Editor's Letter

Welcome to The Sphere Journal Online

Dear WebSpherian,

Welcome to the premier issue of The Sphere Journal Online.  We will use this space to bring you opinion, news, and technical information on how to use your current WebSphere products more effectively and help you make more informed decisions about WebSphere products you should be deploying in your organization.

Here is what you can expect to get from The Sphere Journal Online:

The Leading Edge of WebSphere – Dustin Amrhein and IBM’s New Product Evangelist team discuss what’s coming in WebSphere technology and why you should be paying attention to it.

Your WebSphere Deep Diving Instructor  – IBM Hursley Lab Guru Andy Piper provides an overview of important technology developments in WebSphere, what technology you should make the effort to master and why.

The Message Queue – News and notes on what’s happening today with WebSphere and business.

Feature Articles – Experts technical articles and covering specific issues that will:

• Enable Architects (Application, Enterprise, and Infrastructure) to build robust and flexible IT systems.
• Allow WebSphere professionals to add new function and applications to their solutions portfolio efficiently.
• Highlight the skills required to build, deploy and manage applications for business needs with the WebSphere Application Server.
• Help business analysts develop strategies for achieving business process agility through proven best practices and methodologies with the IBM BPM Suite.
• Deliver information and skills to help build a messaging infrastructure to leverage existing legacy applications, as well as swiftly and seamlessly integrate new services into the enterprise.

All this content is powered by the Global WebSphere Community (GWC).  Most readers of The Sphere Journal Online are members of the GWC.  Membership is free and you can join this community at www.WebSphereUserGroup.org.  You can access all content from The Sphere Journal Online as well as thousands of blogs, articles, podcasts, and presentations that will help you do your job better using WebSphere technology.

I look forward to providing you The Sphere Journal Online in 2011.  I welcome your feedback. I can be reached at www.WebSphereUserGroup.org or brucelynch@wispubs.com.

Best regards,

Bruce Lynch, Editor and Publisher
The Sphere Journal Online

The Leading Edge of WebSphere

Forging Ahead in the Cloud with Patterns

By Dustin Amrhein, Technical Evangelist, WebSphere Emerging Technologies

As part of my job, I get the opportunity to talk IT users from many industries, across organizations of varying sizes. Particularly, I talk with these users about how they construct and manage their application environments, with a specific focus on the application infrastructure components within said environments. As you might expect, the precise standards and operating procedures for carrying out these activities differ from organization to organization. However, the pain points that these users feel carrying out such tasks are remarkably similar regardless of the organization.

There is no arguing the importance of application middleware for enterprise applications. These middleware components include application containers that deliver critical application services, integration solutions vital to preserving connectivity across the ecosystem of applications and users, fabrics that provide a foundation for business process alignment, and much more. While the importance is clear, we cannot afford to ignore the pains that users sometimes experience when interacting with this class of solutions. Distilling down the feedback I get from many different users, the following three challenges contribute to most of the pain:

• Lead-time for application delivery: Simply put, it takes too long to construct and deploy application middleware environments. On the low-end, users typically talk about delivering these environments in days. More often, it is a proposition of weeks, and on the high-end, it can be months.
• Consistency in application deployments: Because of the numerous configuration steps involved in setting up these environments, users often struggle with being able to deploy the same thing consistently. You may know this phenomenon as configuration drift, and it often manifests itself as inconsistencies in the application runtime.
• Low utilization of hardware resources: In many cases, since users struggle to deploy environments quickly and consistently, they often hang on to setups even when not actively using them. While this ensures them that they have a system when they need it, it contributes to the abhorrently low (many times in the 6-12% range) hardware utilization rates observed in enterprises.

Now, I never like to hear users recount some of their struggles with constructing and managing their middleware environments, but I have to admit, I do not mind when they bring up these challenges. Why? Because IBM is relentlessly focused on rendering these problems outdated with a patterns-based approach for cloud-based middleware.

First, let me explain a little about what I mean by patterns. A pattern, in this context, is a persistent, deployable unit that is a complete representation of an application middleware environment. It includes the necessary infrastructure nodes (application servers, web servers, databases), as well as the configuration and integration of those nodes. In this way, patterns encapsulate many of the installation, configuration, and integration tasks that are time-consuming, tedious, and error-prone. Therefore, patterns provide a means by which to attack the problems of prolonged delivery times and consistently inconsistent application deployments.

