As business leaders focus on growth during 2012, they are identifying business expansion and transformation opportunities. The resulting IT mandate to rapidly evolve mobile and social interactions is forcing CIOs to re-invent their software delivery. By following a straightforward four-step plan, CIOs can improve productivity, enhance agility, deliver timely solutions, and help fulfill strategic business growth goals.
When investing in technology infrastructure, organizations commonly desire a positive return on investment (ROI) within six to twelve months and a lower PaaS TCO over the investment lifespan. Does deployment topology sizing, tenant count, tenant density, and service mix significantly impact expense and influence ROI timeframe?
In John Rymer’s recent blog post, Progress Software Lowers Its Sights, he breaks the news that Progress is divesting perceived ‘non-core’ middleware products. On the selling block are Progress Sonic ESB, Savvion BPM, Actional services management, and FuseSource. Progress’ recent strategy shift places Sonic ESB, Sonic MQ, and FuseSource implementations at risk of obsolescence. The list of probable acquirers could mean product termination and forced migration.
VMWare’s Linux in the Cloud strategy is only half the solution for Cloud applications. Development teams also require a Cloud Native application platform.
Summary: Before selecting PaaS infrastructure, understand how sharing, location, and responsibility impact your public/private Cloud and internal/external Cloud decision.
All Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) products may be used to build and deploy services, encapsulate legacy systems, route messages, transform message formats, and perform protocol mediation. Many WSO2 prospects ask me ‘What differentiates WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus?’ This blog post shares my perspective and scales the conversation.
Application development organizations continue to undergo a structural shift towards business enablement and away from technical debt. Teams desire to re-invent software delivery into an agile, on-demand application environment and change the business-IT dynamic. WSO2 platforms enable IT to solve mundane technical plumbing and focus on business-oriented personalization, self-service, monetization, and analytics. When changing the business-IT dynamic, we see leading clients:
Pinterest is being touted as a web ecosystem platform that may potentially rival FaceBook. To be a web ecosystem platform, an online website property publishes an API enabling an ecosystem of 3rd developers. Once Pinterest publishes an API, 3rd party developers could extend core Pinterest functionality, enrich the user experience, and accelerate user adoption. According to recent reports, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors are ready to ride user interest in Pinterest:
“When the API is available, Adam Ludwin at RRE, says he’s interested in entrepreneurs who can build on top of the platform, who can “close the loop” and figure out a way to monetize the interest around products on Pinterest. He’s interested in startups that will provide tools to facilitate transactions on and through Pinterest.”
But exposing an API can lead other companies capturing revenue otherwise directed to Pinterest. As reported recently by Jay Yarow, Pinterest
“might not release it [API] for a while, says an industry source familiar with Pinterest’s plans. This source says that Pinterest fears having a ‘Twitter problem.’”
To further improve the automobile shopping user experience, one of the largest clubs in the American Automobile Association Mid-Atlantic (AAA Mid-Atlantic) recently introduced the new AAA Auto Buying Tools mobile app. As the app design emerged, AAA Mid-Atlantic found a few obstacles in their way -
WSO2 Identity Server supports many leading identity management specifications, and work is underway to support interoperable Simple Cloud Identity Management. The Simple Cloud Identity Management (SCIM) specification is designed to make managing user identity in cloud based applications and services easier.
Ten years after the rise of Service Oriented Architecture, many organizations have identified and published services as shared assets, however teams and partners often continue to invest considerable time and resources when building new solutions. Many teams experience rapid portfolio proliferation and sprawl, but not enhanced portfolio efficiency or business agility. Achieving business agility requires the growth of development partnerships and interactions, which should span both internal and external teams.
Traditional SOA and integration platforms enable rapid development, but they provide little business partnership support. Teams commonly operate independently and autonomously. Hundreds of people write new APIs and services; few people know:
I have recently met a few individuals who do not ascribe positive value to open source. I had thought the open software versus closed software argument was decided circa 2005. Unfortunately, a few renegade individuals are holding out, and believe in the goodness of autocratic companies who operate without transparency. It took me awhile to dig into the bias and understand the root concern; an organizational need for competent technical support, high usability, and a viable roadmap. Corporate sponsored open source solves these concerns.
Are PaaS purchasers enamored by a polyglot language promise? PaaS Polyglot proponents are suggesting that the winning PaaS will be the polyglot language PaaS.
I’m not quite sure historical purchasing trends support the theory.
At Gartner’s Application Architecture, Development and Integration Summit in 2011, SearchSOA.com’s own Jack Vaughan speaks with Chris Haddad, VP of technology evangelism at WSO2. Chris Haddad explains his idea of what real “cloud-native” cloud architecture means and how this varies from some vendors’ “cloud-washed solutions.”
View the video explain How PaaS is changing application servers?
You may have invested significant time and effort creating services. Have you reached maximum service agility, adaptability, adoption? Are applications now easier to build? Is it time for a SOA portfolio review?
The PaaS on PaaS marketure has me confused. The ecosystem surrounding Cloud Foundry demonstrates how PaaS, the middle level between SaaS and IaaS is actually a multi-layered market space. A way to unwind the recursive relationship between Cloud Foundry and ecosystem partners is to first start calling the technology a ‘cloud-enabled platform’, and limit PaaS as an instantiation of the cloud-enabled platform delivered as a service. The CloudFoundry ecosystem partners (e.g. AppFog, Stackato, Uhuru, Tier3) seem to be competing on ease of use enhancements, bundled technology (e.g. language support, cache support, database support), or managed hosting.
Platform as a Service resides within the space between Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
Ben Kepes posted a good discussion on LinkedIn, Cloud computing and the concealment of complexity.. . Ben summarizes his position in a call to action at the end of the post:
“Let’s make this stuff as simple as possible, articulating complexity does much to build barriers to cloud adoption….”