Today HP made a series of announcements focused on helping CIOs drive down costs in the down economy. The press release title was “New HP Software and Zero Percent Lease Financing Help CIOs Respond to Tough Economy”. The 0% financing (for qualified customers) is a way to help HP get CIOs beyond budget freezes to enable them to utilize HP solutions right away. The new HP software includes major new releases of HP Quality Center 10.0, a new more integrated release of HP Universal Configuration Management Database 8.0, and a new SaaS offering. I would have guessed that the SaaS offering might be the lead announcement to address the down economy, but HP probably felt that SaaS was new for most customers and 0% financing is an easy message to understand and enable the conversation to progress to the next step.

All three product announcements fit into HP’s theme of Business Technology Optimization, which includes automation of the entire IT value chain, including project portfolio, resource and time management, applications requirements, management and testing, and production management. All the new releases are more tightly integrated, to help speed deployments and help drive down costs.

HP Quality Center 10.0 supports automation of requirements management, performance loading, and testing. This helps ensure that testing is aligned with business requirements. Given the breadth of methods, technologies, and solutions in the enterprise, including agile development with very short iterative cycles, Web 2.0, SOA, composite applications, SaaS and cloud computing, it is becoming more difficult for CIOs to focus on the most critical investments to drive top line revenue and customer satisfaction. HP Quality Center 10.0 automates management of IT assets across the enterprise.

Quality Center 10.0 incorporates ITL 3 practices for ensure service continuity, and manages requirements throughout the entire lifecycle. It helps managers prioritize projects and optimize the application portfolio. They can put in KPIs, resource costs, and monitor projects, even integrating with development tools, to ensure projects stay on track and deliver business value.
The automated workflow capabilities can ensure business requirements are managed through security and quality testing.

Quality Center also addresses another hot topic among CIOs – using virtualization to cut costs. Quality Center can identify hardware platforms with excess capacity that can be better utilized if shared across departments and applications. It also automates monitoring and change management processes. Quality Center requirements management capabilities are integrated with the Universal Configuration Management Database.

HP Universal Configuration Management Database (UCMDB) 8.0 is the centralized repository for all systems information. Most large organizations have a plethora of technologies, platforms, and applications. The UCMDB provides a single version of the truth about all systems which can be used for systems management, event management, performance management, incident, release, and resolution management. The UCMDB integrates with Quality Center and the SOA Registry. It contains information on all components of a business service. It can dynamically manage service level agreements (SLAs) as well as operational agreements, which are internal for IT operations and administration. UCMDB uses complex event processing to predict operational issues before they happen, including predicting when an SLA will be breached, how many users will be impacted, and the dollar value of the breach.

UCMDB provides a 360 degree view of the service so as a network engineer is about to deploy a patch, he can go back in and see what other changes are in the queue that may override the change or cause further disruption, compare performance before and after the change is deployed, and see how many incidents are open. CMDB integrates with seventeen 17 HP products including HP Business Availability Center 8.0, HP Operations Manager i-Series, HP Network Node Manager i-Series Advanced, and HP Service Manager 7.1. These integrations allow customers to have an end-to-end view of their business service. It also integrates with other third party products.

HP also announced expansion of it’s SaaS offering. While HP has been offering a SaaS solution since its acquisition of Mercury testing suite, it is now also providing more products online on a subscription basis including:
• Quality Center 10.0
• Service Management – Help Desk
• Business Availability Center – Business Service management quite
• Performance Center – load testing and performance testing.
• UCMDB

Organizations can event start on a SaaS platform to reduce upfront costs, and later bring the solution in house.
This past May HP acquired EDS, so not surprisingly services were also part of this announcement. EDS Testing and Quality Assurance Services include pre-defined processes, end-to-end test capabilities, and support from global centers of excellence. The independent testing services are designed to improve software quality, accelerate implementation, reduce operational risk and decrease the cost of application rework.

