Oracle Integration Cloud Service Reviews

We had a lot of integration between our On-Premise Systems and the Oracle ERP Cloud. We used it in that context. 

The adapter was pretty useful. The visualization tool was pretty useful, too. Drag and drop features — those are pretty good. In general, there were a lot of great utilities for working with files. 

We were using this solution, but we recently stopped using it four months ago. 

This solution was fairly stable. We never had any issues with it.

We used to face some issues when we tried to connect to the Oracle ERP Cloud. When we were trying to run a job on the ERP Cloud site, when the integration was complete, the job on the Cloud would still be running. We couldn't completely monitor the execution of that integration. There were instances when the integration finished, and at the end of the retry count, the thing was still running — the job on the ERP Cloud site was still running. 

Because of this, we had to keep pulling the job on the ERP Cloud site to find out if it was finished or not; but you can't keep doing that forever. We would retry and after five attempts, we would find out that the job was still running. We just had to report back saying that the job was still running on the ERP Cloud site. There was no way of knowing whether a job was completed successfully or not — unless we logged into the Oracle ERP Cloud and checked the status of a particular job.

The support and resources were lacking — they weren't there. Coming from an AWS background, the difference between Oracle Support and the resources and support of AWS was like night and day. 

Although I wasn't involved in the initial setup, I know it's fairly straightforward. I've done it in one of the classes that I've taken, but when I came to this company, it was already set up. It's quite straightforward; you just need to specify the compartment and where you would like to install it. 

When comparing AWS to the Oracle Cloud, I don't see an equivalent platform. There is no ESB as such currently on AWS. AWS has a lot of other services like a queuing service, national servers, SQL Servers, etc. If you want to integrate with Oracle and SAS applications, then this is a pretty good solution. On the flip side, OIC has a limited number of resources, including support — there are just one or two courses to go by. I wasn't happy with the instructions that we received and the number of materials and resources; it made it hard for us to learn how to properly use it. 

All things considered, it's a fairly good platform. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Oracle Integration Cloud Service a rating of seven. If they improved the amount of support and resources available, I would give them a higher rating. 

We primarily use the solution for integration with SAP, for its specs and factors and for integration with Oracle applications. 

Everything related to the mapping is valuable. It's visual, design-wise when compared to other solutions that I used to use. 

It's very easy to get started on the solution. It's also easy to maintain, scale, and integrate according to cost factors. 

The solution is very user-friendly in terms of identifying the orchestration and targets, and associates when mapping.

The solution could benefit from using things like AI and machine learning. For example, with certain orchestration fails it would be helpful to look at them as a way to either terminate or re-issue or restart the whole process again.

Oracle-based automation blueprints for the majority of the integrations would be helpful to have in a future release.

There are some default recommendations that shouldn't be done in some of the firewall integrations. At the end of the day, I don't use the product straight out of the box. Some of the finer integrations have problems like looping or standard patterns that we will have to integrate with Windows and Linux right away. 

It would be helpful if Oracle could provide one quick deployment method.

The solution needs to provide good oversight over the entire integration platform, with more analytic capabilities.

I've been using the solution for six years.

The solution is stable. However, they should allow for the deployment of multiple agents so that I can read and take one from another region if one region goes down. That way, it can fall back on another and there won't be any issues. Therefore, in terms of the product's capabilities, it's both there and not in terms of stability.

Although the solution is fairly easy to scale, we're using the latest version which is available on OCI, and scalability should be addressed. I believe Oracle is still working on this. At the moment I think, probably small, medium integrations are good. Bigger integrations could be developed, though availability and progressive recovery are not in place yet. We have about 7,000 people on the solution. Scalability is mission critical for us at this point. The entire company utilizes it and it is integrated with critical solutions like SAP and HTML output factors.

I'd say technical support is a little above average, however, it's something that Oracle could work to improve.

In terms of the initial setup, it's very easy. Only the deployment gets really complex. You have to write items in without correcting the integration with the Cloud. It's a bit challenging. It would be helpful if they allowed for an implementation where there's an ability to write some pieces, or Java scripts, which would be helpful.

We have a team of three people, who are actually looking after integrations and maintenance, and we have a partner who we rely on at times to add new functionality or design elements.

We mostly use the public cloud deployment model, but it depends on the requirements of the client.

