Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Cloud with Oracle Managed ...

Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Cloud with Oracle Managed Cloud Integration Service How to Connect Applications More Quickly and with Less Risk ORACLE WHITE PAPER

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OCTOBER 2015

Achieving the Promise of the Hybrid Cloud If you’ve implemented Oracle applications in a private cloud configuration, it’s probably because you wanted to reap the many potential benefits of delivering these applications as services. Deploying these applications in a private cloud can enable you to: » Scale your applications to the demands of your business users » Use hardware more efficiently » Ensure greater application uptime during hardware maintenance and upgrades » Enhance disaster recovery and business continuity » Make better use of software licenses

But you may have already decided that it makes sense—financially, technically, and strategically—for your organization to access certain business applications through a public cloud deployment. As time goes by, more and more Oracle business applications are becoming available as public cloud solutions. Today, you can easily deploy these applications alongside private cloud deployments of Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle PeopleSoft to give your organization powerful new capabilities without making a major investment in licensing, implementation, and maintenance. Adopting a hybrid cloud model—in which you use Oracle applications in both public and private cloud deployments—can give you: » Better quality of service in all your applications » Greater business agility » Minimal burden on your IT staff » More robust security as you leverage the technologies developed by a major enterprise software provider

If your company is seriously considering a hybrid cloud deployment, you’re not alone. Today, enterprises seek to do more than just save money with cloud technology—they also crave agility. Companies are looking beyond the goal of reducing capital expenses and operational expenses, and now seek to implement technologies that enable usage metrics, self-service offerings and automated provisioning without an accompanying surge in operational costs. Hybrid cloud deployments offer this promise. But as you seek to create a hybrid cloud environment, you’ll face significant technical challenges. Without the right integration strategy and design considerations, it will be difficult to monitor

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applications centrally and manage the complete integration lifecycle across multiple clouds. First and foremost, you need a reliable way to keep business data flowing from one application to the next.

Two Common Approaches for Building and Managing Integrations Relying on In-House IT Staff Many companies that aim to integrate data between public and private cloud applications rely on their in-house IT organizations to manage these integrations. This approach is fraught with several clear disadvantages: » In-house IT teams can seldom provide a guarantee that any project will go live on time and on budget. Because they often lack expertise with today’s emerging public cloud technology—and especially with integrating this technology to existing ERP solutions—they may not be able to meet your timeline or quality standards.

» Once the integration goes live, the work for the in-house IT team has just begun. You’ll need to rely on them to provide additional implementations, patching, reporting, and break-fixes. Performing these services may not always be their top priority.

» Issues with your integrations will only be resolved as quickly as your in-house staff can manage, and service tickets will likely fall in line behind other support issues. Regardless of how capable your IT staff may be, they will probably lack the deep connections within Oracle product development to get issues resolved as quickly as possible—and with the highest degree of user satisfaction. As a result, there may be significant disruption to your business when integrations stop working properly.

» Every hour that your IT staff spends on building, monitoring, testing, maintaining, and upgrading integrations will divert them from more strategic IT projects. » Most in-house IT teams lack the security expertise needed to connect on-premise enterprise applications to public cloud applications. A faulty integration can put your organization at risk of violating today’s increasingly complex industry regulations.

Engaging a Systems Integrator You also have the option of hiring a systems integrator to perform integrations between your public and private cloud applications. But once your integrations go live, your partner’s involvement in the project will likely end. Responsibility for periodically testing and maintaining these integrations will fall back on your in-house IT staff unless you pay additional fees to your partner. You’ll also need to engage your partner to perform enhancements to your integrations as the underlying applications change. To ease your transition to a hybrid cloud model and reduce the risk of business disruption, you need a reliable integration solution that’s designed to help you go live quickly and cost-effectively.


Cloud Models Shift Toward Hosted Private Cloud and Hybrid Cloud Organizations Prefer a Mix of Cloud Deployment Models A recent Gartner survey asked participants to identify the cloud models they’re using today and the models they expect to be using in three years. The responses indicated that the use of hosted private cloud solutions would double in a three-year stretch, increasing from 8% of organizations preferring hosted private cloud in 2014 to 16% in 2017. The survey also found that the use of hybrid cloud would nearly triple, growing from 7% of organizations preferring it in 2014 to 20% in 2017.1

