Oracle Enterprise Manager has been around for more than a decade, and many database administrators around the world have used one or more Enterprise Manager products for running their databases more efficiently. Over the past few years, Enterprise Managers have made a big push to manage middleware and applications as well. This has helped change the original market perception that Enterprise Manager was simply a DBA’s best friend.

With its flagship Grid Control product release 10.2.0.5 (released on Linux platforms in February 2009), Enterprise Manager has strengthened its previous offerings in the middleware area. Enterprise Manager’s strategic direction is consistent with the one charted out by Oracle after completing the BEA acquisition on April 29, 2008. The greatest improvements have been made in managing WebLogic Server, and the Oracle SOA platform that includes Oracle BPEL Process Manager, and Oracle Service Bus (formerly AquaLogic Service Bus).

Enterprise Manager has made several acquisitions in the past two years to complement existing capabilities and provide a complete management solution to users. Auptyma was the first of these acquisitions, which provided deep Java diagnostic capabilities without instrumentation or overhead in production environments. The product was renamed to Application Diagnostics for Java (AD4J). Separately, Moniforce was acquired to manage an end user’s experience while interacting with an application and service providers, and the product was renamed to Real User Experience Insight (RUEI). Another key acquisition was ClearApp—a company that provided technology to model and monitor composite applications. The product was renamed to Composite Application Modeler and Monitor (CAMM).

Several integration challenges lie ahead, and many still think of Enterprise Manager as a database management solution. The product has grown considerably faster in the past two years, especially in the middleware, SOA, and application space. Enterprise Manager is one of the top product lines at Oracle, but is still the best kept secret in the Oracle portfolio. With a vast array of product lines, it is important for an Oracle customer’s IT to manage these product lines centrally, and with a low cost of ownership. The big four management vendors (CA, IBM, HP, BMC) have broad product offerings that are not optimized for Oracle products. Further, the pure play vendors are focused on niche areas, and do not provide an enterprise management solution. Oracle Enterprise Manager plays an important role for enterprises that have one or more Oracle products in their data center, as well as non-Oracle products.