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Foreword
As the digital age embraces each of us, our businesses and the world around us, the importance of Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Integration, and API Management and is higher than ever before. Today, every business is not only expected to lead but also be able to pivot and flex to ride over disruptions or even disrupt age old industries themselves-be it banking, public sector, hospitality, music or any other, even the 300 year old taxi industry. Today businesses expect their IT to be agile and rapid enough to enable them to compete and lead in an environment where the next technology-led disruption is always just around the corner.
Enterprises, large, and small, are seeing rapid uptake of best of breed SaaS applications, often led not by the CIO or IT, but by the Line of Business (LOB) such as the HR manager, the sales VP or the marketing officer. SaaS bring unprecedented advantages of the cloud with rapid deployments, ease of use and huge savings in time and money. While SaaS undoubtedly brings these benefits, it doesn't take long for the LOB to realize the importance of their SaaS applications integrating with each other, with existing on-premises applications and with business processes across the enterprise without this SaaS is nothing but silos as a service. This is where the rapid development and elevated user experience of the leading Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)-Oracle Integration Cloud Service (ICS) comes in.
In this book, Phil Wilkins and Robert van Mlken , take us through an exciting and insightful journey of how Oracle ICS solves exactly this crucial and urgent need that businesses face today an iPaaS solution that complements your SaaS and on-premises application landscape allowing SaaS business users to rapidly build cloud and hybrid integrations, while allowing IT to have visibility of these integrations at design time and runtime, across the enterprise.
Phil and Robert , bring years of rich experience solving integration problems for market leading businesses across the globe. Through this book, they not only share their expertise of Oracle ICS through in-depth information on leveraging the service but also take us through an exciting journey weaving through various aspects of rapidly building cloud and on-premises integrations-simple as well as complex, multi-step orchestrations leveraging tens of out of the box connectivity adapters and monitoring capabilities that Oracle ICS brings, for the SaaS user as well as IT. Phil and Robert , have not only shared when and how to use Oracle ICS for your business but have also articulated how to effectively solve modern business integration problems.
Your drive and expertise will always have the biggest impact on your IT and business, but I hope the knowledge you gain from this book of Oracle ICS enables you further to build the technical, architectural, and integration capabilities your business critically needs today, whether in the cloud, on-premises or both, to innovate and to future proof your business and IT.
Vikas Anand
Vice President, Product Management, Oracle Integration PlatformOracle Corporation
About the Authors
Robert van Mlken lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and is a Fusion Middleware specialist. He has over 9 years of experience in IT. Robert studied computer science at the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht and received his BCS in 2007. Before his graduation, he started as a graphic designer and web developer, but soon shifted his focus to Fusion Middleware. His career started just before the release of Oracle SOA Suite 10gR3 and progressed heavily from there. Currently, Robert is one of the expertise leads on integration and cloud at AMIS. Before he started working at AMIS, he already had 4 years of experience in SOA Suite 10g and 11g. AMIS is specialized in most of the facets of the Oracle Red Stack and is an initiator of the Red Expert Alliance, a group of well-known Oracle partners.His main emphasis is on building service-oriented business processes using SOA Suite 12c, but lately his focus has shifted towards cloud and on-premise integrations, using Oracle's offerings and custom JEE solutions.Robert is a speaker at international conferences and is frequently on the AMIS Technology blog, the Oracle Technology Network, and OTN ArchBeat Podcasts. He is one of the two SOA/BPM SIG leads for the Dutch Oracle User Group (OGh) and organizes these meetups. He also works closely with the SOA Oracle Product Management team by participating in the Beta programs. In 2016, Robert was named Oracle ACE, promoted from ACE Associate, for SOA and middleware, because of these contributions. He served as a technical reviewer for the book Applied SOA Patterns on the Oracle Platform . It was published in 2014.
I would like to thank the people who have helped me over the years to shape my professional career. I'm most thankful of the people at AMIS who gave me the chances to excel in my career. Without them, I wouldn't have come this far. My utmost gratitude goes to my friends and family for their loving support in writing this book. And finally, a special thanks goes out to my coauthor, Phil Wilkins, for his efforts and hard work in making this title a reality.
Phil Wilkins has spent over 25 years in the software industry with a breadth of experience in different businesses and environments, from multinationals to software start-ups and customer organizations, including a global optical and auditory healthcare provider. He started out as a developer on real-time, mission-critical solutions and has worked his way up through technical and development leadership roles, primarily in Java-based environments. Phil now works for Capgemini, specializing in cloud integration and API technologies and more generally with Oracle technologies.Outside of his work commitments, he has contributed his technical capabilities to support others in a wide range of activities, from the development of local community websites to providing input and support to the development of technical books (particularly with Packt) and software ideas and businesses. He has also had a number of articles published in technical journals in his own right and is an active blogger. The journal contributions have been part of a wider commitment to the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG), where Phil is also a member of the Middleware Special Interest Group Committee. He has been recognized as an Oracle ACE Associate.When not immersed in work and technology, he spends his time pursuing his passion for music and with his wife and two sons.