WUG News and Updates

Upcoming WUG Meetings for December

• December 3: Southern Ontario WUG

The GWC Announces the Re-Launch of the WebSphere Commerce Worldwide User Group
We are pleased to announce the re-launch of the WebSphere Commerce Worldwide User Group (WC WUG).  This user group is open for membership to business partners, customers, and IBMers who would like come together to learn about WebSphere Commerce  solutions, share experiences, and learn from others.

User group meetings will be scheduled once a quarter via webcast.  If you are interested in speaking at one of the WC WUG meetings, group owner Vani Mittal (vanimi@in.ibm.com) is accepting technical topics and case studies for upcoming meetings. Talks from third-party vendors who have built solutions that complement WebSphere Commerce are also of interest provided the topics are of a technical nature or address business problems with WebSphere Commerce technologies.

To join the WC WUG you must be a member of the Global WebSphere Community.  If you are not already a member, you can sign up for your free account by visiting www.websphereusergroup.org and clicking on the Sign Up link in the upper right-hand corner.  Once you have completed your member profile, you can join the WC WUG by visiting the group page on the Global WebSphere Community at www.websphereusergroup.org/webspherecommerce.  Click the Join This Group link under the group profile picture on the left (you must be logged into your GWC account to complete this step). 

If you have questions specific to the WC WUG, you can contact group leader Vani Mittal by clicking on the Contact Group Owner link on the WC WUG page (you must be logged into the  GWC account to use this feature).

The Global WebSphere Community Presents: New WebSphere Product Announcements to Take Your Business to the Next Level
If you missed last month’s WebSphere Product Announcements webcast series for  Application Infrastructure, Connectivity and Integration, you can listen to the replay or download the presentations at your convenience with the links below.

What's New with WebSphere Application Infrastructure Products?
 View the replay and download the presentation

On October 12th, IBM WebSphere is announcing new additions to its ever expanding product portfolio — products that can help your business run faster, more cost effectively and more efficiently.  Join this webcast to hear our WebSphere Technical Architects discuss how these new product announcements can enhance your current WebSphere investment.  You'll hear about new application infrastructure products including: WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit, WebSphere Application Server v7 Feature Pack for Modern Batch, and a sneak preview into WebSphere Application Server v8 beta! 

What's New with WebSphere BPM?
View the replay and download the presentation

A successful roadmap to agility leverages Business Process Management, business rules, and business events capabilities to optimize the processes and decisions across the dynamic business network.  The expanding WebSphere BPM portfolio now encompasses WebSphere Lombardi Edition, WebSphere Process Server, WebSphere ILOG JRules, WebSphere Business Monitor, SOA, Cloud, DataPower SOA Appliances, and more, all intended to accelerate your business’s process improvements.  Listen to one of the leading WebSphere architects describe the technical nuances of "what's new" in the product offerings that are at the heart of your business.

What's New with WebSphere Connectivity and Integration?
 View the replay and download the presentation

With recent acquisitions including Cast Iron and Sterling Commerce, it's an exciting time for IBM WebSphere Connectivity and Integration.  In today’s increasingly complex business environment, organizations need to have seamless integration and connection within the boundaries of the organization and across trading networks.
 
These acquisitions and new WebSphere offerings like WebSphere MQ Advanced Message Security, MQ Telemetry, and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus Registry Edition, WebSphere Message Broker Hypervisor Edition, as well as enhancements to core products like WebSphere MQ LLM, WSRR Service Federation Management and Message Broker version 7.0 provide the agility that today's dynamic business networks require.  Come join Sid Bhatia, Program Director for WebSphere Connectivity Product Management, as he expounds upon these exciting new announcements!

For more information, please visit our Monthly Focus page.

Interested in Becoming a GWC Business Partner?
The Global WebSphere Community reaches tens of thousands of WebSphere professionals every month – the GWC Partner Program allows companies to get their message to decision makers in the community that they may otherwise not have the opportunity to reach.  “When we want to send a targeted message specifically to people working in the WebSphere platform, the GWC Partner Program makes that happen for us”, says XebiaLabs CEO Coert Baart, a recent GWC Partner Program participant.  He added, “A recent email sent to the community on our behalf resulted in dozens of new leads overnight.”

The GWC Partner Program delivers value far beyond simple advertising.  They work as an advisor helping partners choose the right mix of sponsored articles, white papers and webinars that are likely to deliver the desired outcome to partners in terms of brand recognition and lead generation.