I'd advise others that they need to be really clear on what integrations they need and the complexity of the integrations their client requires. As long as users identify the source target systems and the integration pattern that they would like to put in place, they will be fine. This needs to be the first step, so users may need a longer implementation phase. It would help provide a quicker outcome for them if they put the work in upfront. 

Those implementing the solution need to ensure they have the right partner with the right skillsets. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We have a lot of other integration platforms, even provided by Oracle itself. The biggest differentiator is that it is simple to integrate. One is, to access an application, you just go in, click, subscribe and you are ready to build the integration. That's one.

The second is when you build the integration, you don't need integration expertise. You definitely do need a certain amount of knowledge on the application side, but that's all. You already have a very rich library of connectors, or what you can call adapters. You just need to configure those connectors. You drag and drop. It's very easy to navigate it. It's self-explanatory; just go and select an object, application or whatever you want to work with, and just click Next, Next, Next. That's all. Then you do the mapping.

Mapping is the trickiest part, I would say. You need to know what you need to map to. Mapping takes up the most time. Overall, if you look at the experience, they made it very simple in terms of integration.

now ICS brought Recommendation engine that can help customer reducing time and effort in mapping.

We do use their own products, which are on-prem, like OSB, the Service Bus, and SOA Suite. The basic differentiation is still there. You need to install, you need to maintain, you need to upgrade, and all those things and upgrade wasn't that simple so far.

Just like you talk about upgrading from 11g to 12c, it's a selfless exercise. You have to go through the entire thing in order to manage that. Here, that pain goes away. They upgrade themselves. You do not need to worry. They will make sure it's backward compatible. Nothing will wreck your existing integrations.

As far as user friendliness goes, I loved it so far. For whatever application that I'm integrating it with, I would give ICS a rating of 9 or 9.5 out of 10; others don't come close to it. They focused on it being user friendly, and they achieved it.

Recommendation Engine

More robust adapters and more added adapters

More orchestration capabilities

Improved agent to connect to on premise

There are certain functionalities which at this moment ICS doesn't cover, such as B2B integration. ICS doesn't cover B2B, but Oracle has SOA CS, which is, in my opinion, nothing but a SOA Suite in a cloud environment. It's the same product. We can use that product to do the B2B. ICS in particular doesn't cover that.

Also, it has some limitations around the message size and the number of messages. Those are certain limitations which I would say if they could improve, it would do better.

These are some of the things I would say that should be improved.

The rest is good and I like the product.

There's still a lot of room for improvement, but it is coming out very well considering that it is only something like two years old. It came out very well.

3 years

No

No

It still hasn't gone into production yet. We have around five users configured already. I don't think they charge based on the users, so doubling the number of users probably should be okay. The way it works is, basically they made me the admin and I can add as many users as I want. They charge based on the number of adapters that are configured. You can have six licenses or 10 licenses.

There are various ways to reach out to technical support. At this moment, Oracle is focusing on cloud. Whenever they see a potential customer, they do reply. Yes, until now technical support has been good. Being a partner, we always can reach out to our contacts.

NA

There's no preparation required because it's a SaaS application. They just need to subscribe. The trial was part of the Insight program. They can just go in and request a trial version. They can look into the product for themselves.

In terms of preparation, I would say you need to know your requirements, what you want to integrate, and whether those are limiting factors in ICS or not. There are prerequisites you should go through or you can work with their sales team, who basically can educate you better so you can decide whether ICS is the right product.

Oracle has a wide variety of products for integration itself. Any company that wants to get into it should know what the right product is for them to start with.

We are seeing the benefits, it's a digital transformation. It's a real paradigm shift for many customers. It's important for every company to move forward with cloud services, especially all the services provided by Oracle; absolutely amazing.

I think it's now going through some changes. More and more customers have started adapting. That's where we know how it can fit into different segments of the market. They started introducing at a very decent pace. I think as they start expanding it worldwide, more and more customers will discover the gaps in the product. It's more of the fitment. The companies installing the Oracle cloud will start understanding how to do the gap fit analysis. That is the key, from what I understand.

I have been using it for the last four months. We are currently doing PoCs. We have a sales team. We are trying to learn it ourselves and then move into the new cloud environment. Gone are the days where we were just sitting and doing databases. We are getting into cloud services more. First, we are making ourselves more acute with knowledge. Then, we bring in the customer's thoughts on the same page and make them experience all the different services provided by Oracle.

