Latest News from WebSphere Journal

IBM Buys Initiate Systems

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST

IBM is buying privately held Chicago-based Initiate Systems, whose data integrity software is used for information sharing in healthcare and government organizations. Financial details were not disclosed. The deal should close this quarter and Initiate will become part of IBM’s Information Management business. IBM noted that it was its 30th acquisition in information and analytics.

The People's Republic of Cloud Computing

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST

I just got back from an action-packed week of meetings in Shanghai, China. Shanghai is one of the more exciting cities I've visited recently as they prepare for the World Expo in May as well as the upcoming Chinese New Year festivities. As a city Shanghai is a bustling modern metropolis. A city that in a little over thirty years has gone from a small village to mega city of more then 30 million people. In talking with the people I met in Shanghai I quickly came to realize that like myself, most people in Shanghai were not originally from there, most had recently moved there from other areas of China for "economic opportunities" the city now offers. Looking around the city you'll notice a level of wealth on par or better than most western cities. In a nutshell the reason I found myself in Shanghai was for the very reason the Chinese are now pouring into the the city, the opportunity to capitalize on the new Chinese dream.

SOA and the IT Pressure Cooker

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:15:00 EST

Market conditions are in a constant state of flux. The economy is, well, the economy. The regulatory environment shifts based on the latest business scandal and which political party holds sway. Plus, there is always a new management strategy to solve world hunger or something. As users struggle to keep up with this deluge, they frequently turn to their friends in IT for help.

Java vs C++? Really?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST

Every industry has head to head comparisons between popular products and they make great headlines but is the question really being explored? I say no. In fact, I think these comparisons are meant to throw meat to one side or the other and to stir the pot of controversy for one purpose: to sell copy (or get readers for free publications). I will spend some time exploring the question of selecting or using Java vs. C/C++.

The Appliance Form Factor of WebSphere CloudBurst

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST

As with most new technologies, the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance inspires a healthy set of questions. As usual most of the questions are about features, capabilities, use cases, etc., yet there is one question that is quite frequent but a bit of an outlier from the preceding categories. Personally, I’m not sure I’ve talked to a group about WebSphere CloudBurst without getting this question. What's the question? “Why is WebSphere CloudBurst an appliance?”

Where is the Architecture?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:30:00 EST

We seem on the verge of repeating the mistakes associated with failed SOA implementations: ignoring the larger issue of architecture.

Everyone – from pundit to public – is asking the same question: “Where are the network virtual appliances?” But fewer people seem to be asking a question that needs to go hand-in-hand with that one: “Where are the architectural guidelines to support deployment of network virtual appliances?” SOA has been deemed by many to be a failure in part because it lacked true architectural guidance. Architects were simply unable – whether by lack of skills or training or lack of support from the rest of the organization – to design an architecture that took advantage of services and thus the result was often little more than “service sprawl.” Services did not scale well, they were not so easy to integrate, and no one really had a good handle on what services were available, and where.

Lack of an architectural strategy to accompany a network virtual appliance will likely lead to the same end: network sprawl and a lack of scalability or worse – scalability that’s costly in terms of expenses and resources.

Rich Miller, who’ll be joining a panel of other industry notables at Cloud Connect to discuss Infrastructure 2.0 and what’s necessary to successfully move forward with these “new” infrastructures, may have inadvertently pointed out the lack of architectural guidance related to virtual network appliances when he said:

If a vendor is going to sell network virtual appliances, the nva's should be designed from the get-go to be scalable (both 'up' and 'out'), and designed with the notion that the 'appliance' is not just a physical appliance without the box. That is 'horseless carriage' product design, which casts new technologies in exactly the same roles as their precursors.

What Allan doesn't say is that this may require the wider deployment of network infrastructure designed specifically for virtualized appliances and converged IO. It's not just whitebox, commodity x86 hardware running general purpose virtual machine environments for server virtualization.

-- Rich Miller in “Where ARE the Network Virtual Appliances?”

Rich is focusing more on internal design in general, but any such “design” must also necessarily include how the VNA scales in the target environment. Scalability is at the heart of all definitions of cloud computing and without the ability to scale solutions – whether application, network, storage, or application network – any such implementation will almost certainly be deemed a failure.

SCALING UP

Scaling up, i.e. vertical scalability, in a cloud computing or virtualized environment is in essence little more than “throwing more hardware” at the problem. Scaling “up” adds more compute resources, yes, but it is not “on-demand” today because it effectively requires re-provisioning of large chunks of resources. Cloud computing and virtualization in particular today are not capable of simply “adding on” more CPU or RAM to a virtual machine and even if it were there are hard, physical limitations imposed by the underlying hardware on the upper bounds of such a strategy.