You may be asking where the cloud comes into the discussion. The answer is that the foundation of these patterns, a set of IBM constructed virtual images, sets the stage for cloud-based deployments. You deploy these patterns to create virtualized application environments, and then you can layer on additional qualities of service such as elasticity, monitoring, self-service access, and utility-based billing, from solutions like our WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance, that truly bring your cloud to life.

I am excited about the value that our patterns for cloud-based middleware offer, in both the short and long term. If you find yourself struggling with some of the problems above, I encourage you to be proactive and look into emerging paradigms like this patterns-based approach. After all, your competitors surely are.

Your WebSphere Deep Diving Instructor

By Andy Piper, WebSphere Messaging Community Lead, IBM

Hello, and welcome to my first column for Sphere. I’ve recently moved into a new role at IBM as WebSphere Messaging Community Lead, looking at all things messaging, integration and connectivity (three themes that sit at the heart of WebSphere) - but with many years of hands-on experience consulting with customers, I don’t intend for this column to be limited to those topics. The plan is to bring you news and information on all areas of the WebSphere platform, and hopefully to dive into some that you’ve not yet explored. I’ll also talk about what is current and “hot” in our labs and in the marketplace. I hope you’ll find it useful!

For this first column, though, you’ll excuse me if I do talk about about the messaging family, partly because 2010 was a huge year for that set of products. One of my colleagues has a great tagline in his email signature: “Messaging optimized for reliability, low latency, files, security, mainframes and small devices”. That sentence really captures what has been happening. You should already know about the “reliability” part: WebSphere MQ has been the central transport in IBM’s messaging story for over fifteen years. The question is, have you been paying attention, and kept up with what else has been happening in the MQ family recently?

The past couple of years have seen a stunning amount of innovation in the MQ family, driven by the smart folks at IBM’s Hursley lab in the UK. WebSphere MQ has always been about providing a universal messaging backbone that connects any of the platforms in an enterprise, but increasingly there have been demands for more specialised usages in that family. For instance, WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition enables you to move files around over your existing MQ infrastructure, with all of the reliability, flexibility and control you’d expect from the transport. At the other end of the scale, WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging is optimized to move small messages around incredibly fast and close-to-the-network (if you want to know more, I recently started contributing to a new blog, http://lowlatencymessaging.com/, where we’ll explore the subject in greater detail).

Two key technologies that joined the family in 2010 were Advanced Message Security (AMS), and Telemetry (MQTT). AMS is important because it provides message-level encryption completely transparently to your applications, enabling you to define policies that secure message data “at rest” on a queue. MQTT is what I’ve spent most of my own time on lately, though - it’s very cool! You’ve probably heard of Smarter Planet, and “The Internet of Things” - MQTT is an extremely lightweight but reliable transport that interoperates with WebSphere MQ. The simplicity, low network bandwidth and memory usage make it ideal for the tiny mobile devices and sensors which collect and emit data today. The very interesting thing is that it is portable, because IBM has published the protocol itself for royalty-free implementation. You could run it on Android, embedded on a router, on an RFID collector, or as part of a desktop application - it makes it simple to connect your mobile or sensor application up to the enterprise.

If you know about the WebSphere messaging family already, you’ll find there’s a lot more to learn. If not, I’d urge you to take a look, as I believe that these new features are going to be increasingly important in 2011.

The Message Queue

News and Notes on What’s Happening Today with WebSphere and Business

IBM WebSphere Application Server Users to Realize Better Availability from New Granular Configuration Automation Solution by Evolven

Evolven Software Inc., the pioneer of Granular Configuration Automation solutions, recently announced their support for IBM WebSphere Application Server.

Evolven support for IBM WebSphere Application Server allows for detection of granular configuration changes and classifies them by criticality and impact facilitating less downtime and increasing stability

Evolven will enable customers to achieve greater visibility into the granular configuration information of IBM WebSphere Application Server’s application infrastructure which can affect the availability and performance of IT environments where IBM WebSphere Application Server is running.

IBM WebSphere Application Server provides services (database connectivity, threading, workload management, and so forth) that can be used by business applications. IBM WebSphere Application Server provides the availability and security that businesses depend on, allowing developers to build, deploy and manage robust, agile reusable, and innovative SOA business applications and services of all types while reducing application infrastructure costs. IBM WebSphere Application Server enhances development productivity with integrated tooling and unique backwards compatibility features that eliminate recoding with comprehensive support of open standards and programming models, including: OSGi, CEA, JPA, SAML, SCA, SDO, SIP, Web 2.0, and XML.

