Welcome to the blog where IBMers exchange viewpoints, share their perspectives to provide more insight around service oriented architecture solutions, and delve into a range of SOA-related subjects. We want you to speak out on SOA through comments in the blog -- from where your organization stands on SOA adoption, to your challenges and experiences -- to share with the larger community the impact of SOA on your marketplace. Sandy Carter is IBM's Vice President, SOA & WebSphere Marketing, Strategy and Channels. Discover the entry points to SOA and how companies worldwide are making SOA pay right away.

Practices of Flourishing Families --

http://socialmediasandy.wordpress.com/

YEA! We just received 5 Hermes Awards for Social Media Marketing!

Great news! The organization has received 5 Hermes Awards! This is me celebrating in our crazy hat day!

Platinum Awards:
Impact 2008 (Event Marketing category)
Smart SOA Widget (Electronic Media/Other category)
IBM Smart SOA Newsletter (E-Newsletter category)

Gold Awards:
Smart SOA World Tour (Integrated Marketing/Other)
World Tour "Get Smart" Videos (Viral Marketing category)

Hermes Creative Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. The international organization consists of several thousand marketing, communication, advertising, public relations, media production, web and free-lance professionals. The Association oversees awards and recognition programs, provides judges and sets standards for excellence.

The home page for Hermes Creative Awards links to the winners' list.
Awards are here!

IBM Receives the 2009 ACORD Innovation Implementation Award & ACORD Infrastructure Platform/Middleware Award

YEA! IBM Receives the 2009 ACORD Innovation Implementation Award & ACORD Infrastructure Platform/Middleware Award

The yearly ACORD award recognizes organizations that are implementing XML standards in unique and exceptional ways and organizations that enhance the utilization of ACORD Standards. The IBM team continued the 2008 award winning tradition with a Proof of Technology and Redbook that demonstrate implementation best practices for Insurance companies. With these best practices, IBM customers can deploy end to end SOA Solutions based on Industry Standards in ACORD and the IBM Insurance Process Acceleration Framework.

Smart Work is about transforming companies to make informed decisions, build deeper relationships and work with more agile business processes. The Strategy & Technology team has established SOA as the state of the art for Smart Insurance at ACORD. With our customers, we continue to raise the bar on ACORD implementations and Smart Work.

What should you do?

First, Download this redbook !

Second, see the great
Showcase!!!

Finally, I'd like to thank Donald Buddenbaum, Brian Bokor, Qiang Wang, Bruce Wallman Ph.D., Stephanie Fetzer
and Rufus Credle who made this valueable work possible!

IMPACT comes to India!

IMPACT is coming to India on May 21st! Please join us! And you can contribute your thoughts on
SOA here!

And sign up here! India IMPACT!

IMPACT 2009 Day 4! Primeur

It was a pleasure to meet Peter Segdwick at IMPACT from Primeur! Primeur is a Silver Sponsor at IMPACT 2009!

I took a few minutes to chat about how Primeur tools compliment the WS software offerings.

Sandy: Do you offer tools for WMQ file transfer--that work with the new version of WebSphere MQ?
Peter: Yes we do.   We have had the ability, in our Spazio product, to transfer files over WMQ for a number of years.  Now that IBM has introduced WMQ File Transfer Edition, we fully support WMQ FTE as the product of choice for file transfer for  WMQ users.  We are very excited by WMQ FTE as we see this as a tremendous opportunity for IBM customers to further improve their RoI in their ESB/SOA infrastructure by implementing File Transfer  alongside their message based services and applications.  Overall, WMQ v7 really has opened up new benefits with its extended Pub/Sub and Managed File Transfer.

Sandy: How are users responding to the offer of your Security toolkit download? In the current economy, do you find that security is still something people are investing in as a primary need for their business?
Peter:We have been very encouraged by the increasing interest in Security, both for our toolkit download and for our full function offerings.  For a long time, companies have considered that link level security (SSL) is adequate, particularly for internal networks.  We are now beginning to see interest in securing data at rest for both messages and files as companies now realise the threat of highly confidential data being compromised even when stored temporarily in queues.  Securing data at rest is just one of the functions of End-to-End solutions, along with authentication and digital signatures.

Sandy: Can you tell us a little about the File extensions you've developed for WebSphere? How do your utilities enhance the value of the IBM software?
Peter:We at Primeur have developed three extensions for WMQ File Transfer Edition.  Our Spazio File Services Governance (Spazio FSG) provides monitoring, audit and reporting not only for FTE but also for all the commonly found Internet (e.g. FTP) and proprietary (e.g. Connect:Direct) file transfer protocols.  This means that users can get a single and complete view of all their file transfer flows regardless of the protocols they are using.  In capturing the information needed to do this, Spazio FSG also enables users to make productivity improvements of at least 18::1 in converting and modernising from, say, Connect:Direct to FTE.  Our Spazio File Services Security Suite provides end-to-end security for messages and files in a WMQ infrastructure, and Spazio MFTS can seamlessly interface an internal FTE network to the outside world using Internet or Proprietary protocols.

