Oracle SOA Suite Reviews

The most valuable feature is its capability to integrate with a wide variety of other solutions.

We have been able to automate a lot of manual processes for our invoicing.

I’d like to see more integration with Salesforce. That's one thing that I think they're still in the inception phase. I think a more robust solution for Salesforce would be good.

It’s pretty robust and stable.

One of the reasons why we went to Oracle SOA Suite is its ability to scale out to all the different platforms and technologies. I think it's doing pretty well. We have integrated with a couple vendors right now, and we plan to integrate another five or six in the pipeline.

Technical support has been pretty good. The Oracle support team has seemed to be pretty knowledgeable about the SOA Suite. They have provided proper support every time we've called.

We were not previously using any other solution. We evaluated this and a couple of other things, and when we did all the metrics and everything else, SOA Suite came out on top.

Initial setup was pretty straightforward, but we had one of the Platinum Partners come in and actually install it. They knew how to do it and there was pretty minimal involvement from us.

We thought about building a custom solution and also looked at Microsoft. We decided to go with Oracle SOA Suite just because it was already pre-built and it was mature enough that it had all the capabilities we were looking for.

When I’m looking for a vendor such as Oracle to work with, I evaluate product maturity and support highly.

Look at all the integration adapters that SOA Suite offers. If those are the integration points that you wish to integrate with, I think it's the right solution. If there are some that are still in development or whatever, such as the Salesforce one, then you should probably consider something else.

There's a little bit of room for improvement, as I’ve mentioned, on the Salesforce side. Other than that, I think it's doing what it's supposed to do.

I think adapting different protocols easily with no coding is the best feature of the middleware SOA Suite.

We have created an offering for our customers, leveraging industry standards in order to utilize the delivery for that.

It should provide better log management and an easier tool for configuration.

There are still some problems that are not covered. The login mechanism still creates issues when it is not configured properly. The monitoring in general is complex. I think that there are some integrations with the cloud and mobile that need to be taken care of.

I have found version 12c to be stable.

The organization by logical domains based on WebLogic is definitely a key factor for the scalability of the solutions.

Technical support is quite a stable process but sometimes there are not responsive, especially for the more urgent and critical cases. In that case, we usually escalate it with our partner.

I'm a system integrator, not a customer. We usually use it in order to provide middleware solutions to our customers. Basically, also based on analyst reports, SOA Suite is at the edge of the technology, so we invested in it.

Initial setup was really complex.

We also have looked at TIBCO, which is very strong as well, and WebSphere, but I think that is a niche player, especially in financials. At the moment, I think TIBCO is the most realistic competitor for Oracle, apart from all of the open-source solutions.

When I’m looking at a vendor such as Oracle to work with, the most important criteria are scalability, reliability, maturity and also support.

Ask for Accenture support. We have tons of experience at the moment in the team and in the regions, in Europe, especially. I think that the best solutions start with the configuration, in terms of high availability that is similar to production, in order to test all the configurations sent in from development.

During the last five years, the product has improved a lot. At the moment, it's a very natural product; a lot of very good features at the high end of the market.

I guess connecting to any and every application. Different sources: it can be a file source, a database, a web service. It's a single source for integration.

I think it has already improved quite a bit. At the system level, when you are running a website, it should be easier to diagnose the source of problems, for example, why the CPU is high, and make the error logs and log files easier to work with to find why an issue happens. Sometimes the Java can be a bit tricky to diagnose the actual problem. I think probably this area can be improved.

I started in 2010, so for over six years now.

It's stable enough. It has its problems as with any other Java application. Java, you know, sometimes can go down; JVM crashes; it has stuck threads. So as with any Java applications, it has its fair share of minor issues; but it's getting better.

It is scalable.

The technical support was average. It's a complex product, so it really takes time before you can find someone who knows, or someone who can get the right answer that we are looking for, and sometimes you don't, even if it takes ages.

If you know it, it's straight forward. If you don't know it, it's rather complex and can be very tricky. If you haven't invested time, you will make mistakes. Then it is not very simple to get back and start again.

If you want to invest in this product, I recommend to go ahead and do it. If someone is starting ,start with the latest version. It version is a lot better than it used to be. Don't even look back at the old version.