Scaling “up” a virtual network appliance in practice is really no different than scaling up hardware. It leads to over-provisioning by necessity and in the event that capacity and physical constraints are reached, requires provisioning a new, higher capacity instance which while easier than upgrading hardware counterparts still requires much the same process in terms of deployment.

While I agree with Rich’s assessment that virtual network appliances should be designed to scale up as efficiently as possible, that doesn’t change the challenges associated with actually scaling up the solution in a dynamic environment or that it’s not all that much different than what we do today to try to future-proof the sizing of solutions.

SCALING OUT

Scaling out, i.e. horizontal scalability, is usually the more desirable choice in these discussions. This makes a great deal more sense even though scaling “out” is still essentially a “throw more hardware at the problem” solution, it’s a more temporary “toss” and is more flexible in terms of growing capacity on-demand. It’s certainly more efficient and agile to deploy another virtual network appliance than it is to acquire and deploy another physical network appliance.

The problem with this approach is not in the details. It’s in the broader architectural strategy applied to the process, which today is virtually non-existent. Scaling out is a proven method of addressing capacity constraints. We do it all the time with web and application servers, with firewalls, with XML gateways. load balancing as a method of implementing a horizontally scalable application and network infrastructure is nothing new and it is indeed efficient, scalable, and architecturally sound.

The issue is with how one scales out, and what. The call for “virtual network appliances” in general ignores the architectural implications in favor of some perception of increased flexibility and scalability. There are simply some functions within the data center that would not benefit from being “virtualized” and others that will not benefit without a strong set of architectural guidelines. Some functions should never be virtualized because such an architecture would not be feasible to implement and would do more harm than good to both network and application performance.

Let’s take core routing, for example. One of the reasons you’d want to “scale out” a core router is because it has hit an upper constraint on bandwidth. Perhaps it’s only capable of handling 10Gb of aggregate bandwidth entering the data center/cloud computing environment but you need to handle 20 or 30Gb of bandwidth. In a completely virtualized architecture you’d just scale “out” by adding another another virtual router, right? That will certainly increase aggregate bandwidth capacity, but fails to address a very important question: how is traffic directed to one instance or another? Do we have to scale the scalability? And if so, how does that work? Do the core routers deploy in an active-active configuration, both masquerading as the entry point into the data center? Sharing of “bogus” MAC addresses across active-active-n scaling architectures is the most common solution to this problem, but introduces others related to failover and network utilization. That latter piece is due to the natural behavior of switches and reliance on MAC address/port affinity; essentially this solution turns a switch into a giant hub, replicating data/traffic across all possible ports on which the “bogus” MAC address might be. As you scale out, more and more bandwidth will be consumed by this broadcasting behavior and can make troubleshooting more difficult, especially in environments where visibility is already limited such as cloud computing providers.

RIGHT BACK WHERE WE STARTED

Is it the case that every virtual network appliance capable of being “scaled out” will essentially need to be capable of acting like a Load balancer? Because that’s how it looks from here. Horizontal scalability is based on the premise that something – some device, some solution – is load balancing requests/data/traffic across the multiple instances. Without the load balancing solution, such implementations are nearly impossible to achieve. So imagine the potential issue when the load balancer is virtualized, too. It, also, must scale “out” and thus must be “scaled” itself by … a load balancing solution. Such an implementation is certainly achievable, but also requires that the “primary” load balancing solution is scaled “up” in order to handle the aggregate request/data/traffic being directed at the infrastructure. Limitations on vertical scalability return us right back to a solution based on horizontal scalability, which puts us right back here where we are: how do we scale out the “more scalable” virtual network appliances that are so highly in demand?

We haven’t even touched the large problem of sprawl in a virtual network infrastructure. Management systems aren’t quite ready for such an implementation, and ironically part of the reason cloud computing, virtualization, and infrastructure 2.0 are coming of age now is because we have issues with managing an increasing volume of servers, applications, devices, and IP addresses across the data center. Deploying an infrastructure comprised of virtual network appliances without a strong architectural strategy and a supporting management strategy is sheer folly, and puts us no better off than we are today.

We should be very careful to ask ourselves why we want a particular solution in a network virtual appliance and how it might impact the network and management of the network before we blithely toss it into our critical network and application network infrastructure. Architecture is inherently as important when designing any type of distributed system, and when moving from hardware to distributed software as a means to achieve scalability there needs to be more a lot more thought and strategy put into the process.

While there are certainly going to evolve architectures that take advantage of virtual network appliances, and traditional hardware appliances, and combinations thereof, we need to tread carefully forward and ensure that our driving desire for what appears to be flexibility doesn’t end up breaking the backbone of the data center: the network.

