Oracle's latest Fusion Middleware 11g is a key part of
Oracle's strategy to help organisation solve complex integration
problems, says Oracle president Charles Phillips.
The second major release of Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFM) was
aimed at solving the common challenges facing enterprises in the
coming years,
he told a London conference.
Oracle's key strategy is to solve the problem integration
between a plethora of applications through a complete, standard and
open middleware product, said Phillips.
Oracle Fusion Middlware 11g shows how our architecture is
evolving to change the way people think of enterprise computing, he
said.
"For several years we have been working on an architecture that
will reduce the complex integration issues, and Oracle Fusion
middleware is a major component of that," he said.
The release of OFM 11g is important because it is proof of
Oracle's commitment to simplifying enterprise computing, Ronan
Miles, chairman of the UK Oracle User Group told Computer
Weekly.
"Techies who have been given previews of OFM 11g are genuinely
excited about the new features and capabilities that enables them
to do more stuff," he said.
OFM 11g introduces over 5,000 customer driven enhancements, the
result of over 7,000 hours of engineering and 3m hours of quality
assurance and testing. Phillips highlighted new capabilities aimed
at supporting cloud computing, grid computing and social
networking.
The latest version of OFM also provides enhanced identity
management services, web portal services, security services,
services oriented architecture support.
"These features enable businesses to customise applications by
making changes in a metadata layer without needing to touch
application code," said Phillips.
This means customisation is now possible without making future
upgrades as difficult, complex or time consuming as they have been
in the past because the only changes are made in the metadata.
Phillips highlighted OFM 11g's innovations to take advantage of
the latest computer processor technologies.
"Most enterprises are now using multi-core processors, so we
have modified our middleware to make use of more than one level of
cache to optimise application speeds," he said.
Early adopters include BT, which has used OFM to improve
collaboration easier and improve business processes around the
world.
According to Mike Blackmore, enterprise architect at BT, BT has
already used the new OFM capabilties to reduce its global IT estate
by 200 systems.
"OFM 11g is world class and we are confident it will enable BT
to meet the challenges of managing thousands of systems around the
world" he said.