To learn how the GWC Business Partner Program can help you deliver targeted messages to WebSphere professionals, contact Scott Treggiari at scott.treggiari@wispubs.com or 1-781-751-8734. 

IMPACT 2011 sponsors and exhibitors are eligible to get a 25% discount off their GWC Business Partner Program.  For more information about exhibiting at IMPACT 2011 being held April 10-15, 2011 in Las Vegas, please contact Pari Lasch at 312-541-0567 ext. 654 or via e-mail at pari@corcexpo.com.

News on the Web

Don’t Miss These New Whitepapers!

Java Deployments in an Enterprise Environment
The proper deployment of Java applications to WebSphere can be a cumbersome process. Errors during the deployment process often impact both Development and IT Operations.

For an optimal deployment process, a company usually faces one or more of the eight deployment pitfalls listed in this whitepaper written by XebiaLabs.
Examples of such pitfalls are:

• Using heavy deployment manuals that are incomplete and not up-to-date.
• Working with middleware environments that are not in-synch.
• Having an incomplete view of all existing deployments.

These pitfalls cause serious problems for smooth and reliable application deployments.

Automating Java deployments using a Deployment Automation solution is a significant step forward in eliminating these deployment problems.
This whitepaper titled “Java Deployments in an Enterprise Environment” also describes the requirements that can be used as a rule-of-thumb when considering a (new) Deployment Automation solution. Click here to download the whitepaper.

Using Business Process Management and Business Analytics Together for Smarter Work    
IBM helps organizations confront business challenges with a combination of industry leading Business Process Management and Business Analytics technologies. The combination of these technologies can help CIOs raise the ROI of IT investments, make innovation real by leveraging the latest technology and position their companies for growth in this flat world.

Making the Move to WebSphere Process Server:  A Migration Strategy for WebSphere Heritage Product Customers
For organizations that rely on previous-generation SOA and BPM technologies from IBM—heritage products such as IBM WebSphere® Business Integration Server Foundation, WebSphere MQ Workflow, and WebSphere InterChange Server—now is the time to begin planning your migration to WebSphere Process Server, the next-generation solution for BPM powered by SOA. WebSphere Process Server is a proven, integrated platform for all SOA-based process automation, workflow, integration and business process management activities. This consolidated solution offers one integrated programming model and development environment, combining IBM’s flagship process integration features on a common Java™ application server runtime.

• New users of SR can submit Service Requests with a provisional status. These new users will not need to wait for STC approval. They must have a valid customer number and an IBM ID. They will only be able to see their own Service Requests.
• Site Technical Contacts can submit pre-approved email company domain names through the SR tool, allowing immediate approval to users who are not in the system, as long as their IBM ID (email address) matches the approved company domain name. 
• An SR user now has the ability to add several colleagues in terms of those who can be notified about PMR updates. 
• The SR user interface was redesigned and now uses a tabbed approach. This design gives clients opening new PMRs a more consolidated way to access their preferred product/component lists and search against their entitled products or the entire IBM software product catalog.

Don’t Miss these New Solution Briefs!

BPM for Banking Solution Brief: Build a Better Loan Origination Process
IBM offers proven Business Process Management (BPM) solutions specially designed to help banks cost-effectively develop and implement streamlined loan origination processes with less risk and improved time to value.

Telecom Solution Brief: Accelerate and Optimize Your Campaigns and Promotions Processes
The IBM Campaigns and Promotions Accelerator for Telecom helps speed the launch of concurrent multichannel campaigns and promotions to increase revenue streams, and reduce churn.

Modernize Existing Core Systems for Greater Agility (Public Healthcare & Government)
Proven Business Process Management (BPM) powered by Smart Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) or BPM powered by Smart SOA solutions are specially designed to help private and public healthcare enterprises and governmental organizations drive business agility.

BPM for Telecom - Streamline Order Management with Industry Standards
BPM from IBM can help customers streamline order management with a common process spanning new and existing customers, multiple product lines, channels, and lines of business. BPM helps clients achieve flexibility with a catalog-driven, dynamic approach to order management that is independent of product offerings, technology and vendor applications.