A well-thought planned architectural strategy for integrating virtual network appliances with traditional data center components will go a long way toward ensuring maximum flexibility without stretching the network so tightly that it breaks.

Related blogs & articles:

Technorati Tags: MacVittie,F5,virtualization,architecture,cloud computing,infrastructure 2.0,infrastructure,load balancing,routing,scalability

IBM and the Air Force Sign Cloud Deal

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST

Today my employer, IBM, announced that it was awarded a 10 month long contract with the United States Air Force. According to the press release, the contract calls for IBM to “design and demonstrate a secure cloud computing infrastructure capable of supporting defense and intelligence networks.” Lieutenant General William Lord, Chief Information Officer and Chief, Warfighting Integration for the Air Force, goes further by stating the purpose of the project will be to “develop an architecture that could lead to improved performance within the Air Force environment to improve all operational, analytical and security capabilities”

Air Force Selects IBM For Mission-Oriented Cloud Computing

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:15:00 EST

The U.S. Air Force has awarded IBM a contract to design and demonstrate a secure cloud computing infrastructure capable of supporting defense and intelligence networks. The ten-month project will introduce advanced cyber security and analytics technologies developed by IBM Research into the cloud architecture. The project will push the technology boundaries of cloud computing with an infrastructure design that not only supports large-scale networks, but meets rigorous security standards and the government's Information Assurance guidelines for all networks. The Air Force's network manages the operations of nine major commands, nearly 100 bases, and 700,000 active military personnel around the world.

IBM To Make US Air Force a Hyper-Secure Cloud

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:30:00 EST

The US Air Force has contracted for IBM to design and demonstrate a secure cloud computing infrastructure capable of supporting defense and intelligence networks. The 10-month project is supposed to introduce advanced cyber security and analytics technologies developed by IBM Research into the cloud architecture. The project is meant to push the boundaries of cloud computing with an infrastructure design that supports large-scale networks and meets rigorous security standards as well as the government's Information Assurance guidelines for all networks. The Air Force network manages the operations of nine major commands, nearly 100 bases, and 700,000 active military personnel around the world.

Mitsubishi DSC To Resell IBM’s CloudBurst Technology

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:30:00 EST

Starting in February DCS, a k a Mitsubishi Research Institute DCS Company, the ~1,800-man systems integrator, will resell IBM’s CloudBurst private cloud infrastructure, to Japanese customers in various industries. It also plans on using the widgetry to provide various services out of its own data center in Chiba Prefecture starting with an internal R&D environment. And besides the private cloud business it figures to get into SaaS too.

What Are Your Top 10 Web Application Performance Issues?

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:45:00 EST

You know the top one or two causes of bottlenecks for your applications, but do you know the next six or seven issues that have the potential to cause problems? Mastering application performance requires the right kind of IT strategy, combined with the right tools, that can shed light on both the painful issues of today and potential problems of tomorrow that are lurking in the shadows.

The Lightweight Solution for Plugging Memory Leaks in Production

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:00:00 EST

As data center administrators and managers, you are entrusted with critical services that have a direct business impact. The threat of business service downtime due to enterprise application memory leaks is a constant IT concern. Often such problems only begin to show after long production runs, and require high-overhead tools to detect and quantify.

IBM and JLL Sign a Seven-Year IT Services Agreement

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST

IBM and Jones Lang LaSalle , a financial and professional services firms specializing in real estate and investment management, on Tuesday announced a seven-year information technology (IT) services deal. IBM will provide full infrastructure support services for JLL across 19 countries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). The contract is similar to an existing agreement with JLL in the United States and Asia-Pacific.

Unisys's Cloud Expo Presentation Streaming Live on SYS-CON.TV

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:15:00 EST

To address their unique business challenges, today’s enterprises need tailored cloud computing services that deliver the best of managed and dedicated services – whether they are public or private. In his session from Cloud Computing Expo 2009 West, Sam Gross discussed the Unisys cloud computing strategy and solutions that enable you to choose the services that best meet your business objectives – from self-managed, automated IT infrastructures to Unisys-managed cloud services.

IBM Gloats Over Sun & HP Poaching

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:15:00 EST

IBM says it carved a couple of hundred notches on its gun in the fourth quarter after persuading both Sun and HP users to defect. It says all told it’s gotten 2,200 companies to move off of HP and Sun server and storage gear since beginning its Migration Factory program four years ago. Last year, it claims 550 Sun users and 250 HP users went over to its Power, System x and mainframe boxes and storage.