We will be explaining and demonstrating all of the above at our stand, S1, and also in Session 2287A on Wednesday afternoon where we are jointly presenting with Ben Mann, IBM’s WMQ and WMQ FTE Product Manager.

Summa's study on TCO and Open Source -- Discussion at IMPACT

I had the pleasure of chatting with Audrey at IMPACT 2009!

We discussed the benefits of using WebSphere instead of open source. Check out the work they have done!

Sandy:Tell me something about Summa and the solutions you have been involved in?
Audrey:Summa has been an IBM Premier Business Partner since 2003 providing mission critical IT consulting and system integration services and solutions to clients in many industries, including financial services, manufacturing, and education.
One of our key solution areas is around application modernization where we help clients develop and implement incremental solutions for modernizing their legacy applications, often incorporating modern SOA frameworks utilizing IBM technology to drive agility and incremental business value.
In the current environment, many customers are seeking ways to reduce their IT costs, and another solution area that we’ve been working with them on is to conduct open source viability assessments – helping IT and business leaders to evaluate the real total cost of ownership and manageability of open source software.

Sandy: Can you tell us more about Summa’s perspective on TCO as it relates to open source software?
Audrey - Summa, like IBM are proponents of OSS, and often recommend and implement open source components for our customers. As companies are increasingly considering open source software solutions, we advise them to consider architecture and TCO trade offs beyond the initial licensing terms which appear attractive on the surface. Some of these factors include their level of risk tolerance, operational ease of use and required hardware costs, the specific OSS vendors track record of delivering updates and defect fixes, etc..

Sandy: What is involved in a TCO assessment on open source viability?
Audrey: We start by talking to customers about their environment, including number and types of servers, and number and size of applications. The deliverable for the assessment includes a customized report that incorporates financial modeling that can be used to help the customer make informed buying decisions. The results can be eye opening, providing a perspective on the “real” costs that are often overlooked by development teams. We are here discussing the TCO process this week at the Impact conference with IBM customers, and the level of interest in our assessment process and methodology has been very high.

Day 3 At IMPACT!! Miami Dade County's Carmen Suarez

Our customers are really cool and I have had the privilege of working with them and learning from their success stories. Miami Dade County is a great example of working smarter with SOA.

Carmen Suarez, Acting Division Director for Enterprise Architecture Services joins me on the Day 3 keynote to discuss the Smarts of the Miami Dade Solution. Carmen is an amazing woman and I have met her several times now and never fail to be impressed by her talent!

I caught up with her at IMPACT for a quick view interview! Check it out!

Carmen: We have been able to re-allocate demand for shared resources as the needs of the government cycle change. For example, during the real estate taxes cycle we allocate more resources to that business need in order to deal with the volume of traffic. This same Internet present application leverages the legacy mainframe system in backend with a WebSphere Java application that has allowed us to extend the legacy application and allow the public to pay their taxes over the web. In this fiscal year to date (October to April) we have collected over $ 390 million in tax revenue alone.

Sandy: For the services your provide you county constituents, how do you see the roll of SOA and the emergence of Cloud computing working in concert to meet your business needs?
Carmen: These days our “consumers” are constituents, businesses, other governments, travelers, investors. SOA, cloud computing and other enabling technology is just that, it enables us to bring service to the consumers faster and by reusing components via multiple channels like kiosks, pervasive devices, the Internet.

Sandy: What knowledge or experience is your #1 priority to take home from Impact 2009?
Carmen: All the things that DataPower can do for me. Like AmberPoint's recently announced integration with WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliance since we have been AmberPoint users for a few years now. And we have integrated the AmberPoint toolset with the WAS UDDI. Next step is to include WSRR (WebSphere Registry & Repository).

Sandy: How has the agility afforded by SOA empowered your vision to change around what services and offerings you can create to empower the people you interact with to Work Smarter?
Carmen: Our SOA vision and current roll out has breathed new life in to legacy applications by extending them to the Internet as self-service features. Additionally it has made our developers Countywide more efficient and given them whole new channels upon which they can deploy new functionality. Our eCommerce initiative alone has grown from $151 million in 2005 to over $468 million in 2008.,

Carmen, thank you for agreeing to do this interview! Great to hear from innovative customers like Miami Dade on how SOA done right = SOA Success.

Folks, if you are at IMPACT, don't miss the day 3 keynote coming up tomorrow

Audi on Main Tent at IMPACT 2009!

Audi's success story is a highlight of our Day 2 keynote and Armin Buttner, CTO of Audi AG graciously agreed to be interviewed for this blog. I love their route 2015 strategy featured in the keynote and here Armin succinctly summarizes the highilights of their SOA journey and how Smart Soa helped Audi align business and IT

There is the new Audi Spyder next to the STAGE! WOW!

