Oracle Integration Cloud Service Reviews

We are migrating some interfaces from Axway to Oracle Integration Cloud Service. There are some pass-through interfaces wherein we receive data for application-to-application (A2A) file transfers within our organization. We initially used Axway, but because it is costly, we decided to migrate to a cloud-based solution, preferring Oracle Integration Cloud Service.

Oracle Integration Cloud Service is easy to use. Being an iPaaS, it offers all the features without needing to provision any hardware. It has built-in features available to establish connections with various SaaS providers like Salesforce. Additionally, it provides a wide variety of built-in adapters for many cloud providers, such as Azure Blob and AWS S3, which you can use for integration purposes.

My clients use the solution to integrate multiple systems, like ERP, SCM, EPM, and some ADP. Different integrations are there, like talent management, compensations and, AppSense OTL, time clock device integration.

Most of the customers are using Oracle products where Fusion ERP is involved. I have seen that the Oracle integration tool is the most comfortable tool for using those Oracle products. It supports multiple systems apart from hybrid clouds. For some of our clients, most integration tasks become very easy when they have to interact with the Oracle Fusion SaaS systems using OIC.

For the most part, integrations and DBCS are more useful. To give a ratio, it is 70% ICS, 20% VBCS, a web-based mobile app, and 10% PCS.

This can be an Oracle-agnostic tool; it does not have to be Oracle-specific; it can integrate any other tools as well. However, it is very useful for integrating other Oracle applications. 

It can easily integrate Oracle Financial Suite, Oracle CPQ, and any other Oracle products, for example. When working with Oracle, this is the unmistakable integration tool we recommend. 

This is also an autonomous one, self-service, which is fantastic. If you need more messaging capacity, you can add it on a self-service page in the public cloud. It does a variety of market standard adapters, such as SAP, Google, and Facebook, as well as DocuSign.

Coupa is a purchasing system that connects purchase invoices to our Oracle payables module. You may not know anything about Coupa, but if you have a Coupa adapter connection, you can drag and drop, and then you can simply get the Coupa connection. It will automatically connect to Coupa and pull data from it. 

Because it can easily connect to Oracle natively, it connects to Oracle and pushes data into Oracle. This is one of your use cases. You can also use Concur, which is an expensive product.

Another option is to transfer expense invoices from the Concur system to the Oracle payables model. It's the same thing back and forth; you can even push data from Oracle to Coupa if you need to send an acknowledgment.

Oracle ERP Fusion Cloud is used for enterprise resource planning. We have different ERP modules at HCM, such as human capital management, supply chain management, and asset work management. 

We use Oracle Integration Cloud to automate a large number of integrations. For example, if you want to load the employee file from, say, a boundary system or Workday, you are providing me with a file containing the employees' salaries, and designations. I need to import it into the Oracle ERP Fusion Cloud or the ERP cloud's human capital management module, but there is no simple or direct way to import that file into the ERP cloud or that CM.

In Oracle Integration Cloud, we take the file, read it, and transform it to meet the MAT requirements of the ERP cloud or SIM cloud. For example, we create the HDL for a MAT file that contains HCM data, we also automate it. Basically, you provide the file, and we transform it. We will submit the job to ERP, where we will be able to encrypt, decrypt, and increase security. The Boundary system only needs to provide the file, and we will convert it to the required format and load it into the ERP cloud, sending notifications, logging, and monitoring.

There was initially we had two products on-premises, with were BPEL and Oracle Service Bus. When stateless integrations were required, we used Oracle Service Bus, and when a large flow was required, as well as a long-running process, we used BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). Oracle has removed these two distinctions and has merged them into one. Oracle Integration Cloud Service can create two services: one that is simple request and response, and one that can run for an extended period of time which is a good thing. That is extremely valuable. As an organization, you do not have to buy a separate product or two separate products for it.

Furthermore, everything is now under Oracle's control, from an infrastructure standpoint. Initially, when we had an on-premise structure or the on-premise SOA Suite, we had to maintain the logs and server as an organization.

It was entirely the organization's fault if the server crashed. They needed to hire web logic administrators. There was another layer. There was an administrative layer and a development layer. There were a lot of node managers and admin managers. We no longer have to be concerned about infrastructure at all. If the server fails, Oracle will take care of it. We do not need to engage in web logic administration consultations to investigate this. The Oracle is in charge of everything. And if there is any maintenance, Oracle will take care of it as well.

They will provide you with a timeline stating that on this day, we will be performing upgrades or releasing some manuals or updates. Oracle has completely automated this process. You no longer need to be concerned about it. There is no web logic, nothing.

We use the solution mainly for on-premises to cloud integration.

We mainly use the solution's ICS component. We use VBCS for building UI and PCS for Workflows. The combination of ICS/VBCS/PCS are used for PaaS extension.

Our typical use case is getting data, either real-time or bulk data. So, in the case of bulk data, we use Oracle Integration Cloud Service to get to an FTP location and read the file from the FTP location and do the necessary transforms in the solution and send it to the Oracle Cloud.

For real-time, we use Oracle Integration Cloud Service to expose the guest services to the consumers. We send data to the Oracle Integration Cloud Service from on-premise applications. After that, we send it to Oracle Cloud and other third-party application file sorts. For example, we integrated with a bank in the past. We sent data to HSBC bank and City Bank using the Oracle Integration Cloud Service.

The features I find the most valuable are the schedule and app-driven integrations. Some 90% of our use cases are covered by these two components. Sometimes we have to create a PaaS component. For that, we have to go for the DVCS screen in case the customer wants to have a screen where they can visualize their data. 

The tool is generally useful for system integrations between different applications, like Oracle and non-Oracle tools, including Oracle SFDC. It is also useful for ERP solutions like SAP, Workday, NetSuite, EBS, and Oracle Cloud ERP Platform.

The solution's most valuable feature is its integration capabilities, and we don't use Oracle PCS too much. To some extent, we use Oracle VBCS for extensions. I think we use the integrated SFTP server sometimes. From OIC, we mostly use the above-mentioned components.

We use the solution for inbound and outbound integrations.

Integration Cloud and Visual Builder Cloud Service (VBCS) are the solution's most valuable features.