Wikis for Online Content Collaboration
Wikis are the quintessential community-based content collection and collaboration environments. Wherever the WebCenter wiki is deployed, users can participate in the content and create their own library of information.  Common enterprise uses include documentation, FAQ’s and knowledge bases.  WebCenter pre-integrates these enterprise features so that it is quick to get started using wikis within organizations.  In addition, there are a set of web services and portlets to be used to integrate into any J2EE app or enterprise portal.

Content Is Everywhere
Oracle Content Database Suite is included with a limited use license with WebCenter.  All the core capabilities are included, except the number of documents is limited to 50,000 documents.  This is quite reasonable for most business needs. With WebCenter, people can search more efficiently, track version and set granular permissions easier than using a file system. For  more information about Content Database Suite go to  http://www.oracle.com/products/middleware/content-management/index.html .

Secure Search Is an Absolute Must
Enterprise search is a key component to any collaboration or portal solution.  Oracle Secure Enterprise Search is a tool that comes with WebCenter.  This crawler-based service can search many different sources (not just content in WebCenter or the Content DB Suite). 

Communication in Context
WebCenter also includes an embedded use license for Oracle Communication and Mobility Server (OCMS), which is a carrier-grade, J2EE and SIP application server based on the JSR-116 (SIP Servlets) standard. It is comprised of the following components:

• Presence Server: SIP-based Presence provides information about a person's availability to every person or application that subscribes to that person's status.
  
• Instant Messaging: Lets users freely exchange ideas through text, audio, and video based chats, file exchange, and a range of other voice-over-IP (VOIP) capabilities. 
  
• Call Setup & Teardown Servlet for VoIP: Enables click-to-call functionality from a JSF or JSP application. 

WebCenter Development
Build versus Buy
Every IT organization has had in some way the battle of “build versus buy”. With the combined framework and Web 2.0 services that come with WebCenter, the argument to build from scratch has a bit less of a voice.  WebCenter has extended JSF to incorporate portlets and services into a single, integrated, standards-based development framework. Figure 1 shows the WebCenter architecture.

The Learning Curve
With any new technology, framework, application, and services, there is a learning curve.  In the case of WebCenter, new features are introduced in almost all of these areas, so the learning curve is multiplied.  Oracle has supplied a “Getting Started” section to help jump start your training.  This inventory of information can be found on the WebCenter part of their Website (http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/webcenter/gettingstarted.html).  For people familiar with portal architectures, SOA, and standards-based development in Java (ideally using JDeveloper), the jump should be fairly easy.  JDeveloper is the development environment for WebCenter, so business users will have to wait to participate in the development or evolution of these applications. The more intuitive Web-based, user-friendly implementation capability is a major area where we feel the WebCenter experience can really use improvements.  Oracle has explained to us that this is a major focus for the next release.

As programming models have evolved, it is clear that a move from linear programming to object-oriented programming was worth the time.  We believe the same will hold true for service-oriented architectures and open standards development. 

On the Green in [Version] 1
As expected with a version 1 enterprise product, WebCenter has its own share of bugs and enhancements that need to be addressed. You might experience some unexpected errors that require workarounds while developing and deploying from JDeveloper, and you may find key areas that you would really like in some of the Web 2.0 services.  Oracle Discussions (Jive) and wikis are great, but there are some administration management and browser-based tools that would make it even better.  While we look forward to future releases, we do believe that Oracle WebCenter Suite 10gR3 (version 1) is clearly on the green.  

Foundation for Oracle Fusion Applications
We know that Oracle is placing a big emphasis in WebCenter as it is the foundation for their future Fusion Applications, which they’ve invested billions of dollars over the past few years through acquisitions. We can expect the entire Oracle Fusion Applications suite to leverage WebCenter as the end-user presentation layer over the next few years.

Backed by all this internal push on the product along with their continued response to our feedback, we believe that Oracle WebCenter is a solid foundation to consider when building out these new styles of applications and user experiences.

Practical Implementation Scenarios
With a new framework and new services, where should you use WebCenter?  The following are some of our “real-world” implementation examples.

Bringing Developers Together
Some organizations or IT departments label themselves as Oracle and/or Java “shops.”  Since you are reading this, there’s a decent chance you belong to one of these organizations.  In some places, many custom Web-based Java applications have been written and deployed, ranging from intranet, mission-critical internal applications, or even customer-facing Web solutions.

It’s not uncommon to find that these applications act in an independent fashion, with their own authentication and their own “framework.”  Even functionality and services that are essentially identical are duplicated among them.  At some point, IT managers and developers all feel the pain of custom-built applications that grow in size and quantity.

WebCenter is a great way to bring this all together as the framework and services can be used to handle authentication, improve modularity/reusability, and simplify management of applications through consolidation.  Along with advantages for IT, the end result includes a more consistent experience for end users.  WebCenter can be used to centralize the Web environment for developers and end users.