Oracle Integration Cloud Service Reviews

I am a Technology Architect. Our company is an IT service company. We develop integrated solutions for different clients.

Oracle Integration Cloud Service is part of enterprise-wide integrations. It integrates different applications from both inside and outside the organization.

The product improved our organization due to the available adapters, which are already provided with the product licenses. This helps us integrate with new cloud applications such as CRM, ERP, or any other cloud application. The proprietary adapters are already available, giving us the upper hand to integrate with different applications.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Integration Cloud Service is its ease of use. We do not depend on any tool to develop it. Everything is on the browser and is easy to integrate, even for someone who does not understand a lot about coding. 

Everything from development to deployment is seamless. It is a one-stop shop for all integration.

While most of the adapters are available through Oracle Integration Cloud Services, they do not have a lot of features. I would like to see some enrichment in this area and for the solution to go deeper into the applications and upgrade the adapters.

When comparing the solution to its on-premise solution which is also in the Oracle space, Oracle Suite, it is not as feature-rich as the on-premise solutions. It is still at a different level and will take some time to reach that level.

In future releases, Oracle could benefit from improvements to orchestration and level of monitoring. Some design aspects are not present in orchestration and there needs to be a more granular level of monitoring or more dashboards. 

I would like to see this product be more compatible and support the deployment on other clouds like AWS or Azure. 

I have been working with Oracle Integration Cloud for six years.

This is a very stable solution.

Oracle Integration Cloud Service is scalable. It's all configurations. We have approximately 500 people using this solution including IT developers, IT leads, IT designers, and IT architects.

Oracle takes care of the server maintenance and patching. Deployment is taken care of by the developers.

Support at Oracle is good, but not excellent. It takes time to resolve some issues.

In the past, we used Oracle Suite.

The initial setup of Oracle Integration Cloud Service is straightforward. Nothing needs to be done. Deployment takes minutes. I would rate the initial setup a five out of five.

We deploy in-house as we are using different DevOp tools for deployments. Oracle Integration Cloud Service supports all kinds of DevOps tools, so it is up to the client how they want to deploy the solution.

Our clients procure the licenses from Oracle and negotiate their own deals. The pricing varies. The solution is less expensive than other products.

This product only supports the deployment on Oracle's own cloud, it does not support AWS or Azure. This may deter other vendors who do not wish to deploy on Oracle Cloud.

Any organization that uses Oracle applications will find this solution very convenient to move into the proper cloud setup. If they require a cloud-to-cloud integration within a short timeframe, this would be an easy solution to use without issue. 

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.

Integration of SaaS solutions that form systems of reference. Exposing simplified APIs to digital front ends.

Expoit its deep integration to Oracle apps and SaaS so we can have event driven integration.

Take advantage of the rich catalogue of prebuilt integration adaptors covering RPA, SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow etc etc

Integration of cloud & on-premises solutions  (hybrid model) supporting secured remote access to on-premises data sources.

The integration of cloud solutions and realizing Hybrid intergrations with existing on-premises solutions has become far easier (compared to SOA suite).

The movement from ICS to Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) has meant the introduction of additional capabilities which will be of positiver value such as Visual Cloud builder, scaling restrictictions of ICS removed.

• The simplicity and ease of creating SOAP and REST endpoints and integrating with them. New features being added regularly to make it a significant integration platform.

Some of the adapters could be enhanced to make integration even simpler.

The example I would use is the GMail interface - it requires Base64 encoded content. But to make the interface simpler, the API should provide the encoding and the adapter simply accept plain text.

Depending on our customer upto 4 years

No stability issues.

There are volumetric constraints today driven by licensing, but we haven't encountered an issue with this. However, people should consider them before signing up.

Customer Service:

The solution is self-serve, so little contact is necessary. When we have spoken to Oracle (more to ask questions about future features), we have had friendly, helpful engagement.

Technical Support:

Technical support is good

SOA. Adopting ICS with JCS offers a cost effective and flexible platform

Initial setup was a piece of pie.

Own team

Agility, now middleware deployment challenges (excluding agents - but they are pretty simple)

Look at volumetric and the number of different connections

Other Oracle integration options that can help with hybrid use cases

Look carefully at the adaptors, they aren't always fully featured when announced.

The out-of-the-box adapters are the most valuable aspect of the solution.

It was easy to set up.

The solution is robust.