New Blog Post: Migrating BPM BlueWorks Beta Content to IBM Blueprint
As mentioned in previous communications, on November 20th, 2010 BPM BlueWorks Beta is joining forces with IBM Blueprint in a new and exciting offering called Blueworks Live. We now have a small video demonstration walking you through the process of migrating specific assets from your company’s private community over to IBM Blueprint in preparation for IBM Blueworks Live. As a reminder, any content you migrate to IBM Blueprint before November 20th will be automatically moved into your own Blueworks Live account once it goes, well, Live.

Smarter Planet Leadership Series
Smarter Planet Leadership Series case studies show how organizations of all sizes are transforming the way the world works.

The Top Ten Most Influential IT Vendors (IBM named #1)
This InformationWeek article explains why IBM tops the list of IT vendors that are driving and shaping the business-technology ideas of tomorrow.

New Redguide: Discover, Interact, and Optimize for Smarter Healthcare with BPM Powered by Smart SOA
This IBM^® Redguide™ describes one of the most significant challenges in healthcare today: the need for healthcare providers to effect patient care positively and proactively in the face of increasing patient load and information overload. However, the healthcare industry has been slow to embrace information technology (IT) solutions that can optimize clinical and administrative processes and, therefore, maximize the cost-effectiveness of care. The sluggish healthcare industry adoption of IT is attributable in large measure to the unavailability or inadequacy of IT tools for use at the point of care (POC). Such tools can enable user-friendly, complete, accurate, and timely clinical decision support, inherent in which is the real-time contribution to the medical common body of knowledge (CBOK).

IBM WebSphere® business process management (BPM) powered by smart service-oriented architecture (SOA), or BPM powered by Smart SOA, has the potential to maintain the increasing CBOK. It also makes critical, current data available to practitioners in a manner that is consistent with the evidence-based, event-driven environment to which healthcare aspires. BPM powered by Smart SOA can also automate healthcare provider administrative and care delivery processes to optimize enterprise operations and to maximize the safety and success of patient care.

SOA Software Announces Unified Governance for IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric
Company’s products offer comprehensive SOA and Cloud Services Governance for a full range of IBM products
SOA Software, a leading SOA and cloud services Governance provider, announced the availability of a comprehensive suite of governance products to help customers successfully plan, build and run applications for the IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric.

SOA Software’s products provide Unified SOA Governance Automation for the IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric. This allows customers to confidently use IBM WebSphere products as part of a heterogeneous enterprise SOA environment sharing services with other commercial SOA platforms including Microsoft, RedHat, Oracle, and SAP.

Unified SOA Governance breaks down into distinct areas; Planning Governance is about making sure that you are building the right things, Development Governance is about making sure you’re building them the right way, and Operational Governance is about ensuring that what you’ve built is behaving correctly.

“We are very pleased to be able to announce this comprehensive set of product integrations that help customers deliver uniform, consistent governance of WebSphere centric SOA programs,” said Alistair Farquharson, chief technology officer of SOA Software. “The strong collaboration we have with the IBM engineering teams allowed us to bring fully functional products with comprehensive integration, to help our joint customers ensure the success of their SOA initiatives.”

IBM Customers add SOA Software’s Unified SOA Governance Automation solution to the IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric to:

• Ensure that services they identify, design and build using the WebSphere Business Services Fabric products are relevant to and consumable by applications they plan, design, build and deploy using other technologies like Microsoft or Oracle, or buy from other vendors like SAP.
• Make services they expose from applications running on WebSphere Business Services Fabric products visible to and compliant with enterprise policies defined, enforced and audited across other platforms; and make services they design and build using other platforms like Microsoft and open source environments visible to and compliant with enterprise policies defined, enforced and audited across their WebSphere Business Services Fabric applications.
• Promote and ensure consistent alignment between demand from service consumers and the supply of services through Consumer Contract Provisioning.

SOA Software’s platform-independent Unified SOA Governance Automation solution promotes the use of best-practices throughout an enterprise SOA program regardless of where services and consumers are designed, built, deployed and operated. Portfolio Manager, Repository Manager, Service Manager and Policy Manager integrate seamlessly with development and runtime products from most commercial platforms including IBM, SAP, Microsoft, and Oracle, as well as RedHat and other open source providers.

Policy Manager provides a powerful policy framework for operational, compliance and Quality of Service policy definition, attachment and auditing. Service Manager provides a set of intermediaries that abstract service and application containers from the implementation, enforcement and auditing of operational, security, management and QoS policies. Policy Manager is available with specific versions targeted and specific platforms, and Service Manager is available for a wide range of service and application containers.

