In 2003 I spent a year in Australia and New Zealand with my partner at that time. Whilst we did our fair share of travelling we were always expecting to work whilst over there. We had both come from the PwC’s Oracle practice in the UK and were expecting to work in bars in Perth where we were staying. It was a quite a surprise then to end up with an Oracle EBS implementation role and a quite delightful 15 minute commute by bike up the pacific coast to Alcoa’s offices.
I was brought in specifically as a middleware specialist, having previously (at the MOD in the UK) worked on some proof of concept integration with Oracle’s “Oracle Application Interconnect” middleware offering. This product didn’t last too long in the marketplace - eventually being replaced entirely by the behemoth of Oracle SOA Suite. There weren’t many people around with OAI experience so both Alcoa and myself were surprised when a tourist responded to their job posting!
I spent around 8 months working with Alcoa and over the course of that time delivered the following:
- Lead Integration consultant delivering integration of 20 systems across various platforms and databases.
- Detailed integration between new Oracle HRMS and existing Oracle Financials instances.
- Development of internal management tools automating monitoring and alerting of integration issues.
- Designed disaster recovery / business continuity plans and test plans.
I worked on the integration team using the Oracle Application Interconnect product to develop and support interfaces between more than 20 different systems and more than 70 integration points running on a variety of platforms and databases (including Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Unix, Windows and IBM OS/390). This included realtime integration between an Oracle HRMS instance and an Oracle Financials instance. I was the lead integration consultant responsible for ensuring the uninterrupted operation of the systems integration as well as being responsible for the analysis behind and development of further integration points. In addition to gaining extensive experience using the various adapter technologies and knowledge of the Interconnect architecture I also built a number of tools to assist in the day to day management of the Interconnect integration solution which greatly reduced the turn around time between the occurrence of a problem, the identification of the issue and the resolution. I was key in the development of the disaster recovery and business continuity plans for the Oracle Financials and integrated satellite systems.