Availability and performance of IBM WebSphere Application Server in the IT environment is critical for providing effective business service. With a unique ability to track the configuration parameters and detect changes and differences, no matter how minute, for IBM WebSphere Application Server, Evolven Comparison allows IT professionals to:

• Reduce Production Outage Risk: Increase stability of releases and detect unauthorized changes to prevent outages and high impact incidents
• Minimize System Downtime: Quickly pinpoint to an incident's root-cause and cut time to repair
• Enhance Security & Compliance: Leverage granular visibility and audit-trail to meet demanding security and compliance requirements

The configuration parameters of IBM WebSphere Application Server are critical for providing effective business service. Accurately managing the configuration of IBM WebSphere Application Server is not an easy task considering the complexity of IBM WebSphere Application Server and the numerous configuration parameters involved with IBM WebSphere Application Server. IBM WebSphere Application Server includes thousands of different configuration parameters in which the misconfiguration or disregard of a single configuration setting can cause an incident with major impact on the entire IT environment and business service.

Evolven Comparison discovers granular configuration information for IBM WebSphere Application Server.

Evolven Comparison's unique Comparison Engine™ includes a set of technologies that deliver clear, definitive configuration information related to IBM WebSphere Application Server, highlighting the critical root cause and its impact, allowing IT professionals to focus on what matters most.

Today’s modern business systems include interdependent layers of applications and infrastructure, and focusing on only one configuration or a small set leaves room for error, and ignores critical context and interdependencies. The Evolven Granular Configuration Automation solution, Evolven Comparison, focuses on the entire environment in order to ensure a stable business service that meets agreed to service levels.

Evolven Comparison analyzes and classifies configuration changes and differences, by their impact, for IBM WebSphere Application Server. Then Evolven Comparison prioritizes and highlights the changes and differences discovered in IBM WebSphere Application Server based on criticality, visually presenting the comparison results for fast and easy analysis. Insignificant changes and differences are ignored. Evolven Comparison even makes effective comparisons for IBM WebSphere Application Server Configurations of inherently different environments (e.g. test vs. production).

WebSphere Portal and Lotus Collaboration Videos on YouTube

There are several YouTube channels available if you are looking for information related to WebSphere Portal and Lotus Collaboration (WPLC). Lars-Olof Allerhed has gathered a collection of the channels for your convenience at: http://www.allerhed.com/2010/12/22/websphere-portal-and-lotus-collaboration-you-tube-channels/.

Intranet as a Driver for Business Process Automation in SMB

BPM is becoming a mission-critical element of business automation. How can an intranet contribute here?

Industry is moving towards adopting the full range of features to provide customers a self-sufficient platform for internal work. Ideally, an intranet should serve as a universal interface with a full range of capabilities necessary to solve business-critical tasks.

The latest trend in intranet development is powering the products with handy tools for business process automation (BPA). Large enterprises normally use legacy tools like Oracle BPM Suite, Microsoft BizTalk, or IBM WebSphere Process Server to connect various applications and services with business processes. Intranet-specific BPA can hardly replace these tools as the enterprise IT environment requirements overwhelms the functionality of intranets. What options do small- and medium-sized businesses have?

Read the full article at CIO Magazine online: http://advice.cio.com/bitrix/14917/intranet_as_a_driver_for_business_process_automation_in_smb

IBM joining up with one of the US’s largest healthcare providers

IBM is extending the reach of its analytics software in the healthcare market with the announcement that they are joining up with one of the US’s largest healthcare providers, Premier, to create a new platform that will link data across more than 2400 hospitals across the US.

The partnership between the two is a logical one. Premier collects and analyzes clinical and financial data from its member hospitals, while IBM, using its information management and analytics portfolio, can provide the technology to assess access and link information.

Ultimately, the companies said in a joint statement, the new platform will streamline the finding and delivery of information to the hospitals and healthcare sites that are part of Premier system.

With this new platform, IBM is creating an analytics platform that runs across multiple sites and one that will be entirely integrated across those sites providing complete information on patients at any location.

