Just what is Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture, or Oracle AIA, as many call it? Well, essentially, it’s a set of pre-built and pre-packaged business process integrations that leverage the Oracle BPEL Process Manager to connect multiple Oracle and non-Oracle applications, including Siebel, PeopleSoft and SAP software. Or, as Oracle president Charles Philips once put it, Oracle AIA is “our platform for integrating applications together.”

But the real Oracle AIA story is a bit more complex than all that.

To shed more light on the Oracle AIA initiative, SearchOracle.com got on the phone with Jesper Andersen, Oracle senior vice president of application strategy and an Oracle AIA expert. In this podcast interview, Andersen talks about the new Oracle AIA Foundation Pack, which is due out any day now, and describes the newest and upcoming Oracle AIA Process Integration Packs, or PIPS, which are at the heart of Oracle’s AIA plans. Andersen also talks about Oracle AIA’s role in the world of Oracle Fusion Middleware and describes how Oracle is engaging its AIA partners. Andersen closed the interview with some advice for anyone embarking on a business process management, or BPM, initiative.

CIOs everywhere are hearing a lot about governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software — primarily because a solid GRC strategy is needed to cope with the unprecedented proliferation of data retention regulations like The Sarbanes-Oxley Act. But what’s the best way to get started on a GRC strategy that’s right for your company? SearchOracle.com talked to Michael Rasmussen, a vice president and research analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc., to find out.

In this podcast, Rasmussen, an expert on the GRC market, talks about why effective GRC initiatives are highly collaborative in nature and how attitudes towards GRC software have changed over the last few years. He also explains the distinctly different philosophies behind Oracle and SAP’s GRC strategies — and why those to business applications giants could learn some valuable GRC lessons from one another.

We’re happy to announce the debut of Oracle Talk.

Oracle Talk is our new biweekly podcast series all about Oracle database and applications management designed for DBAs, developers and managers of Oracle shops. Each half-hour episode focuses on a specific topic and features recent SearchOracle.com content, interviews with experts and authors and a round-up of Oracle-related news, hosted by Tim DiChiara, editor of SearchOracle.com.

In the inaugural episode of Oracle Talk, we explore why database administrators are in such a tizzy about their career choice and what can they do to improve their lot. We also answer some career and certification questions submitted to our experts, as well as rounding up the latest news from the Oracle community and beyond. In future episodes, we’ll be focusing on topics such as the impending release of Database 11g, Oracle security, Oracle vs. SAP and surviving the patching and upgrading treadmill.

In addition to Oracle Talk, we have a growing collection of over a dozen podcasts about other topics, which are listed in our podcast library. If you have any comments or suggestions about our podcasting efforts, let us know.