SOA Software’s governance solution for IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric includes:

• Service Manager Agent for IBM WebSphere Teamworks
• Service Manager Agent for IBM WebSphere Process Server
• Service Manager Agent for IBM WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus
• Policy Manager for WebSphere Service Registry and Repository (WSRR)
• Service Manager Agent for IBM WebSphere Application Server

SOA Software also offers comprehensive governance solutions for other IBM products with:

• Policy Manager for WebSphere DataPower
• Service Manager Agent for IBM WebSphere Message Broker
• Repository Manager Asset Adapter for IBM Rational ClearCase
• Repository Manager Asset Adapter for IBM Rational ClearQuest
• Policy Manager for Rational Team Concert
• Portfolio Manager for IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric

SOA Software’s SOLA products is the leading Mainframe SOA solution for CICS and IMS.

These products combine to provide the most comprehensive solution for ensuring consistent application, implementation and enforcement of policy across the diverse products in the IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric. For more information please visit http://www.soa.com/ibm.

Availability and Pricing
SOA Software’s governance products for the IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric are available today, with prices starting at $50,000.

About SOA Software
SOA Software is a leading provider of unified SOA and cloud services governance products that enable organizations to plan, build, and run cloud and enterprise services and PaaS applications. The world’s largest companies including Bank of America, Pfizer, and Verizon use SOA Software solutions to transform their business. For more information, please visit http://www.soa.com.

SOA Software, Atmosphere, Policy Manager, Portfolio Manager, Repository Manager, Service Manager, and SOLA are trademarks of SOA Software, Inc. All other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information, please contact: pressroom@soa.com.

WebSphere News and Announcements

Gartner Positions IBM in Leaders Quadrant in Their Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites Report!
Gartner's Business Process Management Suites Magic Quadrant report was recently published, where IBM shines in the Leader's quadrant.  Gartner's annual analysis of BPM technologies depicts the relative strengths of the top 25 vendors offering multi-regional, cross-industry Business Process Management Suites (BPMSs) that interest Gartner clients and non-clients the most.  According to the report, 53% of the respondents to Gartner’s September 2010 survey expected that their BPM solution helped them achieve “continuous process improvement”.

New Pricing Options and Enhanced Clustering Capabilities for WebSphere Application Server
IBM now offers two new ways to lower your WebSphere Application Server acquisition and support costs!

First, optional socket-based pricing is now available for the base version of WAS and for WAS CE support, to help you lower license and support costs on multi-core servers. 

Second, the base version of WAS now offers enhanced Web server load balancing and failover for up to 5 licensed application servers.  As a result, WAS base can now be used for many simple clustering scenarios that would previously have required WAS ND, giving you the flexibility to optimize costs by picking the most appropriate WAS family product for your needs.

Click here to learn more!

Education and Certification

Get Special Savings on the IBM Education Pack
For a limited time, you can save 15% on training when you purchase an IBM Education Pack-online account in the United States and Canada. The IBM Education Pack is an online debit account that offers tiered discounts for prepaid training. It can be used by anyone in your department. Buy one today and lock in 12 months of discounted training. Get the details.

IBM Press Books and eBooks: Members Save 40%
Best-Selling IBM Press Books and eBooks (published by Pearson) are A\available at a 40% discount to registered members of WebSphereUserGroup.org. Be sure you are logged in to your site account, visit the homepage and scroll down to see the IBM Press banner. Click on the banner to be brought to the IBM Press affiliate page where you will see the prices automatically discounted. Happy Learning!

Upcoming Webcasts and Seminars

How to Deploy Your Applications Into a Private Cloud: Quick, Easy and Secure
Join Phil Schaadt from Haddon Hill Group and George Knoll, an IBM WebSphere Specialist as they talk about the IBM WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance and how organizations are using this game-changing technology to drastically reduce provisioning time and costs for IBM middleware environments.

Use Virtualization and Cloud to Drive Operational Efficiency and Flexibility for Your Applications and Services
Budget and resource constraints are the bane of IT’s ability to
keep up with business changes. Taking advantage of cloud and virtualization
is a necessity to improve IT operational efficiency and lower costs to meet
the agility requirements of the business.

