WUG News and Updates

The GWC Announces the Launch of Two New WUGs: Hartford WebSphere User Group and NJ  WebSphere User Group

Hartford WUG

Cindrell Frihi (cindrell.frihi@us.ibm.com) created the Hartford WebSphere User Group to provide a local community open forum for IT professionals, business users, consultants, and professionals in the Hartford, CT area to share knowledge, insight, ideas, issues, and questions related to WebSphere products.

To join the Hartford 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 Hartford WUG by visiting the group page on the Global WebSphere Community at www.websphereusergroup.org/hartford.  Click the Join This Group link under the group profile picture on the right (you must be logged into your GWC account to complete this step).

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

NJ WUG

The mission of NJ WUG is to promote the IBM WebSphere middleware technologies to provide agility to the business.  The group will focus on a mix of customer stories, implementation nuts and bolts, product overviews and brainstorming around BPM, business rules, SOA, Agile modeling, Business Events, etc.

Group leader Srinivasan Sethuraman (srini@agilerulesconsultants.com) is currently refining the location preferences for the group and hopes to find a location convenient for everyone.  Suggsted locations include Parsippany, Morristown; Mahwah, Ramsey, Franklin Lakes, Paramus, Montvale; and Livingston, Oranges, Summit, Berkeley Heights.

To join the NJ 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 NJ WUG by visiting the group page on the Global WebSphere Community at http://www.websphereusergroup.org/njwug/.  Click the Join This Group link under the group profile picture on the right (you must be logged into your GWC account to complete this step).

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

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.

WebSphere News and Announcements

Impact 2011 Information You Don't Want to Miss

Listen to a Replay of the Impact 2011 Call for Speakers Webcast
A replay is now available for the 'Call for Speakers' webcast hosted on December 7, 2010.  This webcast answers questions about the Call for Speakers process and gives tips on how to improve the chance of being selected as a speaker for Impact 2011. In addition to the replay, the webcast presentation and a Frequently Asked Questions document are available on the Impact website. The deadline for submissions is Friday, January 7, 2011.

Catch Early Bird Savings on Impact 2011
Register by February 18 and save US$300 on Impact 2011. Experience Impact's world-class technical education on the latest WebSphere, BPM, SOA and cloud technologies, and get certified on the spot. Interact with peers and technical experts, and become the expert your organization needs to compete and grow in an increasingly complex world.

New! IBM Software Services Zone for WebSphere
Visit the new web site for IBM Software Services for WebSphere where you will find useful, easy-to-locate information about our offerings, our people, and our successes.  

Our team is engaged in hundreds of assignments throughout the world in all industries, from smaller turnkey development projects to end-to-end solutions for government and globally integrated companies. This site provides access not only to our consultants’ deep software skills and experience, but also to their broadly applicable industry and business acumen.

View our consultant and client videos, client references and case studies, and spotlights on some of the practitioners who make us unique.  You can also link to articles, books, blogs, and other assets created by our consultants.

News on the Web

WebSphere Application Server System Test Team Test Reports
Wondering what the WebSphere Application Server system test team has been up to lately?  Visit our developerWorks wiki for information about our "company persona" testing approach, miscellaneous automation tips, and access to our collection of test reports.  The test reports document results from representative product scenarios that have been validated by IBM system test groups.  They cover testing we've done with WebSphere Application Server v7.0, the v8.0 Alpha and Betas, and several Feature Packs.  Many more reports are planned.

We'd like to hear your feedback about our work and your ideas about how our testing can be improved.  Visit our developerWorks test team wiki and let us know what you think.

New SOA Sandbox Exercise Featuring WebSphere Business Modeler
Learn how to use IBM WebSphere Business Modeler Advanced to correct a process model and the deploy it for testing.

Using the integrated test environment, you will validate that your process revisions work correctly. In addition, learn how to meet the needs of your business by using embedded tooling to refine your processes effectively.

