Oracle ICS - Welcome the simplified Cloud integration solution

Term ORACLE ICS  where ICS stands for Integration Cloud Services is not a jargon anymore. The simplified solution now is enhanced and all set to change ways of integration of applications. This cloud service lets your organization create integrations between cloud application, but also between cloud and on-premise applications.

The integration is supported by several adapters provided by Oracle. This list might be smaller one but with time it is expected to grow exponentially as the cloud takes on the IT world. 

Every coin has two sides, cloud is no exception. Though security might strike the mind as the biggest concern right now but benefits are lucrative enough. 

> Why to consider cloud? 

The Cloud is probably the most cost-efficient method to use, maintain and upgrade an enterprise service bus.  It is available at much cheaper rates and hence, can significantly lower the company’s IT expenses. There are many pay-as-you-go and other scalable options available, which makes it very reasonable for your organization. Since all your data is stored in the cloud, backing it up and restoring the same is relatively much easier than storing the same on a physical device. 

> What is ICS there for?

• Simplified UI: ICS provides web-based, point & click integration experience where you can easily create integrations between Cloud applications, public web services, and on-premise applications.

• Rich Connectivity: ICS has a standard library of Cloud & On-premise connectors which includes Oracle SaaS applications, but also connectors for the Messaging Cloud Service and industry standards like SOAP and REST.

• Recommendations: The mapping builder to create the necessary mappings between the adapter connections has a built-in recommendation engine for guidance how to best map source to target fields.

• Visibility & Error Detections: ICS as build-in a rich monitoring and error management. With advanced tracking, you can easily spot inconsistencies and monitor the usage and performance of integrations. It generates alerts, and even emails them when connections fail to work. With the guided error handling the errors are easy to repair.

> Working with ICS

You just need a browser to work with ICS. Sign in onto the application and you will be at the welcome page. 

To navigate to the Designer Portal click on the associate menu item at the top right corner.

The designer portal: 

The Designer Portal page shows the four pillars of ICS Integrations, Connections, Lookups and Packages.

1. Connections: Define connections to the cloud and on-premises applications. As of now there ten odd connectors available to facilitate integration. A connection can be viewed, edited, cloned, exported and deleted. Active connections can be deactivated. Some actions are disabled in certain statuses. Each adapter has its own kind of connection setup wizard. RightNow supports different operation modes (single or batch) and types (CRUD or ROQL). The CRUD operation type has four cloud operations; create, destroy, get and update. Major connectors/adapters available are 

• Oracle ERP Cloud Connector for the Oracle ERP Cloud
• Rest AdapterGeneric Connector for REST APIs
• GenericCloudConnector Web Service (Soap) AdapterGeneric Connector for Web Services
• Eloqua (Marketing Cloud)Connector for the Oracle Marketing Cloud
• Oracle Messaging Cloud ServiceConnector for the Messaging Cloud Service
• Oracle HCM CloudConnector for the Human Capital Management Cloud
• Oracle Sales CloudConnector for the Oracle Sales Cloud
• Oracle RightNowConnector for the Customer Service Support Cloud
• SalesforceConnector for the Salesforce CRM (SaaS)

• Integrations: Connect two cloud applications, using available connections, and define how they interact. After defining the connections it is time to create an integration between two cloud connections. An Integration can be in one of these five statuses; draft, in progress, configured, active or failed activation. Draft means it is not 100% finished, in progress means a user is working on it right now, configured means it is 100% done, active means a configured connection was successfully activated and failed activation is an integration which had problems during activation. At this moment there are three types of integrations possible: 

• Map My Data: Drop source and target onto a blank canvas
• Publish to ICS: Connect your source to send messages to ICS
• Subscribe to ICS: Add targets to receive messages from ICS

• Lookups: Map the different values used by your applications to describe the same thing i.e. Currency codes.

• Packages: A package associates to integrations and can be used as a way to group them. When creating an integration you can assign it to the specific package name. Multiple integrations can be assigned to the same package name. Packages can be exported, imported and deleted, which mean integrations can easily be transported to a different ICS instance.

>  ICS is definitely here to stay. The way Oracle has aggressively promoted cloud makes the point very clear that future is cloud and Oracle seems to be barging in with its full power. Mulesoft at this point is clearly posing some serious competition in the market but Oracle definitely will keep the race going. 

Clients are going to benefit from the cloud services irrespective of the provider as we are on the edge of huge technology advancement and change is in the air now.

Getting Started: Follow the below links to know more from Oracle.

https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/integration-cloud-service/index.html

Do let me know your thoughts on this shift to cloud culture in the comments below. Stay tuned!