The following features of this product are the most valuable to me:

Integration to underlying applications and technologies via its OOTB adapters
Scalability of deployed solutions
Business Process Management (BPM)
Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)

For my most recent customer, we automated an accounts payable process that integrated four different ERPs into an approval process.

Customers experience issues standing up environments. Unless an experienced administrator is involved, having an environment that is clustered and load balanced requires quite a bit of time. There are third-party tools to automate this configuration, but there is nothing currently out of the box to ease difficulty the installation issues customers run into.

I have used this solution for 8+ years.

SOA has been stable through the years, other portions of the suite have had issues when they rolled out. Customer support is very responsive when issues are found and the product is stable.

Scalability is one of the strengths of the product. We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I know others with issues, but our experience has been that they have been outstanding. Escalations are handled timely and the expertise of the support techs we've been assigned has been outstanding.

I did not previously use a different solution. We works exclusively with Oracle SOA Suite.

This is a complex environment so unless an experienced administrator is involved, having an environment that is clustered and load balanced requires quite a bit of time. There are third-party tools to automate this configuration, but there is nothing currently out of the box to ease difficulty the installation issues customers run into.

The vendor team was not used. Full disclosure - I work for a consulting company and we were brought in to facilitate the BPM and integration aspects of the project.

Get training up front. Hire an experienced administrator. Bring in experienced consultants to help on the initial project to help mentor and provide best practices.

It encompasses a lot of different apps. The key is that it combines a lot of commonly used apps, from a business perspective, for example, business logic implementation such as people or reporting. They made it lot easier. From a development perspective, the tools are pretty good.

My one big improvement would be to make the ID tool that the developers use to develop a lot of these applications better. It could be more stable and the performance can be improved. As a developer, me and my team face the most challenges installing it. It's very memory intensive and it crashes a lot. They could definitely improve on that.

I have been using it for 8-9 years.

Parts of it are stable. When they release a new version, it can be unstable. A lot of times we have seen that, even though they claim in the documentation to have implemented or enhanced certain things, when you start actually implementing it, you realize it's not really been done. For each major release – for example, from 10 to 11 or 11 to 12 – there can be some performance and stability issues in the initial phase. But, overall the patches and the releases are pretty stable.

It’s scalable. It will meet the company's needs moving forward.

Technical support is okay. I would think they could do better. They have a way of raising service requests with Oracle. Every time you raise one, you lose a lot of time when they go through their standard routine before you actually reach a person who knows stuff and you can actually start moving forward. I believe you lose a lot of time just getting to the right person and start going forward. They could work on that for sure. I’m thinking it’s an Oracle specialty.

The initial setup is pretty good, actually, and it's very well documented.

It's a good product, but still also mind your business needs and your business case. I don’t suggest jumping for it right away. Evaluate how much value it can add for your organization.

We use it as middleware to interface between our financial application, which is JD Edwards, and the database, as well as to legacy systems. It serves a critical functionality of linking the applications together to provide us the data we need.

The error reporting can be improved. When you get an email saying that something has gone wrong or something is not complete, it isn't very intuitive. It has to go to a very technical person to be able to tell you what actually the error is and what you need to know about it.

The company has been using the product for about two years.

I would say it is and is not a stable solution, not because of a fault in the product, but because we have a combination of legacy systems and also modern ERP systems. The challenge has been with information moving between the interfaces. When you send information, it's a black box. You don't get a confirmation that information has come back, so it's asynchronous, whereas our applications are synchronous. The ongoing challenge is knowing whether your data been sent completely and accurately. We've had to work to build very good reporting at least. The biggest challenge is getting useful information to troubleshoot when something goes wrong.

So far, it has been a scalable solution. The next few years will be the true test of it, but so far, it has been a scalable solution.

Because it's a transformation project program over several years, we have internal and external support. Resources are from Accenture, the service integrator, working with Oracle Managed Cloud Services and ADM. So far, so good.

I wasn't directly involved in the setup. Nonetheless, I would say it's as straightforward as it can be considering our environment.

I think about process, not solutions. Determine what you really want to do first. Then, once you have clearly determined what you want to do, determine your requirements. Once you have the requirements, then go find the solution that meets those requirements. Rather than thinking of the solution and trying to look backwards; does it fit? Know what you really want and then go find the product. You will rarely find a product that gives you 100%, but you might find one that gives you 80% of what you need, so determine what you can live with and what you can't live without.