Listen to the replay and for this webcast and learn how you can:

• Reduce your costs of managing applications and services through cloud and virtualization technologies that significantly simplify administrative tasks and speed application deployment, dramatically reducing set-up time for your environments
• Ensure that critical applications are always available and high performing, while continuing to meet operational cost-reduction targets and maintaining and improving IT reliability
• Effectively manage the growing number of applications and services that need to be deployed, even in the face of IT budget challenges.

Optimize Your IT Application Delivery and Extend Its Cloud Capabilities with WebSphere
As enterprises move more of their IT infrastructure to the cloud, security and end-to-end application delivery issues are priorities for IT leaders. WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliances continue to extend their purpose-built capabilities within and beyond the enterprise. The DataPower Cast Iron XH35 Appliance and Secure Cloud Connector introduce new functionality to organizations leveraging the cloud. The DataPower XC10 Caching Appliance and DataPower Application Optimization feature accelerates XML processing throughout the enterprise.

From Zero to Process in 90 Seconds: Blueworks Live with Phil Gilbert, Vice President, Business Process Management, IBM
Do you want to implement a better way to manage processes besides email? Would you like to use online business process management tools, but don't have the budget for IT resources or formal training? Then join Phil Gilbert, Vice President, Business Process Management, IBM, as he discusses the revolutionary, ground-breaking Blueworks Live cloud-based business process management tool. Phil will discuss:

• How anyone, anywhere can become a process expert without taking a class
• How to discover, model, and document business processes by creating Process Blueprints 
• How to easily collaborate across your team using a social approach 
• How to leverage the built-in expert, online community to stay current on best practices, converse, or ask question

Who should attend? Project managers, department managers, team leaders, business analysts, process COE leaders, or anyone who wants to improve the way they work.

Bringing Science to the Art of Marketing
It’s no secret that marketing is much different today than even just a couple of years ago. Whether you target end users, businesses, or other constituents, the old rules of marketing often don’t apply:

• Loyalty has fallen
• Attention spans have shortened 
• Expectations for a consistent and positive experience have increased
• Customers have more influence on brands and purchasing behavior through social media channels

Today’s successful marketing shouldn’t seem to be marketing at all; it should be so relevant to your customers that it feels like a service. But positive brand-stewardship for the entire customer experience means bringing science to the art of marketing through advances like:

• Customer and Web analytics
• Marketing automation 
• Message and offer personalization across all channels
• Social media

Join us for a live video Webinar with a spirited, interactive discussion examining the present and future of marketing and how to take the guess-work out of marketing with user-friendly technologies designed to optimize marketing performance.

All webinar registrants will also receive complimentary admission to Internet Evolution’s CMO clan, a community tailor-made for Chief Marketing Officers, SVPs and VPs of marketing, and other marketing executives to share best practices and anecdotal experiences about branding, customer retention, and how to talk (and listen!) to customers online. When you become a member of the CMO Clan you will also be automatically subscribed to our CMO Website, which is launching in the next month and is also exclusive to marketing executives.

Strengthen Relationships and Integrate with Customers, Suppliers and Partners with SOA
A Smart SOA approach is the key to enabling a truly dynamic business network. As business processes evolve, suppliers and regulations change. Organizations need to have seamless integration and connection within the boundaries of the organization and across trading networks. They need to share services across domains to optimize business performance and improve flexibility. They need any-to-any connectivity to allow easy integration within and beyond the company—connecting systems throughout their dynamic business network. They need to have a federated approach that helps manage complexity—even as they share services across different domains.

IBM can help deliver a roadmap for strengthening relationships and integration across your dynamic business network of customers, partners and suppliers.

• Maximize service reuse across the enterprise
• Federate across SOA domains including cloud and smart devices
• Enhance flexibility and security across the enterprise

WebSphere Batch Solutions - Join Us for the 2-Part Series
Do your batch applications meet the expectations of an always-on, 24/7, globally connected customer base? Join us for part 1 as lead architects review IBM's comprehensive, enterprise-class, Java-enabled, batch-processing platform. The solution complements existing enterprise batch standards, accommodates mixed workloads, and builds upon the rock-solid transactional integrity of WebSphere Application Server. In part 2, architects from Principal Financial Group (PFG) will talk about their business need for a batch solution, why they chose IBM, their experiences, success, best practices and lessons learned along the way.