New video from  Nastel together with Verdande at IBM Impact 2012 on using analytics to rapidly determine the cause of problems in complex composite applications. 

The approach in this video illustrates using Complex Event Processing as the first tier to handle large volumes of data and find the patterns that denote a specific problem situation.

The second tier is case-based reasoning which relates the current situation to a prior situation in order to categorize this problem accurately and take action.  

There was an extensive Q&A section that was recorded as part of this video.   It was a very lively audience with a lot of detailed technical questions.  

 
The link to the video is: www.nastel.com/index.php?option=com_cont...

Enjoy and let me know if you find it helpful.

--Charley  

Many enterprises utilize middleware as the “glue” linking their application infrastructure together. This application fabric is usually comprised of bespoke and commercial applications, some of which are sourced within the company and others obtained through acquisition. For these enterprises, middleware lets it all work together. Unfortunately, the middleware solutions are often used on a department or division basis with a box of overlapping tools to monitor and manage them.  As IT is still for the most part organized in silos (see Silos of Shame), this can be costly at best providing a technology-specific view of status and with little overall visibility of the application, itself.

But, we can take another approach and get past this. Utilizing a single point of control to view and manage all of your middleware solutions can be just the answer we need. As companies face greater competitive pressures in the marketplace and need to reduce costs they often look to deduplicate tools, processes and roles. This approach can help.

A unified middleware management strategy can be beneficial in removing some of the duplicate tools or at least funneling their events into a single view and analysis engine and thus reduce both cost and error. This strategy can also reduce some of the redundant processes that are tool specific.

This approach can also help in terms of staff efficiency.  Many of the challenges in sustainable cost reduction are exacerbated by location strategies that implement off shoring and out sourcing. While initially reducing costs, they can end up being more expensive as the center of expertise is not off shore and there are different tools and levels of staff efficiency in each location. This can be helped by avoiding “eyes-on-screen” monitoring.  There shouldn’t be any reason why operators need to watch a screen for problems – that is just so 1990’s. Avoiding this through automation and through the reduction in the number of consoles by utilizing the unified approach can be an essential component in improving IT resource utilization; another important factor in delivering sustainable cost reduction.

Furthermore, a single view across all middleware is just the ticket for the vital insight into compliance that enterprises need to stay on track with the ever increasing set of regulatory standards applied to business. This is especially helpful when there is also a way to control segregation of duties across all middleware solutions as opposed to a separate process for each solution.

Messaging middleware has made it possible for applications never designed to work together to pass information between them without requiring them to be rebuilt. However, the infrastructure around them has become too complex and costly and in today’s world of “doing more with less,” this is unhelpful. On the other hand, taking the “unified view” can help you deliver on your CIO’s plan to handle competitive pressures, reduce costs and meet regulatory challenges.

Nastel AutoPilot announces a DataPower Expert with support for all of the metrics

DataPower provides, including appliance statistics, users, connections, caching,

memory, network and chassis. In addition, AutoPilot maintains a collection

history for trending analysis. This instrumentation data is analyzed by the

AutoPilot Complex Event Processing (CEP) engine which views it as part of a

larger situation in conjunction with other performance data coming from sources

such as Java, .NET, WMQ, ESB, Message Broker, transaction flow and CICS.

AutoPilot CEP analyzes the performance of DataPower routing and

transformation in relation to user specified business policy, and automatically

delivers early warning indicators about potential business-impacting problems.

For the full release go to: www.nastel.com/nastel-announces-support-... 

Nastel Technologies is offering its first Freemium Offering.  

AutoPilot On-Demand for WMQ is available as a free download here:  www.nastel.com/download-software_335_250...


Please try it and let us know what you think.  

Features include:
 www.nastel.com/download-software_335_250...

Nastel has a YouTube Channel at:

 

www.youtube.com/user/NastelTechnologies

 

Check it out for videos on Complex Event Processing, WebSphere  and monitoring composite applications

 

See you there!

 

--Charley

 

 

Nastel was interviewed on the Computer Outlook Radio Talk show while at Impact 2011.

 

The broadcast can be heard at: computeroutlookrts.com/_computeroutlookr...

 

Much of the interview revolved around what middleware does and the benefits of monitoring it.

 

Enjoy,

Charley

IBM Impact 2011 was a successful event for Nastel.

The attendance at our booth was terrific and the quality of the sessions IBM put on and the interractions with the other business partners was excellent. 

Highlights:

Presentation by Stephen Neal, global Director of Middleware at Barclays Capital on "Monitoring Low-latency Middleware".  There was standing room only for this presentation.    Great questions from the audience. 

New product announcement:  AutoPilot On-demand for WebSphere MQ: www.nastel.com/autopilot-on-demand-for-w...

Live impromptu interview on Wednesday, viewable at:

www.livestream.com/ibmimpact/video?clipI...

Interview with the Global WebSphere User's Group:  waiting for link

Computer Outlook radio interview:  waiting for link

Stay tuned for more news.

--Charley

Please attend a session with Stephen Neal, Global Director of Middleware at Barclays Capital at Impact 2011

Stephen will be speaking about his experiences monitoring low-latency middleware at Barclays. 

Come to Session 2581

Tuesday 4/12 10:15 - 11:30 Venetian - Delfino 4001A

Abstract:

Middleware is undergoing a revolution as it moves from a software-only paradigm to one that is hardware appliance-based. As businesses are putting more emphasis on lowering latency in transactional environments, they must still manage their heritage middleware products. 

The challenge: firms need to maintain high performance and minimize the need for additional management when introducing new middleware.

The solution: a single point of control over all middleware enabling proactive and efficient management.

What will your audience walk away with?:

1. How to monitor a high-performance, multi-vendor middleware estate

2. Achieving the benefits of low-latency from the new hardware-based middleware

3. Proactive management in order to reduce mean-time-between-failures

See the blog entry on the IBM Impact site at:

www-950.ibm.com/blogs/aim/entry/why_ibm_...

We are doing a free webinar with Enterprise Management Associates and our partner Coradiant who provides a solution for end user experience monitoring on 3/31 at 1 PM ET.

It is called: IT as a "Secret Weapon". 

The webinar will cover the following

o  How firms are using Proactive APM to optimize their business processes

o  How Complex Event Processing with closed-loop automation can prevent  outages and performance problems

o  How Proactive APM improves end-user experience by connecting business KPIs to application performance

Register at: www.enterprisemanagement.com/nastel

Looking forward to seeing you there!

PS.  We will be at Impact 2011 in Las Vegas in the zZone.  Please drop by our booth.

--Charley