Posted by bethgb in Governance • Industry News • SOA • SaaS • Vendor Briefings • Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week at its developers’ conference Microsoft announced, Azure, its new cloud computing platform, and gave analysts a peek during a conference call. The industry trends of cheap computing, cheap storage, high bandwidth, and a proliferation of devices with internet connections, are creating a demand for cloud based computing, according to Microsoft. Microsoft is calling this the “third tier of computing” in which the first two tiers are functionally rich PCs, back end application servers, and then the Web tier that supports both personal and business processes. Never mind this fact that this is a gross simplification of distributed tiered computing, the general idea is that the Web will become an application tier.
Microsoft is describing this tier as software plus services. These services include comprehensive development services, consistent programming models (read .NET only here), security and privacy, and control and customization. Below is how Microsoft is depicting the capabilities of the platform.

Microsoft will provide Azure as a SaaS offering which will only be hosted in Microsoft data centers. Initially the services will be accessible from anywhere, but will be hosted in the US. Eventally Microsoft is planning data centers around the world. There are no plans to ship versions which can be deployed within the enterprise. Microsoft is going to provide an SDK so developers can design, test and run application on a local machine before deploying to the cloud. While Azure supports REST, SOAP and XML, only .NET services can be deployed on the platform.

Azure includes advanced tracing and logging to allow development personnel to understand what is happening with the application. It provides rules based access control. The ESB will provide integration with other applications. While Microsoft stated that the problems of traditional integration can be resolved through mediation through messaging, and cloud computing offers a way to connect with partners and suppliers, to me there was a disconnect in this message. SaaS platforms offer cost effect solutions when partners and suppliers can simply connect with one platform

Microsoft stated they have been providing SQL Services in the cloud since the Spring of this year, and the service has proved popular with developers seeing an expensive way to scale out storage. However, the question remains as to how organizations will use cloud computing in the future. Neil McAllister of Infoworld makes some very good points about cloud computing creating lock in. He also sites issues with version control, and keeping up with new versions of the cloud platform and how that will impact existing applications, or more precisely, force you to change them. All important to keep in mind when evaluating development and deployment platforms.

My major concern is manageability. My consistent mantra for the past 20 years of designing distributed systems has been “Don’t build what you can’t manage”. I asked Microsoft about testing these cloud apps. Answer – not there yet, it’s a good opportunity for partners to provide a solution.

What about managing the services in the cloud? Microsoft’s repository is Oslo. However there is no specific plug in to integrate the management of policies and SLAs for the cloud based services. Microsoft stated that this may be coming sometime next year. In fairness to Microsoft, I think this is a general issue in the industry. There are too many different repositories for different kinds of policies and no integration or federation between them. Bottom line – how do you manage the policies end to end? This is a general issue that organizations should be a bit concerned about.

How about security, a very big concern with cloud computing. Microsoft realizes this. Their answer today “they will be providing additional information as they go forward with the platform.”

Azure is not yet GA and Microsoft has not yet announced a release date. We are still in the very early days of cloud computing. What should organizations be doing now? I think they should be evaluating what makes sense to put in the cloud. Data services and on-demand as needed, off-site storage makes a lot of sense to me. How many of you now are backing up your laptops with an online service? Collaborative applications also make a lot of sense. These types of applications are easier and cheaper to deploy in the cloud. Another use of Azure would be to make Microsoft applications, such as Office, available as a SaaS offering. This would make a lot of sense given the rise of Google apps.

So while cloud computing is certainly in our future, my advice to organizations is to move cautiously, see what makes economic and business sense, and DON’T BUILD OR DEPLOY WHAT YOU CAN’T MANAGE!

For more information on Azure, check out David Chappell’s white paper, available on the Microsoft site.

Posted by bethgb in Enterprise 2.0 • Industry News • Industry Trends • Vendor Briefings • Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week IBM gathered the analyst community together to preview a series of SOA announcements which, to my ear, contained more marketing approaches and services than product innovations. Senior IBM managers participated in the announcement, including Robert LeBlanc, GM, Software Sales, Tom Rosamilia, GM, WebSphere Software, Manoj Saxena, GBS, VP, Global Solutions & Asset Management, Mike McCarthy, VP, GTS Middleware Services, and Sandy Carter, VP, SOA & WebSphere Marketing, Strategy, and Channels.

IBM is touting its position as a leader in SOA implementations based on experience with 7022 customers and 7420 business partners. Now they are announcing a “First-of-a-kind, customized go-to-market approach” that includes a 100 city tour, with customers speaking in each city. The agenda and discussion will be localized and customized for each city. Over 1000 customers are participating in these presentations. One third of the cities are in emerging and growth markets.

