Oracle SOA Suite Reviews

I can describe several use cases for Oracle SOA Suite; it is fundamentally a middleware product. In software architecture, we refer to it as middleware. Middleware is an application that lies between multiple applications as a broker or message flowing platform.

For example, if an ERP system holds the data, we do some reporting. Ideally, middleware does not handle that work, but when ERP systems require data from multiple systems, middleware comes into the picture to take the data from multiple sources and send it to multiple targets.

That's where the job ends; once the data is received by the target application, they will do whatever the use case or requirement is.

The main benefits I've seen from using Oracle SOA Suite arise in a large enterprise landscape where multiple applications such as Salesforce, Oracle ERP cloud, SAP, and Workday exist. In such setups, Oracle SOA Suite effectively facilitates communication between different systems. For instance, your employee payroll data should flow from Workday to Oracle ERP.

Oracle SOA Suite serves as the best-fit product to eliminate point-to-point integration, consolidating this flow logic, filtering, and ensuring messages are transferred to target applications. Ultimately, the source system does not need to know whether the message reached the target.

The best features of Oracle SOA Suite, during the initial times around 2010 to 2015, made it a very robust platform as middleware. It has multiple built-in adapters, a strong WebLogic server, an easy-to-understand user development interface, and quick development timelines. Moreover, it offers excellent monitoring for applications, providing real-time insights and details about the successful and failure flows.

These were the good parts about this product, with many in-built technology and application adapters, and a stable server.

I have utilized Oracle Business Activity Monitoring in Oracle SOA Suite, which is another product available within this suite. The Business Activity Monitoring, or BAM, gives you real-time monitoring and sensor data if activated in our process. The data flow, payload, and all transformations get stored in a database, allowing you to see what has happened in that flow through your BAM application web page.

The integration capabilities of Oracle SOA Suite in connecting disparate systems within the organization are excellent. There are numerous features still available, and it has a cloud platform as well. It's beneficial that we can install Oracle SOA Suite in OCI cloud. Oracle SOA Suite was primarily on-premises, but now there's a cloud version, allowing us to take a marketplace and use an initial license or buy a new license to deploy the application on the OCI platform.

The current product Oracle provides, called Oracle Integration Cloud, is also very robust and offers more adapter connectivity features. However, the challenge is that Oracle SOA Suite is a stateful application, meaning it persists data and keeps transactions open, while Oracle Integration Cloud is more serverless or stateless, acting as a fire and forget method.

There are areas of Oracle SOA Suite I would like to see improved or enhanced in the future, particularly regarding its adapter capabilities. The popularity of Oracle Integration Cloud nowadays arises from its larger set of adapter capabilities, including numerous application adapters. In contrast, Oracle SOA Suite provides a limited number of adapters.

I would like to see more REST-based features added to Oracle SOA Suite, currently lacking, along with an enhancement of file size or payload capability, as the existing limitation is a 10 MB payload size. Additionally, Oracle SOA Suite licensing cost tends to be higher, adhering to a fixed pricing model rather than a pay-per-use basis, which might not be suitable for smaller organizations.

I have been working with Oracle SOA Suite since 2008, making it approximately 14 to 15 years of experience.

Product-wise, Oracle SOA Suite is stable, but it requires knowledgeable individuals to navigate its complexities. It's not something that anyone could manage; you need someone with experience, which is true for other platforms.

The scalability of Oracle SOA Suite is high; it allows for extensions and the addition of new interfaces without requiring server shutdowns, resulting in a highly scalable environment.

I have escalated questions to Oracle customer service and technical support, and I would say that their customer service is moderately responsive. There have been many instances where I've been stuck for longer periods awaiting resolutions.

Neutral

I haven't worked with competitors of Oracle directly, but I know there are many competitive products in the market that offer features similar to Oracle SOA Suite.

The initial setup of Oracle SOA Suite is complex; while the standalone environment might be straightforward for developers, production environments with clustering and load balancing require dedicated infrastructure administrators for proper setup.