We are an Oracle partner, so we are promoting cloud services with all of our clients. The first goal for us is to bring in all the data and then do a PoC for the customer. Then, we'd want to do the real integration, an integration that I can do by myself; that would make me feel more comfortable. I want to start promoting my own company versus my partnership company. That's what I'm looking for.
With the integration cloud service, I am a beginner. I do see they are providing some really amazing services. Once I'm more comfortable with it, then I will rate it higher.

It is stable; we are already seeing its stability.

It is scalable.

Their technical support is great. We're a diamond partner for Oracle. Their support services are amazing. They're knowledgeable and responsive; 10 out of 10.

Especially regarding Oracle Cloud, go with it. The shift which we need to do towards the cloud is, at one stage, if you're not adapting to it, I think you are late for the bus. That's my opinion.

When I select a vendor to work with, the very first thing I look at is the cost. The cost is what is driving the entire industry. I know everyone is increasingly becoming very sensitive to the cost. The second thing is the service, the customer service. As a vendor, I bring up some critical issues. I do look for them to be a partner and see how fast they solve my issue; that is very important, because any disruption to the customer is not good. That actually has some implications on their business. We need to zero down and make it more simplistic.

It is doing great. It has its own loopholes and that's where there is an opportunity for implementation partners like us. If the product was perfect, then probably there wouldn't be a place for implementation partners. So in fact, it's not the features that attract us, but the lack of features in something like Oracle Integration Cloud leaves some room for leads implementation partners like us, some room for custom implementation services. For example, the supply chain part of the solution is not completely available for the customer as a turnkey solution so we have a role to play in terms of integration into various solutions. But not all connectors are available. With Oracle Integration Cloud we have a role in terms of connecting to different applications. Also, not all features are there. Even if we are migrating Oracle on-premise, ERP, into Oracle ERP Cloud. So it's all Oracle, but still, there are holes that we need to plug in and that's where it leaves some opportunity for us.

It could be improved in the supply chain. I think some of these features are just available to their own consulting services, their own professional services arm. Not all features are available to the implementation partners. So especially the features that are related to leverage mission turning and artificial intelligence. They're still not available to the partners in reality. So in that case, if they make tools framework available for us, then we would give them an eight.

We have been working with Oracle Integration Cloud for three years.

They are a very good partner team so I don't think there are any areas of concern on that side.

I think they're quite flexible in their pricing. So it all depends on the statement of the customer at play so they're quite flexible in terms of pricing. That's what we found.

It works for basic stuff but if you're looking for a turnkey solution, Oracle Integration Cloud would not work. So it all depends on how heavily customized you are within the application that you already have. And there is no customization inside. You need an integration partner. That is well worth it. Your own customization has a license, Oracle Integration Cloud. I would rate Oracle Integration Cloud at a six on a scale out of ten.

Our primary use for this solution is enterprise integration.

The benefits of Oracle Integration Cloud Service is in terms of its cost and pricing for an organization and its integration platform. Integration Cloud comes with a usage based pricing which means the price is based on the number of integrations which are actually used. The biggest benefit is in terms of the price point.

The most important part would be the use of connectors. The significant number of cloud connectors available for active integration is its value.

The product has to mature a lot. I think they've created a lot of cloud integration platforms, and their integration cloud has to mature a lot more in terms of features and capabilities. There are other improvements for the integration cloud, like how it works with EPI.

They should bring in more orchestration and integration because it's a cloud-based solution. Now the platform is not built in a way that you can define.

I've been working with it for almost two years now.

In terms of stability, I think a lot of features weren't added. It's not so much a stability problem.

There is a limitation with the data, a limitation in terms of the amount of cancellations that you can do, and with the amount of the size of the payload.

We have around ten users using this solution in my company. We have plans to increase usage. 

Our experience with their technical support is that they're just different. Sometimes they don't respond. Technical support, with the information, the documentation is not always available. You might have to reach out to another representative.

I have experience working with Amazon Lex, Connect, Amazon QuickSight, Oracle Digital Assistant, and Oracle Integration Cloud service.

The initial setup was very straightforward and it could be done easily. It usually takes minutes. It doesn't take much time.

We used a consultant to work on the integration layer.

I would rate it a six out of ten. They need to add more features and better integration.

Primarily, we use Integration Cloud Service to integrate on-premises systems and applications, e.g. SAP, with cloud-based solutions like Salesforce. 

