SAN FRANCISCO – At its annual OpenWorld conference held here, Oracle has announced the expansion of its Application Integration Architecture (AIA) for Partners program, originally launched in April at the Collaborate 07 user group conference in Las Vegas. AIA is an open, standards-based platform for business process management across Oracle, third-party and custom applications.
All members of the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), including system integrators, are now eligible to participate in the program.
Said Mary Arbelaez, senior director worldwide alliances and channels, global ISV strategy and programs for Oracle, “the focus is on working with SI and ISV partners who have developed integrations with the big six Oracle applications.”
Participants in the program receive access to software and tools to assist them in integrating with Oracle products, as well as information on best practices, marketing support, and training and certification opportunities.
They can also apply to download the AIA architecture framework. Partners are now entitled to receive development licenses for Oracle Process Integration Packs (PIPs), horizontal and industry specific pre-integrated business flows across Oracle’s portfolio of applications which they previously had to access through trial software or customer licenses. Each Process Integration Pack leverages the Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA Suite and is designed to enable a quick implementation by customers or partners.
Once development is complete, partners can apply to have their applications validated by Oracle, a service previously only offered to Certified and Certified Advantage partners.
To use the validation testing service, participants must be OPN members in good standing, have updated profiles in the OPN catalogue, and have created a solution for Oracle products or services.
Partners apply online for validation testing, Arbelaez said, and should be prepared with a vanilla instance of the Oracle application to be integrated with, and have their solutions completed, documented, and have prepared a testing plan that examines the integration for data integrity, use of best practices, installation and other factors. The tests themselves take two to four days after fees have been paid (each validation costs US$5,000) and paperwork completed, but the entire process can take six to nine weeks.
Partners with validated applications can use the Integrated with Oracle logo, said Arbelaez, and the company also assists in developing a data sheet that is posted on the Oracle web site in its list of Oracle validated applications.
Oracle recommends that vendors have their integrations re-validated after major releases of their underlying Oracle software.