Our customers always deal directly with Oracle when purchasing; we do not utilize partners or different marketplaces such as AWS Marketplace or Azure Marketplace.

I have not exactly calculated the ROI or found it cost-effective; it doesn't provide a clear return on investment to my customers.

The setup cost of Oracle SOA Suite is relatively high since various components, including database licenses, WebLogic licenses, VM costs, and SOA licenses based on enterprise and Oracle negotiations, contribute to expenses. Overall, customers often find the costs for Oracle SOA Suite higher than for Oracle Integration Cloud.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate Oracle SOA Suite an 8 out of 10.

My advice to organizations considering Oracle SOA Suite is to ensure they have a strong infrastructure support team capable of managing applications and servers, which is critical.

It's to provide access to other solutions that we can handle or solve. Clients may have other entities that they would have to use Azure as well as the VPN. Even going further and having the service migrated to ensure that they continue to see it on-site.

Predominantly accepting APIs. The other API platform. We find that most of the customers are not running Oracle solutions, but they'd want to be able to connect with the IT agent in the software to integrate because that's in the SOA and have, like, an integration.

The features we've been installing are really, really robust. The only challenge that we have down here is that most individuals have not improved so much. But the features are quite mature. The only tenant is that they would not have enough knowledge to be able to interact with those features and integrate them with their systems. So, to improve other than the training or the performance of those that are using the package.

Another area of improvement is performance. Because with multiple solutions connecting to the SOA platform, in time, the performance of the SOA platform can be affected. So, that could be one area that could be improved with the SOA.

Also, licensing is another area of improvement. It seems to be a high cost, especially for our customers. So that is something that we might look at improving.

I have been using Oracle SOA Suite for more than four years. 

It is a stable solution. I would rate the stability an eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. It is a scalable solution. We have clients on the bank side. They are mostly in the public sector.

The support depends, especially on the ground and the customer's response time.  

We always get a high priority from Oracle support, but the downside comes from the customer if they don't respond. So, from Oracle's side, the support is very fast. 

Positive

I have worked with other solutions. Predominantly Oracle and Microsoft solutions, as well as IBM solutions, but mostly and predominantly Microsoft solutions.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy. 

For someone like me who's been working with Oracle solutions, it's one of the easiest deployments.

The deployment went pretty smoothly. It takes less than five days. But for other configurations, depending on customer needs and use cases, it could take about a month or two, considering the scope of the product.

We are having government work, especially because my customers are in the public sector, mostly preferring on-premise solutions. Cloud and hybrid are still young in that area. Most government institutions prefer on-premise. But we're looking to enable a hybrid kind of solution. Most are good for on-premise solutions with on-site protection.

Due to the region, the pricing is high for our customers. Because we are going with the global price. And with the global price, we who are in Africa, for instance, customers actually do have a hard time. So that is really setting it back for our customers.

I would definitely recommend Oracle SOA Suite for most customer needs. It is a scalable solution, easy to deploy, and has good uptime. It is a great choice for customers.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

BPEL is a component of SOA Suite. The use cases are almost the same for both products. Most of the solutions are implemented in SOA Suite with BPEL.

I found the adapters to be most useful. The adapters make it easy to connect with the end systems. The product has an adapter if we want to connect with Oracle Applications. The product also provides adapters to connect with application adapters like SAP, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft. These features are available in 11g. 

In 12c, Oracle has also provided cloud adapters. For SOAP, they have provided SOAP Adapter and REST Adapter. It is a very good product. I do not see any alternate product for Oracle SOA Suite. The product is very useful, and it provides many integration solutions to multiple customers for their business needs.

The deployment could be made easier by including add-ons like Hudson and Maven. The add-ons and tools for deployment need to be improved. Patches should also be improved. Most of our clients are heading towards the cloud.

The cloud integration features need to be improved. Almost most of the integration solutions are UI based. Those are very lightweight solutions, whereas SOA Suite is heavyweight. The product should become more lightweight, and it should be UI based.