IBM’s approach is to focus on business outcomes and provide new products and services to enable a successful business outcome. The outcomes include driving agility into the organization, taming chaos by process, creating a smart SOA foundation, and meeting new customer needs.

Drive Agility into the Organization. Includes industry specific solutions and key agility metrics, and of course SOA middleware to implement all. Manoj Saxena introduced SmartBusiness INSight, which provides past and future process insights. Saxena also announced a set of industry specific frameworks with business trends and processes, market opportunities and threats. The full offering includes business design services, approaches for linking core business processes to business strategies, processes, and IT execution, and for prioritizing SOA/IT initiatives based on business priorities and pain points, as well as the IBM CBMSOMA Methodology which integrates development across CBM/BPM/SOMA.

For me, the most interesting announcement Saxena made was about the key agility indicators which IBM built from over 16000 engagements from global services. The announcement was for over 300 Key Agility Indicators over different industry processes. This KAIs are also being embedded into WebSphere Monitor and Modeler. These industry specific key agility indicators are potentially very valuable IP if they provide managers with insights that would not have otherwise been available. Saxena also announced the release of Chemical and Petroleum product development frameworks. So far, there have been nine frameworks released. These include a framework to monitor the profitability of products, and one to monitor call center performance vis-a-vis average in the industry and best in class. There is a framework for retail inventory turnover and sales per store and one for Insurance to determine combined ratio of policies written. There are frameworks for monitoring losses and expenses ratios, and other key things that drive business outcomes.

Taming Chaos by Process. This set of announcements, discussed by Tom Rosamilia, focuses on BPM enabled by SOA. According to Rosamilia, in this release IBM focused on making BPM easier to install, easier for business people to use, and easier to buy with more attractive pricing.

IBM is making BPM more accessible through Lotus mash-up technology, providing easy to use, unified, integrated interfaces for different user roles such as business leader, business user, business analyst, etc. For example, a business analyst would need an interface to modify rules and change policies. A process owner or analyst will have an interface for monitoring the end-to-end performance of the process. Now a common user interface crosses several products including WebShpere Monitor, Process Server, and Modeler. The BPM Suite is going to include more content management integration with the Active Content Edition. The second edition will be available in December.

According to Rosamilia, the world of events is “exploding” and with the next release discussed WebSphere Business Events & eXtreme Scale of IBM was focusing on the expansion of the billions of transactions processed by CICS and other platforms each day. IBM WebSphere Business Events, released in May, is the product purchased from Aptsoft. The next release will feature tighter integration with the rest of the portfolio, including integration with the ESB, integration flows, and into monitor to make policy updates. WebSphere eXtreme Scale provides in-memory management working with thousands of JBVs, and up to 1 million events per sec, to tackle big problems. The CICS Transaction Server Support Pac will be available in December, and will convert transactions into events and integrate with Tivoli to enable bilateral sharing with business events.

BPM Healthcheck Services, originally announced at IMPACT back in the spring, apparently was popular among customers and helps them identify current strengths and shortcomings in different dimensions and articulates a BPM Strategic Roadmap. Rosamilia also announced an expansion of this offering.

Build a Smart SOA Foundation. This business outcome includes a collection of products and services focused on the underpinning of SOA strategy, including Portfolio Strategy Analysis & Planning, Information Agenda, Entry Points, Connectivity, Governance, and security. The full list included in the SOA foundation offering includes:
• Business Value Assessment
• Online Value Analyzer
• WebSphere Portal
• QuickStart / Design & Implementation Services for WebSphere Portal
• InfoSphere Information Server
• IBM Mashup Center
• WebSphere Process Server
• WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition
• QuickStart services for DataPower
• WebSphere Application Server
• Rational Asset Analyzer
• WebSphere DataPower LLM & B2B
• WebSphere ESB 6.2
• Detailed Business & IT Best Practices By Maturity
• Telelogic System Architect
• Rational Requirements Composer
• SOA business and infrastructure consulting services
• Tivoli Security Policy Manager
• Rational AppScan
• Professional Services for security