A CTO Analysis of Hillary Clinton’s Speech on Internet Freedom

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:15:00 EST

This is a very good presentation of policy worth a complete read by all, but I looked through it for statements indicating what we technologists should focus on. I tried to find the phrases indicating what the Secretary was saying the US should or will do, since that should drive many other government actions and should help technologists think through what we may be asked to do/support.

"New Media" Series on Public Television

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST

"The Future of News" brings together some of the brightest minds in new and traditional media. The new 10-part television series produced by the Newseum in Washington, D.C., debuts in Janury 2010 on American Public Television. Featuring lively discussions and cutting-edge conversations with today's leading journalists and newsmakers. Hosted by Frank Sesno, Emmy Award-winning broadcaster and director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University, the series highlights emerging forms of news presentations to emphasize the role of technological diversity in the modern media landscape.

Vint Cerf and Multi-Cloud Mayhem of Cloud Computing

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 18:45:00 EST

According to Cerf, "Strong authentication will be a critical element in the securing of clouds." We know that authentication is a core for establishing trust between transacting parties. This requirement is now further heightened because of the expansion of corporate boundaries out to cloud-based services. Authenticating to cloud services and accessing only authorized services in a multi-tenant environment will continue to be the most important aspect of establishing trusted connections between enterprises and IaaS, PaaS and SaaS providers.

Akorri Founder to Present Virtualization Session at Cloud Expo 2010

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST

By consolidating low priority applications onto shared resources, virtualization has enabled IT organizations to cut costs and improve efficiency, leverage new IT investment, and improve service. In his session at the 5th Cloud Expo, Rich Corley, Founder and CTO of Akorri, will analyze the steps IT managers need to take while they optimize their virtualization environment including: troubleshooting, optimization, capacity planning and service level management.

Rackspace President and RightScale CEO to Present Joint Session at Cloud Expo

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:45:00 EST

As enthusiasm for cloud computing has exploded – so has confusion over the definitions, use cases and practical realities of deploying applications in the cloud today. In their session at the 5th Cloud Expo, Lew Moorman, President, Cloud & Chief Strategy Officer at Rackspace, and Michael Crandell, CEO and a founder of RightScale, will cite real-world case studies and discuss the pragmatics of cloud computing today.

Introducing WebSphere CloudBurst 1.1

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST

I’ve written numerous technical entries both here and elsewhere about the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance. The appliance is a cloud management device that is geared towards those enterprises that for a variety of reasons (security, privacy, performance, customization capability, existing investment, etc.) are looking to benefit from on-premise or private clouds. The initial version of WebSphere CloudBurst, released in June of 2009, introduced the capability for users to create, deploy, and manage WebSphere application environments in a cloud that they retain control over. While that may seem straight forward enough, this can radically change the way users perceive their application environments. By using this appliance-based approach, users can achieve flexibility and agility because of instead of in spite of their approach to the creation, provisioning, and maintenance of application platforms.

What is Enterprise Cloud Computing?

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:30:00 EST

What is enterprise cloud computing? Simply stated, it’s a behind-the-firewalls use of commercial, Internet-based cloud technologies specifically focused on one company’s or one business environment’s computing needs. Enterprise cloud computing is a controlled, internal place that offers the rapid and flexible provisioning of compute power, storage, software, and security services to meet your mission’s demands.

"Swamp Computing" a.k.a. Cloud Computing

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:45:00 EST

MIT Technology review recently published a great article titled: Security in the Ether addressing security, privacy and reliability issues resulting from cloud computing. Some of the interesting points in this article are summarized. Cloud data may be mishandled by the cloud provider because of technology gaps, but more importantly, such information can be extracted through a court issued subpoena. Whether the data resident in the cloud versus on-premise makes it more or less likely to a subpoena being exercised is yet to be seen. Bit and bytes lost accidentally or intentionally have a strange way of persisting and being recovered eventually. 22 Million emails "lost" during Bush's era were "suprisingly" recovered by computer technicians recently.

My Mobile Wish List. Santa, Are You Listening?

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 14:30:00 EST

Hello Cisco Mobile Community. I would like to take a minute to introduce myself. I am one of Cisco’s Chief Architects for Service Provider, focused on the evolution of mobile network architecture and services. I will also be Cisco’s Guest Blogger for the month of January. I am excited to discuss mobility technology, trends, and business models with all of you during the month. I could also not resist offering an initial post before January rolls around, in the spirit of the upcoming holidays, to share my 'wish list' of mobile-related merchandise due to make a big splash in the coming months.

Linoma Software Lends Its Support to iManifest

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST

The IBM i continues to work as the backbone of data processing for thousands of mid-size to large enterprises around the world. The secure architecture and flexibility of the IBM i (formerly branded as AS/400, iSeries and System i) has given it much more longevity than was ever predicted by those early skeptics. Even though the IBM i is a very powerful and robust computing platform, many its supporters do not think it’s getting the attention that it deserves.