I have been using the solution for nine to ten years.

The tool is stable. I rate the product’s stability an eight and a half out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten. Almost 80% of the people in our organization are using the solution. We have more than 100 users. Our clients are enterprise businesses.

All our Oracle solutions are supported by one technical support team. They provide high-level support.

Positive

I rate the ease of setup a seven out of ten. There were some difficulties. It is not easy for a person doing it for the first time with guidance and an installation document. The process is complex for domain configurations, DB setup, and adding additional features compatible with the product. There are different domains involved. The person installing the product should know which one is better suited for them. It is very complicated. This process should be made easy. The solution is mostly deployed on-premise, but the trend has started toward the cloud. Recently we migrated to OCI. We use Oracle Cloud predominantly.

The overall deployment process took close to one hour. The important steps in the installation are the domain configurations, selecting the parameters from the server, and selecting add-ons based on the space and features. Then, we create the infrastructure.

The product is moderately priced. I rate the pricing a six out of ten. There are no additional costs associated with the tool.

Currently, I am working on 11g. I have worked on 12c too. I would highly recommend the product. The product has been evolving for a very long time. The product improved a lot because of the added features and resolved issues. I have seen the 10g version. Now we are in the 12c version. There have been lots of improvements. The product is doing very, very well. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use Oracle SOA Suite to integrate between systems and ensure data synchronization.

Oracle SOA Suite is a powerful product that allows us to connect with multiple systems. This enables smooth and timely data flow. So it improves the way data flows in our organization.

The most valuable features for us are the APIs, which we commonly use, as well as the scheduling capabilities and file transfers.

One area that could be better is the human task feature. It could be improved to provide more functionality and customization options because it has limited options available. Human tasks involve workflows where users can provide inputs to the process integrations. So I would like to see improvements and expanded features for human tasks.

In future releases, I would like to see improved connectivity with cloud applications and better adapters. Specifically, we need better adapters for Microsoft Dynamics, as we currently lack inbuilt adapters for that system. So, I like to have improved connectivity with cloud apps.

I have been using this solution for more than ten years. We are users of the product, and we have also been implementing it for many of our clients.

We are currently using version 12.2.1.3.

I would rate it as highly stable. I would give it a nine out of ten. In terms of stability, we experience very minimal issues with our live applications.

And if any issues arise, Orcale support providers and upgrade solutions help us resolve them promptly.

I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. It's not much more dynamic, not as dynamic as you may think, like seeing it in the cloud.

In order to use it, you need to have the download servers and then scale up your systems.

Oracle SOA Suites serves as a middle layer between applications. For example, let's say you have SAP, and we have Salesforce or Oracle ERP system. Users connect to those systems and perform certain activities or transactions on the applications. Now, if any data needs to be synchronized or any integration needs to happen between these applications, we use the Oracle SOA Suite. It acts as the bridge between the applications, not between the users. It's like having endpoints between the applications. Currently, we have 20 endpoints; 20 systems are connected to it, which is great.

Oracle SOA Suite is being used daily. We are using it to its maximum potential. 

Oracle SOA Suite provides excellent support.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward; it wasn't too complicated. I would rate my experience with the initial setup as a nine, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

It took around two days to deploy. The process involved following a set of documentation and guidelines provided by Oracle. We followed the documentation to set up the solution. Some of the steps included ensuring the availability of prerequisite applications like the database and JDK. Once those prerequisites were met, we proceeded with the setup process.

Deployment was done in-house. Typically, one person is sufficient for the deployment. The person would be a system administrator or a WebLogic admin.

Moreover, there will be quarterly patches that need to be applied for maintenance. The number of people required for maintenance depends on the complexity of the APIs and the organization's needs. WebLogic admins or SOA admins handle the maintenance tasks.

The pricing is not very high as compared to its competitors. 

