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.