications and technologies.
- Lots of interesting conversations with application architects and business developers regarding Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) and PeopleSoft. Many of these attendees are using Concurrent Manager and Process Scheduler to schedule and execute processes within these respective applications, but instantly see the value in having an enterprise workload automation platform that adds more advanced date/time scheduling, and more importantly, an event automation framework to allow them to trigger processes based on common IT events, such as an email, an FTP, an Oracle database trigger, or others.
- Like most enterprise applications, Oracle EBS’ and PeopleSoft’s native schedulers are simply limited to scheduling only EBS or PeopleSoft processes. Oracle attendees, looking to pass data and manage dependencies between Oracle applications and other technologies, liked the idea of a “single point of control” through which to build and manage these workflows. Other applications attendees commonly mentioned included JD Edwards, Hyperion, Informatica and SAP.
- The ability to extend the “reach” of a workload automation solution by supporting technologies such as WCF LOB adapters, Web Services and Oracle Stored Procedures was a popular topic with attendees. Today, IT operational and business processes span everything from legacy applications to newer, standard-based systems built upon SOA or Web Services. The ability to integrate these application processes within end-to-end workflows was a common talking point, and they liked ActiveBatch’s ability to be able to “consume” a Web Service, LOB Adapter or Stored Procedure and manage their execution within ActiveBatch workflows, all without he need to use custom scripting.
- For example, a number of attendees liked the fact that ActiveBatch could call upon an Oracle Stored Procedure and map those functions as reusable job steps within the Integrated Jobs Library; all by simply specifying a database connection. Moreover, the ability to use output data passed back from that called method as an execution variable for downstream job steps was equally well received.
- Lastly, just because we were at an Oracle show didn’t mean we didn’t hear lots about Microsoft, particularly around IT administrative-type processes. The ability for system administrators to automate many of the administrative processes that consume their time, such as the creation of SharePoint Users and Groups or administer Active Directory Objects, Users and Groups resonated with many.