It can be considered one of the best products that you can use for middleware integrations. Compared with other products like IBM, this could be a better product that has connectivity to other applications apart from Microsoft.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. It has much better features compared to other products, especially when we consider other vendors.

We use this solution for real-time and B2B.

BT is valuable. It performs better in real-time transactions, but BT is much more valuable.

There needs to be separate guided learning for the usage of tools. It's also not developer-friendly.

We have been using this solution for almost eight years, and it is deployed on-premises. We are using version 12c.

It is stable enough but rested if it crosses thresholds.

It is not that scalable and requires rework and additional servers. We have about 30 users and don't have plans to increase the usage. We needed about eight people for deployment, mostly database admins and an Oracle expert.

We are unsatisfied with the technical support, and I rate them a four out of ten. They could be faster and more user-friendly in communication and response time.

The initial setup was cumbersome. It took almost a week to set up. It required support from Oracle Labs and a lot of training and assistance.

Our licensing is annual, but I am unsure of the exact cost.

I rate this solution a six out of ten. Regarding advice, I would recommend this solution if someone is looking for real-time transactions and B2B.

The product provides transparency in finances.

The product is not user-friendly. It is very complicated. It is very hard to get the reports.

I have been using the solution for one year.

I rate the tool’s stability a four out of ten. The stability could be improved.

The solution is moderately scalable. However, it is not effective. The solution must improve the scalability. Around 20 to 25 people use the solution in our organization.

The initial setup was complex. It was more of a brownfield. The deployment took one year.

We need technical support for the deployment. We needed three developers and two engineers to deploy the tool.

The ROI was okay. Our customers have not dealt with other competitors’ products. Hence, they are okay with the solution.

I will not recommend Oracle to others. Overall, I rate the product a three or four out of ten.

Our primary use case is for integrated systems within the entire company.

The most valuable feature of the facility, as the partner link, is to try to use third-party services and logic in your own vehicle to orchestrate the information.

I would like to see divided containers more separately as a microservice.
Try to convert more in microservices and be less monolith than it is, because at this time it is more monolith than microservice.

I have been using Oracle SOA Suite for thirteen years.

It is definitely a stable match solution.

You can use whatever OS system you would like. You can use Linux or Windows. And, at the same time, you can try to grow with nodes, if you need it with a load balancer. In the end, you have the facilities to grow in the future. We have several hundred individuals using the solution daily.

The home customer support is very efficient. If you put in a ticket, depending on the priority, probably they answer immediately in one hour, not more than that. If you need phone support it is there in case you need it.

The initial setup is straightforward and easy. I think in a week it can be implemented if we have the entire infrastructure.

It depends on your needs. If you need to integrate a variety of systems having multiple logics inside your layer of integration Oracle SOA Suite is a good fit. For example, if you have a service that may propose to receive something from one system, but later consumes different information in other systems, and later transfers the data in another way that the other systems have to consume. On a scale of one to ten Oracle SOA Suite ranks a nine out of ten.

I am using Oracle SOA Suite to do different web services. For example, web service Type SOAP and REST.

Oracle SOA Suite has been beneficial for my organization because it enables us to consume other services and access databases to transfer data. It also allows us to receive messages from web services and transform them into different formats, such as XML. This helps us to effectively integrate and exchange data between various systems and applications.

The Oracle SOA Suite has many useful features, and different organizations may place different emphases on the importance of each feature. Certain features are particularly important to the organization, such as the ability to access databases and transform messages, as well as the use of proxy services to secure web services with usernames and passwords. These features can be critical for enabling effective integration and data exchange between systems and applications.

Other solutions might be better componets such as Salesforce. 

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

The solution is stable.

The initial setup of the solution is easy because I have experience with it.

This is a good solution and you can use it with different web services. You have the flexibility to use other technologies. For example, PHP Web Services and Java Web Services.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Oracle SOA Suite a nine out of ten.

We made all our system integrations on Oracle SOA Suite.