Overcome Integration Challenges with Oracle For most companies that hope to achieve the benefits of a hybrid cloud model, the challenge of integrating cloud applications represents the biggest hurdle. That’s why it’s essential to choose an integration partner that will: » Work closely with you at the concept phase to define your requirements for the project » Bring deep and broad Oracle product knowledge to your integration project » Leverage their experience in managing SOA-based integration solutions across multiple Oracle applications » Remain engaged in your success throughout the complete lifecycle of your integrations—not just during the initial go-live process Oracle Managed Cloud Integration Service (MCIS) is designed to help your enterprise overcome challenges in integrating public cloud applications such as Oracle HCM Cloud with your existing Oracle ERP solutions such as Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle PeopleSoft. MCIS offers pre-built integrations and complete-lifecycle management for cloud integration from design to enhancements. For enterprises that intend to adopt public cloud applications, this service removes key barriers such as: » Lack of in-house expertise in public cloud technology. Oracle provides the consultants and tools you need to establish reliable connections between your private and public cloud applications. » Ongoing maintenance burden. Oracle MCIS takes on the task of performing additional implementations, patching, reporting, and break-fixes. » Lack of connections to Oracle product development staff. The Oracle MCIS team maintains close relationships with Oracle developers and can address integration issues directly with the people who built the applications involved. » Lack of in-house expertise in cloud security. Oracle MCIS provides the robust, proven security controls you need to keep your integrations in compliance with complex regulations. At the center of this solution is a portfolio of pre-built integration templates for Oracle Sales Cloud, HCM Cloud, Taleo, and Service Cloud. Oracle can use these templates to implement your integrations at a predictable cost and timeframe. These templates eliminate the hours of work your IT team would have to perform to install a service cloud adaptor. Most customers find that these templates require some customization to match their specific business processes. Oracle will work with you throughout the implementation to learn your requirements, and will then tailor your integration templates to support the way you work.

1 Anderson, Ed and Mazzucca, Jennifer. “Survey Analysis: Cloud Adoption Across Vertical Industries Exhibits More Similarities Than Differences.” Gartner. February 18, 2015.


Two Advantages to a Managed Private Cloud Configuration Companies interested in engaging Oracle MCIS for their integration projects have two deployment options: they can use the integrations as a standalone service at their own datacenter, or they can deploy them at Oracle alongside any managed ERP service from Oracle Managed Cloud Services (OMCS). Both configurations will offer a seamless flow of data from one Oracle business application to the next. But customers who deploy MCIS at Oracle in a managed private cloud configuration can benefit from two additional capabilities: » Cross-cloud Business Transaction Monitoring (BTM). When you monitor network performance across your entire chain of applications using both synthetic and real job transactions, you can identify and resolve issues more quickly across clouds. » Cloud Automation Platform (CAP). CAP allows you to view various service quality metrics on any device with a ®

web browser, including iPad .

Cross-Cloud BTM Companies that implement and maintain their own integrations face a host of challenges when an integration stops working. First, their IT team must figure out where the problem lies. Next, they must contact the technical staff for the affected application and work with them to solve the issue. These steps alone could easily result in one to two days of lost productivity for business users. By contrast, Oracle MCIS provides cross-cloud BTM monitoring capabilities that let you identify issues quickly and pinpoint the time when the integration stopped working. You can also determine when performance began to deteriorate, providing more insight about each problem. With this information at their fingertips, Oracle staff can get your integrations up and working again in a fraction of the time it would take your in-house IT team. Cross-cloud BTM allows you to monitor your login and batch transactions between clouds such as Oracle EBusiness Suite and Taleo. To monitor your login transactions, Oracle can check your integration links from end to end every 7.5 minutes to ensure they are still live and authenticating properly. Oracle compares each link’s performance with historic data and the thresholds you’ve set to make sure it is meeting your expectations for performance of business processes. In monitoring your batch transactions, Oracle will make sure your transaction data is being delivered at appropriate intervals to Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle PeopleSoft. For example, suppose you are using Taleo and typically hire several new employees each week. Oracle will make sure the new hire data that’s sitting in your talent management cloud is reaching E-Business Suite at the end of each week. When something goes wrong, Oracle will be able to locate where the problem occurred, determine which cloud application is causing the problem, and take immediate action to address the issue through the OMCS Functional Services for Public Cloud application.


Figure 1. Cross-cloud Business Transaction Monitoring screen shot.

Cloud Automation Platform Your IT staff wants to make sure your Oracle integrations are not only staying up and running, but also performing at acceptable levels for your business users. Cloud Automation Platform lets your team view various service quality metrics through any web browser on a computer or mobile device. Cloud Automation Platform enhances your customer experience by enabling you to: » Get data at your fingertips. The Pulse Application, delivered with Cloud Automation Platform, lets you monitor and measure all aspects of how Oracle is delivering services to your organization. The Service Health Dashboard provides complete availability data related to uptime, outages, planned maintenance, and changes. Near-realtime service status data allows you to monitor the user experience at each location. You can evaluate uptime trends, gain insight into storage capacity, and gather details on critical incidents—all from one dashboard. » Increase the productivity and efficiency of your IT staff. With Cloud Automation Platform, you can implement automated workflows across your entire stack of services, use tools for predictive monitoring throughout your customer base, and generate analytics that help you identify ongoing process improvements. » Automate common functions. Self-service allows your IT team to eliminate lead times and ensure consistency when they’re performing repetitive tasks.