When I’m selecting a vendor to work with, I don’t want any bait and switch, in the sense of promise and delivery. The space that we are in, that's the biggest challenge. Sales people always get a bad rep as they offer promises and then when the product is delivered, they say something like, "The product doesn't do that or you need to buy something else to get that." I’m looking for simple clarity on what you're delivering, what it can and cannot do. That upfront clarity and honesty is what I look for the most.

• The EM console
• The WebLogic Server
• The SOA suite
• The BPEL processes.
• I think it's good, as we have done our POC on 12c, and it comes with great features, like all-in-one installation, management from one console, enhanced JVM for great throughput, and memory management.

12c play around reviews

12.1.3== SAP adapter dave so much trouble while configuring it.

Not proper documentation is helpful from Oracle.

After the installation and configuration the classes and jars are not loaded which leads to issues with Fusion SAP connectivity.

Over all the The look and feel of the EM console is ok.

I would recommend to use this version of product with 1.7_81_ version of Java/jre environment.

The rcu is combined inside the soa infra jar installation so that is good thing that I found as I don't have to worry about the RCU to download and install and then configure the SOA_INFRA schema's.

so good this is fair deal of my experience. Happy SOA.!!!!

This product provides a robust and scalable integration solution for our organization’s business needs.

In the current version of SOA Suite 11.1.1.7.8, we are having fewer issues as compared to earlier versions. We have had severe issues being denied, and upon following up with Oracle these have not yet been solved.

I've been using it for the last six years.

Stability is sometimes a challenge.

It’s a very scalable application.

3/5

Oracle being reliable, robust and scalable is always chosen.

Initial setup was full of learning.

We implemented it on our own, although on certain modules the Oracle team had helped us.

It’s a bit costly.

I think the world is moving is towards Cloud solutions and in the same path Oracle has cloud solutions, if you are ready to shell out few extra bucks for your Business’s IT infra and solutions, then Oracle is the one.

The ease of use, service virtualization capabilities, support for integrations with multiple communication protocols and applications, seamless integration with other Oracle products, mobile enablement, and cloud enablement are all features of SOA suite that provide us a lot of value. Also, starting in

Oracle SOA Suite has allowed for more productive development, allowing not only quicker release cycles, but also integration between systems and vendors that was previously done point-to-point.

The monitoring capabilities granted the business transactions more visibility over to the business users and proved useful for tracking KPIs as well as for managing SLA alerts when need be.

An area with some room for improvement is the development tool used (JDeveloper) with regard to stability.

Also, there are three administration consoles available with some overlapping functionality, which should be better segregated.

I have been using Oracle SOA Suite for around six years.

Deployment is very straightforward. The application server (Weblogic) provided mechanisms for remote deployment, which makes it possible to create provisioning scripts, greatly reducing deployment effort and

Overall the platform is stable. We haven't had any issues with instability.

Scaling is a breeze. It's very quick to add extra application servers without even having to make the system unavailable.

6/10 - Some interactions take too much time and end up forcing us to resort to workarounds to avoid impact on project milestones.

I have used a few other integration suites, such as JCAPS (formerly a Sun product) and TIBCO Business Works. SOA Suite is a much more complete solution and quicker evolving to fulfill the market's emerging needs. Oracle is putting a lot of effort in developing this product and bringing out new features and improvements on a regular basis.

There are two kinds of setups possible. The "Quick Start" and the "Regular" one. The first is targeted at individuals trying to get a glance at the product without too much time invested on installation and configuration. It comes with a development environment ready to use (including an integrated application server and a database) and is installed in a few minutes. The "Regular" setup is intended for production use (or other environments) and takes longer due to custom configurations that might be needed, but is well documented.

I have implemented and consulted on several implementation projects using Oracle SOA Suite. My main recommendation is to be trained and willing to learn, because there is so much that can be done with this product and the projects are always looking for long-term usage. Having more knowledge will result in implementing better architectures and problem-free solutions.

The most important for a quick ROI is to license according to your needs over the next one to three years. Don't get more products if there is no plan to use them immediately, or there is no skilled personnel to get value from them. Starting smart with licensing will be a big factor for determining the necessary time to get a ROI.

Try it out and explore the existing features and how they would positively impact your business. Identify the use cases for the several products/components in the suite and see what makes sense for you to license and then build on it.