Oracle SOA Suite improved my organization through system integration. My organization didn't have a way to integrate systems in the past, so the solution has helped the organization through integrations.

What I like best about Oracle SOA Suite is Oracle support. I also like the tool features, especially the integration feature.

An area for improvement in Oracle SOA Suite is the cost. It could be lower. My company even thought about moving to an open-source product, WSO2, but decided that microservice architecture would be best for the company's architectural approach and use cases, such as building systems.

I've been using Oracle SOA Suite for fifteen years now.

Stability-wise, I'd rate Oracle SOA Suite as nine out of ten. Sometimes my company has some problems with stability, but the solution is mostly pretty stable.

I didn't have any problems scaling Oracle SOA Suite, so it's a ten out of ten for me, scalability-wise.

I found Oracle SOA Suite technical support good, so I'd rate it a seven. I remembered cases that various persons were handling. For example, one support person was finishing up on the case, but then the other support person was starting on it, and the knowledge of the case wasn't that good, and that was a critical case, so I can't give a higher rating for support.

Neutral

We're moving away from Oracle SOA Suite and will eventually use microservice architecture.

The initial setup for Oracle SOA Suite is seven out of ten.

Oracle SOA Suite was deployed long ago, and I wasn't with the company when it was deployed.

My company's ROI from Oracle SOA Suite is not bad because the solution works. If I were to rate it ROI-wise, it would be a seven.

Based on my knowledge, Oracle SOA Suite doesn't have user-based licensing. It has a system-based licensing model, so you pay for whole systems.

Oracle SOA Suite is an expensive solution, so it's a four out of ten for me. My company is switching to another solution because of the cost, but there's no additional cost associated with Oracle SOA Suite except for the standard fees.

My company uses Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), particularly Oracle SOA Suite. My company will replace it with a microservices solution, but not for some time.

I'm using an up-to-date version of Oracle SOA Suite.

Within the company, about two thousand people use the solution. Mainly end users with some admins. Any user of systems integrated via Oracle SOA Suite probably uses the solution as well.

About eight people handle the deployment and maintenance of Oracle SOA Suite, though not dedicated to just this solution or task.

I'd tell anyone looking into Oracle SOA Suite that, technically, it's a pretty good solution and has knowledgeable support. It's just its cost that needs improvement, so it would be wise to look at alternatives. Oracle SOA Suite is also pretty old technology if you compare it with other solutions, so my company is trying to move to a different kind of architecture, the microservices.

My rating for Oracle SOA Suite is seven out of ten.

We mainly use the solution internally to interface between two applications. 

We also use it for our external customers. They send us data and we transform that data to use in our applications, or we store it in our database for further use.

An important area that can be improved is the product's data monitoring. When we use the solution for interfacing or end-to-end data monitoring, we want to know exactly where the data is going and exactly where it is failing, or where there is an issue.

Our organization has been using this product for 10 years.

It is stable because it's quite an old product from Oracle.

Since we are using the solution on-premises, scalability may be the real challenge. We are moving towards using the cloud or Oracle cloud, so maybe the scalability will be easier if we move to the cloud. This challenge isn't caused by Oracle, it's because it is on-premises. I don't want to blame Oracle for the scalability challenges.

Oracle's technical support is not very good, but it is good.

Neutral

It was not really complex and not really straightforward. It was somewhere in between the two.

We are currently using the DevOps model, so it is deployed through DevOps. Deployment is not taking much time because we are not doing it manually. It is an automated deployment.

Usually regarding Oracle products, deployment takes time because it requires manual effort to go around and deploy the code correctly.

Over one thousand people in my organization use this solution, including external customers, IT engineers, and our administration team. This is a middleware product for our organization. I mean that it's one of the critical products for my company, and we use it extensively. We currently use each and every feature of Oracle SOA.

I would rate this product either a six or a seven. If you are going to use this product, I suggest making sure that it is designed well by an architect so you can use it effectively. The effectiveness depends on the architect who is going to introduce and implement this product.