Digicable Signs 10-Year IT Outsourcing Agreement with IBM

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:00:00 EST

IBM today announced that Digicable, a cable and broadband distribution player in India, has signed a US $83 million, 10-year strategic outsourcing agreement with IBM. As part of this agreement, IBM will support the integration of Digicable's digital media content delivery and value added services applications with its core business technologies and processes. This integrated approach will enable Digicable to provide superior and personalized service to its subscribers.

IBM Beats Rivals to Korean Cloud Computing Contract

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:00:00 EST

Having beaten out HP, Oracle, Microsoft and Sun for the job, IBM has floated a cloud for its very first telecom customer. It’s SK Telecom, the biggest telecommunications house in Korea, with 24 million customers, representing more than half the market. IBM says it’s the first cloud built in Korea for a private sector company. The widgetry’s built on IBM’s Smart Business Development & Test Cloud and is meant to provide developers with the infrastructure needed to test, develop and publish new mobile apps.

IBM to Deliver Healthcare via Cloud Computing

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:15:00 EST

IBM announced on Monday a new Research collaboratory, located in Taipei, Taiwan. The collaboratory will focus on using technologies -- including cloud computing, analytics and mobile devices -- to advance wellness-centric healthcare that manages diseases more efficiently and effectively to keep people healthier. Most healthcare systems worldwide are "sick care" models, whose primary objective is to fund treatment when people have health problems, with little emphasis on disease prevention and wellness.

Business Process Modeling Notation 2.0

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST

OMG has approved the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN(TM)) 2.0 specification beta submission. OMG's Board of Directors approved the specification at the OMG Technical Meeting held in San Antonio, TX in September 2009. The finalization process for BPMN 2.0 is underway and the final version of the specification is expected to be adopted in mid 2010. The initial version of BPMN provided a graphical notation for specifying and documenting business processes with an emphasis on defining "orchestration processes." BPMN 1.x has been broadly adopted by the industry. OMG lists more than 60 implementations.

OpSource Secure Cloud Computing Storage

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:30:00 EST

Mezeo Software and OpSource announced that OpSource Cloud will offer the Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform, enabling OpSource Cloud users to enjoy online sign-up and immediate provisioning of cloud storage service, speeding enterprises' cloud deployment and offering flexible, secure storage options to help ISVs differentiate themselves. OpSource Cloud, which combines the availability, flexibility and community of the public cloud with the security, performance and control that the enterprise demands, is in public Beta and available for on-line purchase by the hour from www.OpsourceCloud.net. The Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform will be available to OpSource Cloud users in the first quarter of 2010.

Cast Iron Systems to Simplify Cloud Computing Integration

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:45:00 EST

PROS enterprise pricing software company announced on Thursday that it has teamed with Cast Iron Systems, SaaS and Cloud Integration Company, to simplify application integration for their customers. PROS is now a Platinum-level Powered By Cast Iron partner, offering dramatically simplified interface development and integration between its profitability management and optimization software product, PROS Pricing Solution Suite, and the wide variety of business applications, including SAP, Oracle eBusiness Applications, Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics. PROS customers can use Cast Iron’s integration solutions to rapidly connect the PROS Pricing Solution Suite with hundreds of applications in real-time to access information locked away in these applications.

Bad Economics Are Difficult to Shake Off

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:45:00 EST

Terry Pratchett once wrote that “Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off”. We could make a similar comment about the financials of SaaS BI companies. As much as startups in this field would like to shake off their bad economics, reality always catches up. We’re seeing one after another SaaS BI startup [...]

Building Private and Hybrid Clouds with Ubuntu 9.04

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:15:00 EST

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) has been released today bringing highly interesting new features, specially in the Cloud Computing and Virtualization area. The new Ubuntu server distribution includes two complementary cloud tools, OpenNebula and Eucalyptus, so providing the technology required to build the three types of Cloud architectures, namely private, hybrid and public clouds.

IBM to Acquire Lombardi

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:45:00 EST

IBM today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Lombardi, a privately held software company based in Austin, Texas. Financial terms were not disclosed. Lombardi, a leading provider of Business Process Management (BPM) software and services, helps organizations automate and integrate business processes to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. Today's announcement reinforces IBM's commitment and investments in service oriented architecture (SOA) and BPM and builds on recent BPM acquisitions such as ILOG which have helped IBM extend its industry leadership capabilities. With an SOA community of more than 8,000 clients and 7,400 Business Partners, and a BPM community of 5,000 clients and 2,500 Business Partners, IBM continues to build momentum in these important areas.