You can scale it as needed.

Technical support responds quickly.

The bulk processing needs improvement. When the data it needs to process is huge, then it does not work well, for example, when we're talking about gigabytes or terabytes. If data is received in this way, then this middleware doesn't work properly.

We would like to see more out-of-the-box adapters with different boundary applications.

The solution needs the support of more EDI protocols, like RosettaNet.

I have joined this organization recently. I joined eight months ago, and have used the solution since then. However, I'm not sure for how long the company has used it. 

The solution is robust and the stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. 

The solution can scale quite well.

Technical support is quite fast. We are happy with their level of response.

The initial setup is not difficult or complex. It's quite straightforward. 

How much maintenance is required after implementation depends on the number of integrations. For example, if there are 100 integrations, then around five people will be required to maintain everything.

We are implementors. We are able to deploy this product for our clients. 

The licensing costs need to be checked from the Oracle portal.

Typically, there is just a standard licensing fee.

We are the implementers of the product.

We are using the latest version of the product.

If a company is integrating this product with file-based integration, then it is very good. It provides good monitoring and tracking as well. B2B capabilities earlier were not there, however, now they are coming up with the B2B capabilities where EDI-related interfaces can be handled well. That said, bulk processing is still a challenge

I'd rate the product an eight out of ten.

I am not well-versed in Oracle Integration Cloud Service. All I know is that it serves as a path or channel for us to transfer some files, but I am still unclear as to whether it is a cloud-based storage solution or a type of data communication tool. I am still trying to fully grasp the function and purpose of ICS.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Integration Cloud Service is its performance.

It would be helpful if there were more tutorials or documentation to learn about Oracle Integration Cloud Service.

I have been using Oracle Integration Cloud Service for approximately three years.

The stability of Oracle Integration Cloud Service has been great.

Oracle Integration Cloud Service is scalable, we have tripped out the size. I am confident that it can continue to scale.

We have previously used an account solution prior to Oracle Integration Cloud Service.

The price of Oracle Integration Cloud Service is reasonable to start with, but when you scale it becomes expensive.

I rate Oracle Integration Cloud Service a six out of ten.

The primary use case of the solution is integration for clients.

The flexibility for bringing in different streams without depending on the architecture is the solution's most valuable feature.

There could be much improvement in integration and automation within the solution.

The solution needs better dashboarding. There should be reports on running reloads, how things are being deployed and what's in the pipeline. If there was a nice dashboard to have a look at this information, that would allow for more control of the tool itself.

From a performance perspective, there could be more improvements done.

The stability of the solution is good.

Many think that they can use OICS as an ETL tool, which is not true. There are other offerings from Oracle that offer that, they just need this layer to bring in data and process data.

I would rate the scalability seven out of ten.

We did not previously use another solution.

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment time varies depending on the size of the company. 

It really depends on the size of the project and the size of the data we'll be dealing with, but for deployment and maintenance, we have a team of three people. The bigger the company, the bigger the team you will need for maintenance. 

We mostly use the private cloud deployment model.

I would recommend that new users not just dump all the data streams into the tool. Rather they should start small and then scale it depending on the use cases.

I would rate the solution seven out of ten. It's one of the very good counter price integration tools available on the cloud right now.

The most valuable features of Oracle Integration Cloud Service are the seeded integrations with many communication platforms, such as Slack and emails. It works best for the historical communication methods. Those are still prevalent with all the other clients. When we are doing the integrations, it makes it a little bit easier for us to communicate the same output over Slack, rather than sending out an email and downloading the report. The number of seeded functionalities within the Oracle Integration Cloud Service platform is better. 

Oracle Integration Cloud Service can improve the downloading and uploading of files. I've submitted this issue to the Oracle Idea Labs. The issue is from the front end of Oracle Integration Cloud, we cannot download or upload a file directly or drag and drop it.

I have been using Oracle Integration Cloud Service for approximately three years.

Oracle Integration Cloud Service is highly stable.

The stability of Oracle Integration Cloud Service is great.

We have approximately 100 people using this solution in my company. In my client's company, there are approximately 50 users using it with plans to increase usage.

I have not used the technical support from Oracle. However, I did have contact with the support regarding the package cost of the solution and the response I received was good.

I have not used another solution in the same category as Oracle Integration Cloud Service.

The initial setup of Oracle Integration Cloud Service is very simple and easy to navigate around. For a user to be created and set up, takes approximately five minutes.

