Foreword

Middleware market is a fast growing market with a variety of vendors ranging from enterprise grade middleware products such as Oracle's Fusion Middleware to open source efforts such as JBoss and Apache Tomcat. Oracle Fusion Middleware is the number one middleware in the market with over 90,000 customers. Enterprise Manager provides an integrated management solution for Oracle Fusion Middleware. It is a complete management solution for the Oracle stack, which includes Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Database, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Oracle VM, and packaged applications such as Oracle eBusiness Suite, Siebel CRM, and PeopleSoft. It also leverages the built-in management capabilities in the Oracle stack to provide an integrated and end-to-end management solution for the Oracle eco-system.

In a typical datacenter, there are multiple Middleware platforms. Monitoring, application performance management, configuration management, and life cycle operations of diverse middleware platforms is very expensive. Most of the new JEE applications are composite applications built with multi-tiered architecture and hence management of such applications needs specialized tools. As Information Technology becomes the core to the success of any business, there is a greater need of business-IT alignment. This book will show you how Enterprise Manager from Oracle meets these new challenges in the data center and can help reduce the total cost of ownership as well allow IT to contribute to a greater business success.

Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10g R5 was released in March 2009. This version of Enterprise manager provides management capability for Oracle and non-Oracle middleware platform that includes Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Application Server, Oracle Coherence, Oracle SOA Suite, IBM Web Sphere, and JBoss Application Server, and many more. This book will help you understand how Enterprise Manager Grid Control provides for better business-IT alignment and allows IT to not just manage middleware but also manage business processes implemented using SOA architecture.

The authors have first-hand experience in creating, delivering and rolling-out several releases of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control. This book covers the management challenges faced by Middleware administrators in the evolving Middleware market. The book includes the authors' practical experience in adopting Enterprise Manager Grid Control in managing Oracle Fusion Middleware. It is a must read for anyone using Enterprise Manager Grid Control for managing middleware and JEE applications deployed in the data center.

Ali Siddiqui,

Vice President — Product Development Fusion Middleware Management, Oracle Corporation