This is obviously the IBM laundry list, and it’s a long one – not necessarily a good thing when trying to figure out how what is needed to implement a specific solution. During the call, IBM focused on a few of the areas. One message was that WebSphere Application Server (affectionately known as WAS) is a key underpinning of the SOA strategy and expected to be a key SOA development platform moving forward. A recent survey by ebizQ showed that the number criteria for choosing a development platform is existing skillsets, and the #1 skill set in organizations today is Java. From the beginning application servers have evolved from TP monitors, and kept adding services. This trend will surely continue as WAS has added support for Web Services, ESBs, and other services to enable it to remain a viable development platform for new SOA solutions.

Sandy Carter spoke about the role Rational Asset Analyzer in developing new types of solutions. The Rational Asset analyzer is being touted as the way to develop an inventory of services based on existing assets.

As part of this announcement IBM talked about connectivity enhancements, using Data power to enhance security at the perimeter. DataPower offers low latency messaging and will work with financial services and telco offerings. IBM also announced enhancements to XML parsing, and added B2B support for the ESB, including trading partner management and governance in DMZ for transactions.

Meet new customer needs. IBM put Web 2.0 and green computing under this business outcome. This includes easy customer assembly of mash-ups, easy access to enterprise SOA and web data, new widgets that support multiple platforms, and enhanced XML. WebSphere Portal now has a richer more responsive Web 2.0 experience for new customers, new AJAX user interface, new Rest interfaces, consumption of feeds, and new BPM integration. The full list of products, services, and education includes:

• IBM Mashup Center
• WebSphere Portal
• WebSphere sMash
• Rational Application Developer
• Insight on Using SOA for Green
• Smart SOATM Sandbox through Cloud Services
• Smart SOA Social Network
• SOA Certifications
• Innov8 Video game
• Carbon management dashboards through SOA
• IBM Academic Initiative
• SOA courses online and in-classroom
• IBM Innovation Centers
• Industry Framework Program

The areas focused on in the call were Rational Application Developer, which is being touted for SOA development, and enhanced Web 2.0 development tools, including visual development focused on the combination of Web 2.0 and SOA.

Sandy Carter also highlighted two new green offerings, including pre-packaged scoreboards to monitor green initiatives, including green focused KPIs such as water and energy usage. Additionally, IBM has published 7 insight papers around green SOA highlighted best practices around the world.

IBM is also offering what can be called a try before you buy option through the SOA Sandbox offered through cloud services. This allows customers to experience SOA solutions free for 30 days. The Sandbox includes business patterns, scenarios and use cases. IBM has also set up innovation centers around the world which support solution partners.

Some of the products and services announced during the call are available now, and some will become generally available in Q4. Parsing through the range of offerings announced, it seems to me that IBM’s products, services, solutions, and educational offerings are aimed at closing the skills gap for customers to help ensure their success with SOA. At first my reaction was that we were being called in to applaud a marketing strategy. But the thing is, it really is a good marketing strategy, and one which capitalizes on IBM’s unique strengths, so despite my initial reservations, I do in fact applaud it the general approach.

One question I hear often these days is “does SOA really work? We’re hearing more about failures.” The unfortunate truth is that while SOA really and truly is our best hope for delivering IT and business agility, it is not simple. It is not one product, not one solution. It is a new way to think about how to develop systems, and skills are in short supply and high demand. IBM stated that 61% of customers are in foundation or basic stage of SOA. They need help. The long, long list of IBM products for each business is an indication of the complexity of the problem. Focusing on industry specific solutions is a good way to get around that problem.

If you attend any of the sessions on the 100 city tour let us know what you think!

Posted by bethgb in B2B • BPM • ESB • Enterprise 2.0 • Events • Industry Trends • SOA • Vendor Briefings • Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week ebizQ held its Enterprise 2.0 virtual conference. The event had some great presentations by Gartner analyst David Mitchell Smith and Forrester's Rob Klopowitz. David Smith stated that the future of Web 2.0 is NOT Web 3.0. While organizations are adopting social networking and cloud computing, just two of the technologies and uses attached to the term Web 2.0, as they move forward they will focus on separate initiatives. Rob Klopowitz talked about the innate tension that occurs when you introduce innovative and somewhat disruptive technologies into IT organizations that typically try to control all computer and network use.