We have a technical team of 10. Five of them deal with the implementation, and the other five are handling other aspects, such as maintaining the schedule and any kind of changes requested on an ad-hoc basis

We have seen a return on investment, our client always renews their license.

The price of Oracle Integration Cloud Service is good. It is reasonable and is priced well for the market segment. The model they use is on a per-package unit and we have a two-year subscription.

Others looking into implementing Oracle Integration Cloud Service should explore more as and when new updates and patches are coming out and if their business would fit well with Oracle Integration Cloud Service.

I rate Oracle Integration Cloud Service an eight out of ten.

My company implements this solution for our customers. The solution is typically used for any financial or supply chain implementation. We don't do it stand-alone; we typically do it with the Oracle ERP implementation. We use it to do all of the orchestration in and out of our ERP.

As a consulting firm, the biggest advantage is that it is a low-code platform. People are able to scale up, learn it quickly, and start delivering.

There is a limitation with the file size that Oracle Integration Cloud Service can read and transform. If an inbound file is larger than one GB, it cannot be transformed within Oracle. In cases where we face that limitation, we have to use other solutions that can handle higher volumes. 

For each delivery, we use it in conjunction with Oracle OIC, which is another Oracle product, and they could make it easier for us to query the underlying data, at least with the Oracle tables. It is a tedious task and we have to write VIP reports and get that data via web services, so that is something that they can improve.

I have been working with this product for the past three and a half years. 

This product is definitely scalable. It suits enterprise companies and small companies. Day-to-day middleware users would not use this solution, just technical users on the IT team.

The solution doesn't require much setup. After provisioning, the instance is good to go as soon as the connections are set up. From the provisioning and setup perspective, it is pretty simple and easy.

It takes around one hour for us to provision the instance and start setting it up. Then, once we have the instance available, we can start configuring it as per our requirements. The product is deployed in the cloud. Oracle gives you flexibility for how you can host it, so it can be on your private network or on a public network. 

The price is fair. 

I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten.

The main use case is "systems integration" for my company's enterprise customers across many different industry sectors.

Many of our customer projects use Oracle Integration Cloud or OIC iPaaS for integrations between disparate systems like ERP, e-commerce, and warehouse systems, from both Oracle and other vendors and technologies. Integration flows were developed for keeping product inventory, prices, addresses in sync between various end-systems and to support key business processes spanning many systems, departments, and organisations. 

Additional non-functional goals were maintainability, stability, scalability, graceful error-handling, decoupling for loose-coupling of distinct core systems, and "predictable performance". The predictability has been verified via repeatable testing and seamless operation in production. 

Additionally, we have implemented other use-cases like shipping integration (such as DHL, FedEx), order flows from e-commerce to ERP, & many more granular and custom use cases specific to customer needs (e.g. implementing internal APIs to support larger enterprise business processes or application user interfaces, bulk data reconciliation and many more).

In general, a cloud-based product helps avoid the high lead-up times and maintenance overheads involved in setting up in-house infrastructure, and this is adequately achieved by OIC iPaaS. 

OIC, in particular, is also well integrated with Oracle SaaS ERP via "business events" and easy to integrate via Rest APIs (though other integration platforms also offer API-based integration, it makes a lot of sense to use OIC if a customer already uses Oracle SaaS). The recent addition of the Kafka-compatible OCI Streaming has since early 2023 allowed us to support a loosely-coupled event-driven integration between different products from different vendors, built on different technologies, and supporting different throughputs.

OIC offers a number of pre-built technology and SaaS adapters for high productivity for a wide range of target systems, both in-house via agents and cloud/SaaS, via a very flexible range of interfaces. These include APIs by way of Rest/SOAP over http/s, files like ZIP and CSV over filesystem or S/FTP, databases,  and more. All of these interface types were utilized in our customer solutions to deliver a range of functionality in the form of "integration flows".

To summarise: OIC helped us to deliver high quality software engineering to our customers, with our solutions being comparably high in supportability, maintainability, loose coupling between disparate core systems, high cohesion in deployable units, clean interfaces, predictable runtime performance and other important properties for supporting any major enterprise

It offered a natural transition from, and in some cases, it complements Oracle's existing middleware like SOA Suite (now SOACS), Oracle Service Bus, etc, for many but not all use cases.