Don't Miss These Two New White Papers:

Leading Analyst Writes: IBM Breaks New Ground with Blueworks Live
Read the new paper by Neil Ward-Dutton, Co-Founder and Research Director - Macehite Ward-Dutton. He says about the new IBM Blueworks Live, "The value of this isn't just about improving productivity for individuals and taking weight off corporate software development teams; it's also valuable for corporations' governance, risk and compliance (GRC) efforts which struggle with huge mountains of spreadsheet- and email-based procedures.” 

Change Governance in a BPM and SOA Environment
This white paper by Claus Torp Jensen, Chief Architect, Architectural synergies and lifecycles, describes the need for, and principles of, change governance. The primary audiences are architects and governance leaders that work in a BPM and SOA environment.

Don't Miss These Two Great IBM Redbooks:

IBM Redbooks – Adopting Cloud Computing Using the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance
This IBM^® Redpaper™ publication describes the benefits of private cloud computing using the WebSphere^® CloudBurst™ appliance (referred to as WebSphere Cloudburst). This appliance is part of the overall IBM CloudBurst family of products.

Getting Started with the Feature Pack for OSGi Applications and JPA 2.0
This IBM^® Redbooks^® publication introduces OSGi applications and Java™ Persistence API (JPA) 2.0 technology and describes their implementation in the Feature Pack for OSGi Applications and JPA 2.0 for WebSphere Application Server 7.0.

The book will help you understand the position of these new technologies as well as how to use them for Java enterprise development in a WebSphere Application Server environment. Though synergetic, both technologies can be used in isolation.

Don't Miss These Three New Solution Briefs:

Solution Brief for Banking: Build a Better Loan Origination Process
Learn how to streamline the loan origination process with BPM.

Solution Brief for Retail: Vendor Trade Fund Management
Learn about the benefits that BPM can bring to the Retail process of Vendor Trade Fund Management.

Dynamic Case Management for Health and Human Services
IBM offers hardware, software, and services to help clients effectively integrate business strategy, business process management, SOA connectivity and integration, and dynamic application infrastructure to drive greater agility and better business outcomes.

Take a Look at SOA Software’s Policy Manager for IBM WebSphere DataPower
SOA Software’s Policy Manager for IBM WebSphere DataPower is unique in its ability to manage services, define and distribute policy, and collect and display monitoring data for clusters of DataPower appliances. It allows customers to implement and enforce consistent, uniform policies throughout their infrastructure, providing visibility into enterprise service usage, performance, and availability from network edge to application.
 
Policy Manager for IBM WebSphere DataPower allows customers to:

• Leverage DataPower as part of a unified governance automation solution
• Centrally define policies and apply them to services distributed across multiple DataPower appliances
• Manage a cluster of DataPower appliances as a single entity
• Gain visibility into service and appliance performance, individual messages, and business transactions from a single administration console

Education and Certification

Exclusive Training Savings for WebSphere User Group Members
As a member of the Global WebSphere Community user group, you are eligible to receive a 10% discount on public classes from IBM Training in the United States and Canada! Your discount can be applied to over 250 courses across our most popular curriculums, including our newest WebSphere courses:

• Administration of IBM WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliances V3.8.1
• IBM WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance Technical Overview
• IBM WebSphere Application Server V7 Problem Determination

For further details, please visit the WebSphere Education page on the GWC site.

Time is Running Out to Save 15% on the IBM
Education Pack
Lock in 12 months of discounted training when you buy an IBM Education Pack. The IBM Education Pack offers tiered discounts for prepaid training. The more training you buy, the more you save. This special 15% discount ends January 28, 2011. Order today in the U.S. or Canada!

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IBM Education Assistant - WebSphere eXtreme Scale 7.1 Overview and New Features
WebSphere eXtreme Scale delivers Elastic Caching capabilities that can ensure a smarter application infrastructure to support your most demanding business-critical applications. It allows you to overcome traditional IT performance limitations to generate the levels of global scale, process efficiencies, and business intelligence needed for smarter outcomes and for sustainable competitive advantage for your business.

Upcoming Webcasts and Seminars