Red Hat Wants to Make Headway in Desktop Virtualization

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

Red Hat has open sourced a virtual desktop protocol it acquired last year, called the Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment (SPICE) whose technology is close to other rendering protocols like Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol and Citrix's Independent Computing Architecture. When Red Hat acquired Qumranet in 2008, it inherited SPICE used in Qumranet's commercial desktop-virtualization product, SolidIce. SPICE can be used to deploy virtual desktops from a server out to remote computers, such as desktop PCs and thin-client devices when running bandwidth intensive applications like video or voice over IP.

Ex-IBM Honcho Claims He’s Innocent

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:30:00 EST

He claims he didn’t pass material insider information on IBM and Sun earnings or AMD’s sale of its plants to co-defendant Danielle Chiesi despite government wire taps to the contrary. Chiesi, an analyst at the New Castle hedge fund and an alleged Galleon tipster, also denied the charges. Moffat, one of the IBMers who did due diligence on Sun when Blue was thinking of buying it, denied having the information to tip Chiesi to the results of Sun’s fiscal 2Q08 quarter before they were out as alleged or, as his lawyers put it, Moffat “admits that in January 2009 IBM was conducting preliminary due diligence concerning Sun, denies knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief to the truth of allegations that Sun provided IBM with its Q2 2009 earnings results in advance of a January 27, 2009 announcement.”

IBM Launches IBM Business Park

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:45:00 EST

IBM announced the launch of the 'IBM Business Park,' a green data center integrated within Korea's existing Kyobo Data Center in Songdo International City, Incheon. The addition of IBM Business Park is part of the Korean government's goal to build Incheon into an international economic hub. Through the new IBM Business Park, IBM will provide a series of information technology (IT) services including strategic outsourcing, e-business hosting and disaster recovery to more than 20 clients, including Amore Pacific, Iljin and Esquire, which have entered outsourcing agreements with IBM.

SOA Software Extends IBM WebSphere Service Registry Repository

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST

SOA Software today announced a new product to extend the capabilities of the IBM WebSphere Service Registry Repository (WSRR). This new product called Policy Manager for IBM WSRR complements the policy management capabilities of WSRR enabling customers to define policies for services and service consumers regardless of their platform and can audit the policies implemented and enforced by the platform in a closed-loop process.

Reflections on Java Command Line Options

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:15:00 EST

Abstract

There are many different types of command line options that programs need to recognize. Many languages (e.g.: bash and perl) has built-in processing of command line options; Java does not. The Java Command Line Options (JCLO) package performs this task for a variety of option styles. It also uses Java's reflection capability to automatically assign values to variables in a specified class.

XML Gateways, SOA and Cloud Computing

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST

Layer 7 Technologies, a security and governance company for SOA and Cloud Computing, announced the general availability of the Layer 7 Enterprise Service Manager (ESM). Fully embedded within each SecureSpan Gateway, the ESM allows organizations to address critical service and administration requirements from a single, central location. SecureSpan customers can now simplify operations management across the enterprise and into the cloud by centrally provisioning globally distributed datacenters, implementing disaster recovery initiatives, remotely maintaining/updating systems and managing the policy lifecycle – all from a single Web-based dashboard.

Trusting Cloud Computing

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

Trust is an important word in the world of security, and in cloud computing it’s an even bigger deal. Cloud computing offers up the promise that an organizations will be able to run any application from anywhere at any time. But in a multi-tenant environment, a cloud application running in a virtual machine might be located on any number of hosts in a virtualized datacenter, and running next to others’ virtual machines on those hosts.

The Five Layers within Cloud Computing

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:45:00 EST

As a preface to the series of articles I will be writing on the Value Proposition and Business Cases for Cloud Computing, I wanted to discuss the layers below and within the cloud. It is important to understand what each of the layers is composed of, what the intended function of that layer is, and how these layers interact with each other. By simplifying the cloud computing concept into layers, it is easier to define the roles within the overall structure and explain where your business fits into the model.

HP Buys One of the Seven Networking Dwarves and Gets a Bargain

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:45:00 EST

Last week EMC and Cisco announced their VCE collation and Acadia. The other day, HP continued its early holiday shopping by plucking down $2.7B USD and bought 3COM, one of the networking seven dwarfs (e.g. when compared to networking giant Cisco). Some of the other so called networking dwarfs when compared to Cisco include Brocade, Ciena and Juniper among others.

How Secure is Cloud Computing?

