In medium to large organizations what team or group typically support middle tier components like Oracle Application Servers?
(Unix Team, DBA Team, Or Application Development/Support Team)
In a client server application design the delineation of ownership between the server and the client is very clear. In the client server case the Unix Administrators manage the servers and the development support team manage and support the clients. (and the DBA's support/manage the database)
Recently at our shop the lines have become blurred; the introduction of an Oracle application Server (OAS) has popped up;
OAS seems to require a very unique set of skills but also show some similarity to the client server skills. (part Unix Admin, Part Dba, Part Application Developer/Client Support)
What have others done when confronted with this kind of challenge......??
Does a completely new team form that exclusively supports the Middle Tier??
Our It Group has 3 Unix Admins; 3 Application Support staff; 3 Dba's to give the perspective of the size of the teams....
There are a couple of different options, to my mind:
1) Roll it into the application development/support team as this is part of an application that isn't necessarily where only Admins are useful. There should be a separation between development and support to some extent as different tools may be used and some may have a stronger skill set for one over the other such as if one prefers investigating things then support may be a better fit.
2) Platform management team which is a separate group where there is a separation of the layers involved in the applications the company produces. I used to work for a company where the middle tier and back-end were managed by one team that was separate from the Applications group which seems appropriate if there is the plan of having that middle and back-end tiers become a platform for the company to pitch to other companies to use how they see fit in terms of making their own applications on top of this API.
I can see a logic in using either method depending on how one sees what the IT arm offers in a sense.