Furthermore, it offers a compelling solution within the Oracle environment that makes it easier to integrate Oracle SaaS ERP (via business events, APIs) with any other cloud or in-house product that might support many different interface types. 

Our organization, as a neutral systems integrator with a "client advocacy" approach, also offers solutions built on open-source platforms like Apache Camel. However, the choice of platform depends on customer preferences, suitability, and fit with the rest of their IT environment. Singhpora Consulting aims to deliver good "Software Engineering", i.e. an optimal balance between upfront costs, quality, supportability, maintainability, and runtime performance to customers on tools and platforms best suited to them, rather than promote any one particular product. 

To have a realistic picture of Customers must however keep in mind that the mere fact that it is "cloud" and "iPaaS" does not mean a zero-effort pay-as-you-go solution. There is still quality technical design and skill required in actually producing a good solution to be deployed on it.

Moreover, there is still ongoing effort involved in "Systems Administration". This includes functions like physical or virtual network setup and administration, information security, DB administration, patching, updates, etc. These are not directly "iPaaS" functions but important supporting functions, and the quality of these functions can be critical in every project. Some of these functions are also shared between the cloud provider like Oracle, other vendors, or the customer. 

This is over and above quality and effort involved in the "Application Development" practice, which is what developers and applications architects do. We develop and deploy integration flows that run on the iPaaS platform.

Finally, the most important lesson from decades of Software Engineering should be that every IT system must be independently verifiable by professionals in a given area, such as accounting, supply chain management, or logistics. Automation (and increasingly AI) is valuable as a tool to scale up human effort, verifiability, accountability and explanability are very important properties of good solutions - OIC supports these via a visual flow designer, audit trails/OCI logging, transparency in business rules via the Decision Support System (DSS) component and many more inbuilt features, with adequate features to support more. 

Once customers to keep these expectations clear when making a realistic assessment on skills, budgets, intended outcomes, etc., solutions delivered on OIC can vastly improve efficiency and deliver great value to many enterprises. 

The most valuable features are (Reviewed and updated February 2024):

• Update Mar 2023-Feb 2024: OIC's native integration via the OCI Streaming Adapter with the Kafka compatible OCI Streaming service allowed us to develop a powerful and scalable integration with a third-party application chosen by the customer. This kept multiple core systems (built on different technologies, with different throughputs) completely decoupled. The setup of OCI Stream was much easier than a comparable messaging technology, as the setup was serverless. Scaling the message throughput was relatively easy via partitions, and third-party applications could use standard Kafka-compatible interfaces to produce and consume from the OCI Stream. 
• Update Aug 2022: The Decision Support System component or DSS(decision table and rules engine) in general is a valuable feature that is closley integrated with the OIC platform's enterprise edition. It can be used to externalise logic from deployable code (hence simplifying releases whilst making key business logic more configurable and transparent)
• Process Cloud Service (PCS) supports the industry standard Business Process Management Notation (BPMN) for business analysis. Being part of the OIC platform, this facilitates closer collaboration between various stakeholders from multiple departments and even multiple organisations participating in a business process 
• Easy to provision OIC environments (subject to security assessments and ensuring adequate security controls on endpoints)
• Predictable costs and pay for use billing
• It is easy to scale instances, though scalability also depends on how well designed the actual solution is that is being deployed on Oracle Integration Cloud.
• Decent designer interface for flow design and manipulation.
  
• Easy to promote across environments as environment-specific "Connections" are decoupled from the actual "deployable unit" (the *.iar archive). This is a big plus, as it is better for security (credentials don't leave the environment) and also maintainability (less chance of deployment errors, less chance of promoting a deployable unit meant for TEST into PRODUCTION). Some of the other technologies do not offer this decoupling and I have seen first hand some of the undesirable situations this can lead to in some badly implemented legacy environments.
• A range of connectors for different interfaces like files, sftp, http/s Rest/SOAP, databases, and more. With OIC, things "just work", with the right skills, experience, and attitude of course.
• Update Aug 2022/reviewed in gen2 Jan2023: For quite some time now, XSL editing has possible in both Designer and Code modes (as of this writing, some important XSL constructs such as variables are not usable in the browser based designer view, even though they have always been editable via an external IDE like JDeveloper)

Improvements can be made in several areas, as follows:

