Tuesday, August 18, 2009

OAM, OEM, AMP - What are the Differences?

I worked at a data communications hardware firm many years ago. When I joined the company, I was surprised to learn that the data communications business used (and still uses) a huge arrays of acronyms to describe its technologies. Learning those acronyms was like learning a foreign language. At Oracle, we have built up our share of acronyms over time also. In particular, people have asked over and over about the differences between OAM, OEM, and AMP. Let me try to explain what they are, how they relate to each other, and how they are different.

OAM – Oracle Applications Manager is the base console that is shipped with Oracle E-Business Suite

OEM – Oracle Enterprise Manager comes in three editions; Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control, Oracle Enterprise Manager Application Server Control, and Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control. The first two are the base consoles that are shipped with Oracle Database and Oracle Application Server, respectively, and they provide similar kind of functionalities as Oracle Applications Manager. Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control is Oracle's flagship management product, providing enterprise class management capabilities and support for ITIL best practices.

AMP – Application Management Pack, specifically Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite, is a product that extends and runs on Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control to provide advanced management capabilities specifically for Oracle E-Business Suite.

How is OAM different from OEM/AMP?

OAM is the baseline console that is bundled as part of Oracle E-Business Suite. It is a tool designed primarily for administrative tasks such as configuring E-Business Suite parameters, identifying patches to apply, and looking up the real time status of E-Business components from a single E-Business Suite instance. Conceptually, it is similar to Oracle Database Control, which is another similar administrative utility that Oracle provides for administering a single Oracle database instance.

OEM, specifically the Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, provides advanced value added management capabilities for E-Business Suite administrators who need the extra support that only OEM can provide. Through OEM, E-Business Suite administrators can proactively monitor their E-Business Suite environments, track configuration changes, troubleshoot problems, and automate manual intensive tasks such as cloning E-Business Suite environments. Features such as synthetic transaction based monitoring, service level management, configuration analysis, historical metrics, and cloning automation exist only in OEM and not OAM. These value added capabilities help improve the service levels of E-Business Suite applications while at the same time reduce operational costs.

It is not an either-or decision to choose between OAM and OEM. In fact, we designed OEM to complement OAM - OEM is the advanced tool for proactive management and automation, OAM supports basic administrative tasks. Furthermore, because OEM and OAM were built on the same Oracle Fusion Middleware UIX user interface framework and the Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite contains numerous integration points with OAM, E-Business Suite administrators can seamlessly navigate between the two tools to accomplish various tasks.