Figure 2. Cloud Automation Platform screen shot.

How to Manage Your Complete Integration Lifecycle Implementing your own integrations to public cloud applications leaves your in-house IT staff with the burden of managing these integrations as applications change over time. Oracle MCIS eliminates this hassle by providing complete lifecycle management across the design, development, management, and enhancement stages of your integration project. To address the ongoing challenges related to regular updates, managing, and reporting for cloud integrations, OMCS provides setup and configuration, monitoring, ongoing management, and enhancement services. During the design stage of your project, Oracle will work with you to define the data extraction process from Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle PeopleSoft, choosing from a pool of options that include file-based loading techniques, spreadsheet loading, and specialized loading. Oracle can use web services along with extract, transform, or loading procedures to programmatically exchange data with your external systems. You can also enhance the performance and value of your integrations with Oracle Functional Services. This functional services desk is available to customers who choose to run their Oracle private cloud applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle PeopleSoft in an Oracle-managed cloud. As soon as a member of your technical staff identifies a problem with an integration to one of your Oracle public cloud applications, Oracle will manage the issue through to resolution.

Three Common Scenarios for Oracle MCIS Deployment Because of the wide variety of benefits it can deliver, Oracle MCIS is a viable integration option for enterprises in many different stages of hybrid cloud adoption. Here are a few scenarios of how Oracle MCIS can fit into the technology infrastructure: 1. Enterprises that are planning to move all business applications to the public cloud. Attracted by the prospect of not having to devote any in-house IT resources to business application maintenance, some enterprises plan to migrate all of their Oracle applications from private cloud deployment to public. Companies in


this situation may not recognize the potential benefits of using Oracle MCIS to integrate their public cloud applications with their private cloud applications because they plan to overhaul their whole infrastructure within a short period of time. But for these customers, Oracle can act as an onramp that transitions applications to the public cloud faster and more cost-effectively than by other means. Since Oracle OMCS runs on a similar foundation to Oracle’s public cloud applications, your migration to the public cloud can run more smoothly if you work with Oracle’s integration experts. 2. Enterprises that want to maintain control of Oracle E-Business Suite. Some companies recognize the advantages of integrating their Oracle public cloud applications with their private cloud implementation of Oracle E-Business Suite, but they hesitate to work with Oracle MCIS because they are concerned they will be pressured into migrating Oracle E-Business Suite to a public cloud deployment. For customers that see a strategic advantage in continuing to manage the hardware that their Oracle E-Business Suite runs on, Oracle MCIS can provide services through the Oracle @ customer program. In this arrangement, the customer will provide the server hardware and operating system environment, including server storage and backup infrastructure. All hardware and operating system software must meet Oracle Managed Cloud Services’ minimum configuration requirements. The hardware is located and managed at a site of the customer’s choosing—whether it is the customer’s own data center or the data center of a hosting service provider (HSP). The customer or HSP will then be responsible for all hardware services, including procurement, support, and maintenance. Oracle MCIS will simply need access to the Oracle software and the Oracle Managed Cloud Services automation platform on the system in the data center. 3. Enterprises that maintain large in-house IT organizations. Companies that invest heavily in IT often believe they don’t need assistance with Oracle application integrations. They plan to have their large, capable IT staffs maintain the integrations themselves. But in-house IT organizations typically don’t deliver strategic value by testing and maintaining integrations between business applications—they do so by concentrating on new development in strategic areas that can enable top-line growth for the company. For companies with large IT staffs, Oracle MCIS can take a non-strategic task off their plates. This means IT can focus on designing and deploying new mobile apps that increase employee productivity, or on customizing existing business applications to better support the company’s unique business processes.

Learn More About Oracle MCIS There are clear financial and strategic advantages to accessing certain Oracle business applications in a public cloud deployment. You can use the public cloud to get up and running quickly with solutions such as Oracle Sales Cloud, HCM Cloud, Taleo, and Service Cloud. But integrating business data across applications that sit in separate clouds presents an almost insurmountable challenge to most in-house IT staffs. And even after the integrations go live, IT organizations will then have to take on responsibility for monitoring the performance of the integrations and managing the complete integration lifecycle. Oracle Managed Cloud Integration Service (MCIS) eliminates many of the biggest barriers for enterprises that intend to adopt Oracle business applications in the public cloud. This service is designed to help your enterprise overcome challenges in integrating public cloud applications such as Oracle HCM Cloud with your existing Oracle ERP solutions such as Oracle E-Business Suite or Oracle PeopleSoft. By offering pre-built integration templates and complete-lifecycle management for your cloud integration, Oracle MCIS can eliminate hours of non-strategic work for your in-house IT organization while dramatically increasing the reliability of your cloud integrations. Want to learn more about MCIS or OMCS? Email [email protected] today or visit oracle.com/managedcloudservices.


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