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST

Diffie makes a good point: taken as a whole, the benefits of commodity air travel are so high that it allows us to ignore the not insignificant negatives (I gripe as much as anyone when I travel, but this doesn’t stop me from using the service). In the long term, will the convenience of cloud simply overwhelm the security issues? The history of computing, of course, is a history full of such compromise. Right now we are in the early days of cloud computing, where all of us in the security community are sniping at the shortcomings of the technology, the process, the legal and regulatory issues, and anything else that appears suspect. But truthfully, this is the ultimate low hanging fruit. Identifying problems with the cloud is effortless; offering real solutions is considerably harder.

A Doctrine for Change - Lawrence Lessig Again

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST

I was again reading and reviewing Lawrence Lessig's work tonight. The man is so very articulate and his observations so compelling. If you haven't become a student of his work, please take my advice and give it a try here.

At the 2002 Open Source Convention Lessig challenged the audience to get involved in the political process. A tireless advocate for open source, Lessig shared some basic concepts that are a solution to most of the barriers preventing our soceity from overcoming the major challenges of the time. A complete transcript of Lawrence's keynote presentation made on July 24, 2002 is available here. In summation his logical findings were as follows.

Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.

The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.

Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.

Ours is less and less a free society.

Watch the video from Big Thinkers wherein Lessig explains his views on freedom our culture and creativity.

Oracle Dynamic Tabs Shell - ADF 11gR1 – UI Shell

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST

In the latest release of JDeveloper, specifically 11.1.1.2.0 also known as 11g Release 1 also known as Patch Set 1 also known as 11g build 5536 also known as the Shepherd build (cough cough Oracle), Oracle has included a new built in page template known as the "Oracle Dynamic Tabs Shell". This template is part of Oracle's ADF Functional Patterns and Best Practices efforts, also referred to as the "UI Shell". Complete documentation is available here. I'll leave readers unfamiliar with the UI Shell to read Oracle's documentation to understand the basics.

With my current client we're happy with the inclusion of this new UI Shell and we can actively see ourselves using it in the near future. What I wanted to document is my own thoughts and research which may be of use to others, and I hope to further the discussion on the ADF EMG. Note as usual your mileage may vary so take time out to check the facts listed here:

1) The Create JSF Page dialog presents the "Oracle Dynamic Tabs Shell" page template option:

2) The template and its supporting classes are installed in <jdev_home>/jdeveloper/adfv/jlib/oracle-page-templates-ext.jar, though the JDev IDE takes care of importing the template and classes/libraries into your project for you once selected in the Create JSF Page dialog. As the following picture shows an additional library Oracle Extended Page Templates is added to your project:

Side note: Steve Muench has blogged the location of the UI Shell template and supporting classes as a separate download here. This will allow you to take the default UI Shell template and customise to your needs if required. See further points below for why this may be necessary.

2) Our technical team was already getting bogged down in "discussions" of "standard" web page layouts versus RIA layouts. The technical team knows the standard web page layouts weren't suited to RIA applications, but it was hard to argue our case without actually creating a RIA layout. In turn creating a RIA layout that we were happy with was going to take some time, and we're building applications now. With the UI Shell we can short cut the layout "discussions", say this is what Oracle's provided us, it works well and this is what we'll use, allowing us to focus on the more important matter of hand and that's writing the ADF solution for the business.

3) Our overall application is made up of several subsystems (think Oracle Apps with HR, Procurement, Payroll etc). Within the UI Shell the globalTabs facet provides an ideal location to list the subsystems allowing the user to switch between each module:

4) Each subsystem gets its own page based on the template, as in hr.jspx, procurement.jspx and payroll.jspx based on our example.

5) The rest of the application is made up of a number "Activities" that in essence are bounded task flows using page fragments, or in other words the business processes of your application. Each subsystem is free to make use of as many bounded task flows as it sees fit, and in addition a bounded task flow can be used (shared) by many of the subsystem pages.

6) As per the previous point, if you're using the default UI Shell provided through JDeveloper rather than downloading the UI Shell as per Steve Muench's blog above, and you wish to have a common element in every page using the template, you'll need to code them in every page which isn't ideal. The solution is to download Oracle's template and customise it within your own application (or possibly create a number of declarative page components for repetitive content, though this will still require you to load each page component in each page based on the UI Shell template).

7) A key feature of the UI Shell as described in its other name "Oracle Dynamic Tabs Shell" is it shows under each subsystem how to launch a bounded task flow (aka Activity) one or many times:

This may not be ideal for every application, but my current client has a scenario in an existing Oracle Forms application where users open up to 4 sessions. While we're not sure on building an ADF equivalent with a chance to redesign the users' workflow will they still need to do this, if they do we're envisaging that each session can now be as a separate UI Shell Activity under the subsystem page.

8) As discussed in the following ADF EMG thread the UI Shell makes a great addition to the "Master JDev Application Workspace" proposed by Todd Hill bringing a number of composite ADF bounded task flows together.