IBM has built analytics platforms for other hospital systems in the US, but the alliance with Premier is the largest. Its database is the biggest compilation of patient data in the US with its combined system containing the data of nearly 40% of all US hospital discharges.

IBM’s Healthcare Platform

But there’s more than just the analytics part of IBM’s business that will be applied here. The pre-integrated platform for data acquisition is built on the IBM Health Integration Framework and powered by IBM Smarter Analytics System with DB2 data warehouse.

Its information management portfolio will be used to acquire and populate the data model, while Initiate software master data management and WebSphere Healthcare ESB will provide a single view of the data. WebSphere software provides clinical and business rules management.

Tivoli will provide security and service management while application development will come from Rational software. Finally, a common user experience will be offered across the entire system through Lotus software.

Health Benefits

The new platform will be applied across Premier’s health network called Accountable Care Implementation Collaborative, which consists of 25 health systems with 90 hospitals and 1.4 million patients who are cared for by 5000 physicians.

A previous data sharing model developed by Premier across 157 hospitals called Quest saved an estimated US$ 2.13 billion in costs. Premier estimates that if all hospitals in the country were linked savings could be as much as US$ 23 billion.

Bon-Ton Stores Inc. Integrating WebSphere Commerce Platform

Bon-Ton Stores Inc. recently deployed IBM Corp.’s WebSphere Commerce platform, and in September relaunched the e-commerce presence for its family of retail brands — Bon-Ton, Boston Store, Carson Pirie Scott, Elder-Beerman, Bergner’s, Herberger’s and Younker’s.

At Bon-Ton, choosing IBM came after a review of several vendors that led Bon-Ton to conclude that WebSphere best met its needs: directly managing online merchandising and marketing campaigns, and quickly modifying those campaigns based on consumer response; and integrating the e-commerce system with Bon-Ton’s in-house order management and HighJump warehouse management systems, enabling the retailer to fulfill orders from any of its three distribution centers, its stores or drop-ship suppliers.

The retailer’s lean team of software experts, including newcomers with WebSphere expertise, spends more time modifying the new platform than it ever did with the old platform. “We do more of our own tweaking now,” Mansker says, noting that the new site has 3-click checkout and a persistent shopping cart that shoppers can view from any page. “But it’s 100% worth it.”

Even small tweaks make a difference. When shoppers complained that online “Bonus Buy” deals didn’t also accept coupons, merchandisers quickly clarified the offer, and customer complaints ceased. Bon-Ton reports that since launching its new site in September, it has been running double-digit percentage increases in sales compared to a year ago.

As Bon-Ton and other retailers can attest, finding the right e-commerce platform opens up opportunities that make the hard work of selecting a vendor well worthwhile.

MindTree Launches Contract Pricing Framework with
IBM WebSphere Commerce

MindTree, a global IT solutions company, unveiled the launch of its contract pricing framework using IBM WebSphere Commerce at the recent National Retail Federation’s (NRF) tradeshow. The new framework is designed to solve time-consuming business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce challenges presented by implementing and managing multiple contracts and price lists for a single customer.

The recently launched customizable Contract Pricing Framework (CPF) allows a single customer contract to be associated to multiple contract templates spanning across manufacturing, procurement and logistics to finance and legal among other business functions. It also enables flexible pricing for B2B customers using multiple price lists, global discounts, and absolute price. In addition, the framework supports region-wise and role-based field level access to contracts, which ensures that the right people have access to information.

In Focus

Setting Up Cross Cell EJB Calls
by Thomas Køcks Nielsen 

Organizations tend to have more and more complex Enterprise infrastructure these days, making it more necessary to communicate and transfer secure data across platforms.

Typically, when you think about accessing data, you think of it as methods or procedures fetching and setting data, which are accessible on the server in your request. You tend to communicate using TCP or perhaps RPC. However a more streamlined, more flexible and easier way is to set up RMI (Remote Method Invocation) and then use EJB (Enterprise Java Beans) components to access the data.

Click here to read more.

IBM WCM SMART Asset – What It Is and How to Use It
by Thomas Køcks Nielsen

One of the key elements in a larger WebSphere Portal installation is the Workplace Web Content Management System (WCM).

The integral part of WCM is the syndication between servers. Syndication replicates data and content from one library to another. Currently there is no way of monitoring if all items or the items intended are moved correctly, and it is extremely difficult to determine if syndication has occurred correctly and with the intended result.

Click here to read more.