Building integrations between systems is no longer a pure technical discipline. Oracle ICS focuses on the main challenges when doing integrations and that is connectivity to other system as well as the data mapping.

Oracle ICS enables enterprises to start their journey to the Cloud, by providing rich integration functionalities especially in the area of integrating Cloud and On-Premise solutions. So organizations can start small and slightly start shifting their Center of Gravity to the Cloud.

In addition, the cloud marketplace provides new opportunities for enterprises because it furthers the reuse and sharing of knowledge. Due to that the time saved could be invested more valuable in evolving the core business.

Additionally Oracle Partners can also leverage from the Marketplace concept by implementing integrations for common scenarios from which customers can benefit, if the concrete integration scenario exists in their business. A win win situation: new business and participation models for partners as well as rapid time-to-market on the other hand for the enterprises.

One of the most important features -- and, of course, the key differentiator -- is the newly-introduced on-premise agent, which allows users to connect Oracle ICS to their on-premise applications without opening application-specific ports in a company's firewall.

The rapidly increasing number of adapters to connect to other cloud-based as well as on-premise applications is also very impressive, in conjunction with the consistent and predictable roadmap as well as the short release cycles (at least on a monthly basis).

The platform becomes more and more mature. Through an easy-to-understand and intuitive user interface, the creation of system integrations can be done efficiently.

I'd like to see more options regarding error analysis, especially when technical errors occur, which would be great. There could be more documentation as well.

There were no issues with the stability.

We had no issues scaling it for our needs.

The level of technical support is satisfactory and the response times are acceptable. Basic documentation is available and evolving constantly. Also, the community is growing so that useful information from this side, in the form of blogs, web and screen casts, are becoming more and more popular.

There was no previous solution in place.

The only thing to really set up is the installation of the on-premise agent. The installation procedure is really easy and straightforward. No IDE is needed since the implementation of integrations is done using a Web Browser.

The GUI of Oracle ICS is very clear, self-explaining and improves the integration developers productivity.

I didn't evaluate other PaaS offerings from further vendors.

Oracle ICS simplifies the definition of system integrations, focuses on core business features like the data mapping, and hides technical complexity away from the integration developer.

The user interface is very intuitive, responsive and easy to use, so long training periods are not needed. Furthermore, the platform has a very clear and transparent roadmap and is getting more mature with every release.

Make use of the Oracle Cloud marketplace and just do needed adjustments that are necessary for your business to rapidly increase your development speed.

We are a solution provider and we integrate Oracle solutions for our customers. The Oracle Cloud Integration Cloud Service is one of the platforms that we are now working with, in collaboration with a local company.

The most valuable feature is the ease of customization.

The interface is user-friendly and easy to work with. There are only three of us in the company who are using it, and we are able to complete projects for enterprise-level customers. There is no need to hire between twenty and fifty people to get the job done.

Oracle integrates well with other products.

Our client was quite concerned about the cost, which is something that could be reduced.

Having more documentation about different use cases and test cases would be helpful when it comes to integration.

I have been working with Oracle products for more than ten years, but I have only been using this solution since last year. It has only been within the past six months that our customers started using the Integration Cloud Service.

It has been stable to this point, although we have not yet done our performance testing. This is something that is scheduled to take place within the coming month. All of our initial tests indicate that there are no big issues and we are happy with the stability.

Scalability has not yet been an issue for us in this project.

Within our group, there are three people who are using the product. Once it goes live, there will be a knowledge transfer to a group of support people. There are approximately eight to ten people in that group.

Some of the technology is still quite new, so we have run into some challenges. At this point, I would rate the support a five or six out of ten. There are some things that it takes Oracle a while to understand. Also, integration is a touchy point and it takes a while to get it sorted out. We did get it all up and running but it took time to make sure that it was stable.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. You've got the manuals and the guides to help.

For this client, we brought the initial system up in about half a day. However, because of client's business, we turned on certain security features and completed an end-to-end solution. This took about three days in total.

As consultants, we are overseeing the implementation of the whole project.

This is a good product and I recommend it. My advice to anybody who is implementing Oracle Integration Cloud Service is to attend oracle University for training or at least some seminars before getting started. It is best to have some level of preparation. There is a lot of planning and discussion that takes place prior to implementation.

Overall, we are pretty happy with the product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.