The conference included a live panel with Dan Woods, CTO and Editor, Evolved Media, Nathaniel Palmer, President, Transformation+Innovation; Executive Director, Workflow Management Coalition and Puneet Gupta, CEO and Founder, Connectbeam. While David Smith reported that Enterprise 2.0 initiatives have often been led by IT, in an audience poll done during the panel the attendees incidated that the majority of their initiatives are being led by business users.

By coincidence, the same day I got my new MIT Technology Review and the issue was focused on the "Future of Web 2.0". While the analysts pointed out the ways the new capabilities of Web 2.0 are changing the ways organizations work and collaborate, the MIT articles pointed out that no one has actually been able to figure out how to make money from social networking. However, it is growing very rapidly and most pundits feel it is only a matter of time before they can monetize all the eyeballs on the social networking sites.

So what does this mean to the organization? First of all, we found that while the terms Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are useful to describe the new capabilities, vendors are not lining up behind the term, and the analysts indicated the terms will soon be obsolete. And while the vendors creating the new technologies have not yet figured out how to make money, and enterprises have not yet defined an ROI, social networking is starting to seem like an inevitability, which may replace email in many instances.

In fact, the virtual conference environment itself is an example of Web 2.0. It includes a networking lounge and public chats in the lounge and in booths, and person to person chats so visitors can contact other visitors. Allison of Dorsey Consulting contacted me through the chat and said "Great experience! I will be back. Your team did a good facilitation job today, and I enjoyed it. Poked in booths, chatted with people, made a couple contacts I will follow up in. Almost like a trade show . . . .Onward to virtual experimentation!".

As we experiment and experience more in the virtual world the Web 2.0 nomenclature might go away, but it seems the technologies are here to stay - and change the way we work and interact. Is your organization on the bandwagon yet?

Posted by bethgb in Enterprise 2.0 • Events • Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the more interesting and more discussed sessions at the IAP last week was Serena Software, which markets its solution as a “Business Mashup”. The discussion in the audience reflected the fact that we were a mashup of BI, data management and SOA analysts. The data people didn’t quite get the concept of a business mashup. In fact, they viewed it as a downright bad idea. Who was going to protect the data?

Also, because Serena uses a workflow model to create the mashup, this was viewed as a workflow tool. The idea behind the Serena solution is the enable users to create their own applications and thereby “shrink the IT application backlog”. It includes a process design tool, Composer, which is free and downloadable from the Serena website. The full tool also enables you to define data elements, build custom web based forms and create rich interactive user interfaces. While there was much discussion in the room about the definition of a mashup, and the difference between a mashup and a composite application, and what we used to call 4GLs (fourth generation languages), I define a mashup as a type of composite application that brings together components of other applications and solutions into a rich user interface. Serena also provides security, and systems orchestration which enables a drag and drop capability for connecting to other applications.

Serena is now available as a software license, installed onsite, but by the end of the summer will be available in the “cloud” as a SaaS offering. The license model is per user, with a nominal per server fee.

Back to the discussion as to whether enterprise mashups as a concept are a good idea to begin with. I think there is an essential tension between IT control and end user innovation that will always be a part of computing, especially as new technologies enable end users to do new things with enterprise information. One of the questions the data analysts kept coming back to was “who makes sure the information in the mashup is current and accurate?” “How do you ensure accuracy?”

I think this points to an evolving reality with both SOA and data architects. We’re there to enable the business, while ensuring they practice “safe” computing. What does this mean in an increasingly distributed and federated world? I think it means creating levels of services that are easily consumable by business users in enterprise mashups, portals, etc., but which ensure the consistency, quality, and integrity of enterprise information. This is not a simple task, and I think the data people have been left out of it while integration tools enabled information integration through proprietary mapping tools. I also think this is a discussion we will be having for a while.
In the ebizQ Enterprise 2.0 virtual conference, Rob Klopowitz of Forrester is going to be speaking about “Control Versus Chaos: The Enterprise Web 2.0 Effect”. Be sure to check it out. It’s a timely discussion. Jump in.

Posted by bethgb in Enterprise 2.0 • SaaS • Vendor Briefings • Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)