How to Avoid the Perils of Patchwork Cloud Integration

Alignment between IT and business has hovered near the top of “Top CIO Priorities” surveys for years – but this elusive goal can be difficult to attain. The accelerating pace of business change and the exploding rate of technology innovation only make matters worse, as does the fact that business strategies and goals vary by functional perspectives, making IT-business alignment a multivariable equation.
Lines of business (marketing, sales, etc.) are increasingly bypassing IT to strike independent deals with cloud application providers, eventually forcing IT to integrate outside of IT best practices, resulting in a disparate, patchwork integration. These ad hoc architectures become more complex, more costly, and less agile than well-planned architectures with continual collaboration between IT and business.
“A successful cloud integration strategy requires executive sponsorship of IT involvement in all cloud application purchases. Furthermore, cloud integration goes well beyond simple point-to-point connectivity,” says Oracle Senior Principal Product Marketing Director Bruce Tierney. “To solve this issue, you need to enable a diverse set of connectivity options to a common platform that can seamlessly bridge dissimilar technologies in a consistent way when moving between the on-premises world and cloud environments.”
Oracle’s SOA-based integration platform, Oracle Service-Oriented Architecture, provides a comprehensive and flexible platform that allows companies to avoid a complex array of disparate integration tools and standards and is fundamental to Oracle’s cloud integration solution. Tierney says that one of the most efficient ways to create a cloud integration strategy is through Oracle AppAdvantage, a program that helps Oracle enterprise applications customers use Oracle Fusion Middleware to integrate, extend, configure, and secure their investments across all applications.
For example, when it comes to cloud integration, Oracle AppAdvantage guides companies through the process of moving business processes that are unique to individual lines of business or that frequently change out of core enterprise applications and onto a middleware layer that leverages open, standards-based integration and cross-application business process management. “It helps customers manage the scale of integration across on-premises and cloud applications, helping companies build agile, responsive business applications,” Tierney says.
Dive deeper into the details of IT-business alignment. Read the new white paper, “IT-Business Alignment: Why We Stumble and the Path Forward.”
Download the Oracle AppAdvantage customer booklet to learn how organizations like yours are leveraging Oracle AppAdvantage today – and schedule an Oracle AppAdvantage assessment.
And don’t miss the Cloud Integration resource kit. Download the new white paper, “Cloud Integration – A Comprehensive Solution” today.

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