Oracle and Microsoft - Working together...

A very typical view of the enterprise marketplace is you do either Microsoft (e.g. .NET etc) or Java ( e.g. Oracle, IBM, BEA - err Oracle - , JBoss etc).

An often overlooked part of the Oracle technology solution is the Interoperability it offers with microsoft (and indeed other vendors). Oracle is now heavily pushing its fusion middleware products as the glue to join up a heterogeneous enterprise and this, as we all know, almost without fail includes Microsoft.

I just wanted to point out some of the areas where Oracle middleware and applications can integrate successfully (and seamlessly in some cases with Microsoft products)

This interoperability comes in two flavours:

1. Oracle software runs on the microsoft OS platform itself
2. Oracle software running on a mixed platform will integrate with Microsoft products and solutions.

Overall there is a comprehensive integration with Microsoft at the middleware level. Some examples given are:

• Oracle Identity Management solution works seamless with MSFT ActiveDirectory, MSFT Identity Integration Server
• Oracle Identity Management solution provides MSFT Sharepoint with heterogeneous SSO
• Oracle Web Services Manager secures and manages both J2EE and .NET web services
• Oracle Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Manager interoperates with MSFT MQ, MSFT BizTalk server
• Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) can monitor real-time business events in MSFT MQ and send alerts to MSFT Outlook
• Oracle Portal can leverage portlets deployed on MSFT IIS/.NET servers, expose Office applications, and many other web applications developed with MSFT technologies
• Oracle Portal can leverage MSFT Active Directory for user information

Office interoperability

• Oracle Collaboration Suite has a tight integration with MSFT Windows and Office (Oracle Connector for Outlook)
• Oracle Content Services works seamlessly as a file server for Windows (e.g., Oracle Drive)
• Oracle BI Spreadsheet Add-in embeds OLAP capabilities directly in Excel for reporting, ad-hoc analysis, modeling
• Oracle XML Publisher can take data from MSFT SQL Server, data from Excel, Word, render output formats into Office forms and send the data back to MSFT SQL Server or any other data sources
• Oracle E-Business Suite has over 150+ integration points with Office for data entry and report distribution in applications such as Financial Consolidation Hub, HR, Incentive Management, Asset Manager, Internal Controls Manager, Projects, Advanced Product Catalog, and more.

There is huge potential for organisations to do more with what they have - and the interoperability of Microsoft with Oracle has to be one of the key areas yet to be explored.

To find out more go to Oracle's website on working with Microsoft