• Configurable timeouts on each connection would be better than a single global timeout that applies to all. The rationale for why timeouts are necessary is described here: https://weblog.singhpora.com/2019/07/fault-tolerance-in-integration-flows.html  In my opinion, this feature can actually save resources (CPU, memory) for Oracle and also deliver better runtime functionality to customers. 
• Retryable scopes and activities could be useful. 
• Easier ability to edit a DB operation via DBAdapter when a schema changes, such as a column added or removed from a table (Update Aug 2022: it's possible via the wizard but needs a slightly non-intuitive series of steps) 
• Ability to add Java libraries for very corner situations like file/ftp adapter valves, which is a feature that exists in Oracle Service Bus and can be very useful in some rare situations.
• OIC arteracts should support standard source control formatting for easier comparison across versions

We have been using Oracle Integration Cloud Service since Q3 of 2018.

Stability-wise, it is excellent. See the note on scalability. A scalable solution is also stable and predictable in the event of "infinite load".

Scalability is an important non-functional requirement in any software engineering project. Scalability supports two other non-functional requirements: performance (e.g. throughput or data processed per unit time OR response time in a synchronous request-response scenario), and availability (for high availability, the environment needs more instances in a cluster so if one goes down, others can serve requests without causing downtime to consumers)

Scalability depends on two (occasionally competing) aspects:

1. Platform-level scalability; this is the ease of provisioning hardware, VMs, application server instances in a cluster, etc. In the case of Oracle Integration Cloud, this aspect is well abstracted away from application developers and fairly easy to manage. It can easily scale up or down.
   
   
2. The second important aspect of scalability is the actual technical design of the application. In OIC's case, "integration flow", that is deployed on the platform.

A well-designed solution can achieve the same performance on a fewer number of instances, less memory, and less CPU. A well-designed solution that is "scalability-friendly" would easily spread its load across multiple instances that might be available to it and its performance (throughput) would ideally improve linearly with an increase in the number of instances. An important quality of a scalable solution is also that in the event of "infinite load", it would only accept as much as it can easily process at a predictable rate given the resources available to it, and would then start accepting more as more resources are made available (a non-scalable solution would simply fail under such an 'overload' situation). 

It often happens that some of these application design level aspects of scalability get neglected, therefore, customers often end up incurring unnecessary costs in merely "platform-level" scalability with the expectation that "performance issues" would go away by throwing more OIC instances at an application. 

To deliver the best outcome to customers, both of the above perspectives on scalability need to be addressed. 

For our customer's use cases, we achieved this with our application design and repeated testing with large data volumes. We did not over-engineer or over-optimize, even when we felt the solution could be enhanced to perform with higher throughput, we took customer's feedback on when the throughput was acceptable for their immediate business objectives, to avoid diminishing returns

Technical support is excellent by and large, but could be better and more consistent.

Positive

The choice of technology depends on the customer's environment, suitability for their use case, preferences, and other needs. We deliver solutions on multiple technologies and each can have pros and cons. 

Oracle Integration Cloud was the best suited for some major enterprise customers. 

On other customer projects, we have delivered solutions on Mulesoft, Apache Camel, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Service Bus, and more.

There are many "conceptual" similarities that I can see as a Software Engineer, but there are very many implementation level differences not just limited to technology but also in vendor support, community eco-system, and quality of professionals. 

The initial setup was straightforward and it was easy to get productive. Oracle offered initial support and guidance as well, as they were keen for the technology to be adopted. 
However, enterprise customers MUST seek advice from qualified professionals around systems administration and network security, including penetration testing in consultation with Oracle, and must conduct a proper risk assessment as with any other non-trivial enterprise IT system whether or not it is cloud-based.

We developed in-house. Singhpora Consulting was sub-contracted to develop key parts of the solution

Many open-source products can offer a high level of customizability and no upfront licensing cost. However, there can be a high cost involved in provisioning infrastructure, expertise, and other aspects. 

In the case of Oracle Integration Cloud, costs can be "predictable" as far as the platform and infrastructure are concerned. The platform offers a range of pre-built adapters and connectors but it is a closed platform controlled by Oracle. This has pros and cons in terms of flexibility versus productivity.

Yes, identical usecases were implemented on multiple platforms to identify the optimal balance of cost, time, and quality

Self-promotion: Please visit https://weblog.singhpora.com or contact us directly on info@singhpora.com

Customers can contact us for no-obligations brief consultations for their use cases where they might consider our future involvement.