9) The demonstration UI Shell application shows a basic mechanism of stopping a user leaving an activity once they've made "it dirty". The analogy to this is in the JDev IDE when the user changes the contents of a source file, the tab control title font becomes italic and the user is warned/prompted to save changes if they attempt to close the tab without saving.

Currently this feature should be considered a demonstration feature only as in the downloadable UI Shell demonstration application it has a number of limitations (it is a demo after all). In particular the isDirty() check is only done within a subsystem's activities. Clicking on a different subsystem tab/page doesn't invoke the isDirty() check with the appropriate warning dialog. It would be my assumption that this check would need to be coded in each specific application, reusing the isDirty() facilities provided.

10) For the logoImagePath attribute you can specify the path of the UI Shell log image, but not the size. In the turn the layout tends to assume a horizontal logo. If corporate branding is important to your organisation and they have a long vertical logo, good luck.

11) The default UI Shell has no consideration of security. For instance what subsystems are available under the globalTabs for the current user is your responsibility

12) The overall template does waste some vertical screen real-estate:

See annotations A, B and C.

A can be trimmed by setting the globalSplitterPosition attribute. At this time it doesn't look like B and C can be set in the default UI Shell. Ideally we'd want something like this:

13) The overall template is extremely small – only 74k – wow, Oracle can create something that doesn't take up an entire CD! ;-)

14) I note in the source code downloadable from Steve Muench's blog that there are a few comments that the implementation will change dependent on later updates to the ADF component set presumably available in later JDev releases (ie. see the TabContext.java REMOVE_ME_WHEN_NAVPANE_SUPPORTS_STAMPING comment).

This implies the default functionality of the UI Shell could change in the future which could have issues for your existing applications based on the UI Shell and therefore your regression testing and user experience. It may be necessary to source the UI Shell code and baseline in your code repository rather than being subjected to changes in functionality on upgrading to future JDev releases.

15) As per the UI Shell whitepaper, the 7 zillion steps to reproduce the demonstration UI Shell application do look daunting. However if you're familiar with JDev, page templates and constructing JSF pages it only takes about 20-30 minutes to run through most of the steps. In fact most steps are just setting up dummy task flows and page fragments to show some content within the produced template, nothing really to do with the template itself.

16) You'll need to remind users/analysts/managers etc that what the UI Shell gives in preconfigured layouts, saving developers time and boosting productivity, it takes away in customizable layout of the screen. This is a common point of contention in component based frameworks where a super component gives a large array of features, but the component works as the component works and cannot be easily customised without headache.

The Intersection of Data Virtualization and Enterprise Data Warehouses

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:00:00 EST

Large enterprises and government agencies are drowning in data. IT teams deploy a myriad of data warehouse-centric solutions – BI, predictive analytics, data and content mining, portals and dashboards – to harness and deliver data for intelligent decision-making. Yet, large enterprises are also expected to act like start-ups: nimble, agile and flexible to adapt to ever-changing market conditions.

IBM Turns the Screws on zPrime

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:15:00 EST

IBM System z CTO and resident spook Mark Anzani recently sent an IBM mainframe customer a letter meant to scare it into seeing the boogeyman under its bed and make sure it doesn’t use Neon Enterprise Software’s zPrime technology to reduce its mainframe costs. The customer wants to buy IBM’s Specialty Engines for its mainframes, the so-called zIIP and zAAP processors that IBM created to accelerate and run DB2 and Java on. IBM doesn’t want to fill the order unless the customer promises in writing not to use the chips to run the workloads that the zPrime software can offload to the things. It will save the customer millions of dollars in CP cycles and IBM doesn’t like that.

Desperately Seeking SOA Business Cases

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST

Or, to rephrase that famous Kennedy quote, "ask not what SOA can do for you, but ask what you can do to improve your business!" This is a really important question because I believe that the person seeking this information is not alone in attempting to identify real value of investing in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The problem is that a properly done SOA should be unique to the mission, goals and processes of the organization making it of limited relative use to another organization. That is, SOA offers a framework for identifying, isolating, delivering and servicing a consumer need, and, while all businesses have some common aspects, the resulting business services should be unique to the needs of that business' consumers.

IBM Builds Business Analytics Cloud

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST

Internally called Blue Insight, IBM's cloud environment democratizes information, providing access to a variety of client and market data regardless of where an employee sits in the company. It gathers information from nearly 100 different information warehouses and data stores, providing analytics on more than a petabyte (1,000 terabytes or 1,000,000 gigabytes) of data. By turning that data into insight for IBM's sales force and development communities, IBM will be able to deliver more value in the solutions and services it offers to its clients. More than 200,000 IBMers will have access to the new system.