Sandy: How does SOA help differentiate you within your industry?
Armin: SOA allows Audi to deliver solutions to our customers much quicker. We can do our IT projects quicker and with higher quality.

Sandy: What are the top things you are hoping to learn by attending Impact?
Armin: I am looking forward to learning more information on the SOA roadmap and how it will influence our IT strategy and projects.

Sandy: What are the top 3 things about your SOA approach - lessons learned - that you would like to share?
Armin: First, companies need to generate their SOA strategy across the company. The second is governance…it is not possible to do company-wide SOA without governance. The third lesson is that you need to build the skills internal to your organization. And I have an important fourth lessons learned – have a strong partner with experience to help you.

Sandy: How did you go about building SOA expertise/skills within your organization?
Armin: Pilot projects are key to learning SOA and getting the experience and skills inside your organization.

Sandy: How did you sell your investment in your SOA journey to your CFO or CEO?
Armin: SOA helps Audi get our products to market faster. I had to make sure that the CFO and CEO understood the business value. We have so many new products and our competitive advantage it so be faster to go to market. I needed to get early commitment from the CFO and CEO to make sure that our long term approach was successful.

Sandy: What is your favorite Audi car to drive?
Armin: A5, however in the summertime it is a convertible TT

Armin, thank you so much for speaking at IMPACT and taking time to share these insights!!!

Folks, give it up for Audi at IBM IMPACT, a great customer with a fantastic story! Don't forget to follow us on @sandy_carter for live feed from Vegas!

One of my FAVORITE SOA Customers -- Standard Life speaks about IMPACT 2009!

At IMPACT 2009 on Day 1, it is all about our customers and their success stories. We just heard from our customer, Russell Irwin of Standard Life talk about his company's soa journey and I thought it would be great to get a follow up Q & A to glean more insights.

Sandy: You have a world-famous story on the value of reuse in an SOA environment. Can you start by giving us a few numbers?

Russell: To date our SOA has realised a value of £26M pounds, around $40M dollars.
This is objective and conservative. It represents the value of our SOA approach over the cost of alternatives in development terms. We have not included the additional operational savings yet in our metrics. In Standard Life we sometimes debate the size of the saving, but not whether the saving is real. It is growing, the measures are all moving in the right direction. We log and measure through our software Framework and accompanying Infrastructure, so here come the numbers !

To date (August 2004 - March 2009)

227 service consuming apps in production

569 services in the catalog, where a service has to mean something to the business e.g. ‘Provide Customer Information’ is a valid service, while ‘Fetch Parm7 Yabba-Dabba Doo’ is not

Service re-use is consistently running at around 50%

~1.25 million service calls per day,

~ 300 SOA developers

1493 instances of reuse (where a service is used > once)

Multiplied by the cost of developing a typical bespoke service means £26 million sterling / nearly $40 million dollars

Or 2500 Honda Civics, or 200,000 fruit-based MP3 player-pods...

Sandy: Can you tell us how your SOA deployment has evolved over time?

Russell: We have been actively committed to SOA for 10 years. We started by getting the governance model, technology patterns, Software Framework, roles & responsibilities clear. We then began our work with some simple, but popular, services to illustrate the benefits of the approach and secure advocation and support from colleagues in Development and Business areas. The governance model has remained consistent throughout, so the costs to run our SOA remain fairly constant while the throughput and traffic has grown strongly. This offers exceptional efficiency gearing across our work. We now have an engaged community of some 300 developers who are very supportive of the overall governance and supporting patterns.

Sandy: What recommendations would you have to companies just starting their implementation of SOA?

Russell: In summary, smart SOA is working ! If you have already started your SOA journey, stick with it. If you have not started, start small with some services you know will get used, they don’t have to be the holy grail, think of the high volume traffic. Adopt a rigorous approach with strong SOA leadership and robust technology patterns. Measure as much as you can and report business value to your sponsor, not architectural purity. Report those measures in terms that your business will appreciate. Celebrate success ! Choose your technology partner carefully. And be clear on your governance model, roles and responsibilities throughout.

Sandy: What do you see in the future for Std. Life in terms of its involvement with SOA?

Russell: Smart SOA is working. We are committed to it. It has been a great success for us in the UK and we can now look to share the approach in our other markets.

Russell, what a great SOA success story and so happy to have you here at IMPACT! Thanks.

We announced WebSphere CloudBurst and BPM Blueworks! Up in the CLOUDS!

Hey Gang! We just pre-announced 2 major announcements before IMPACT -- both around SOA-enabled Clouds!

Our strategy is to enable organizations to create middleware and application clouds in the enterprise. Cloud services can be either private, on premises services or they can be public, externally hosted, such as Amazon’s EC2 cloud service. Using public clouds is a cost-effective way for companies to acquire temporary infrastructure to develop or test applications, while still running their mission-critical function in their private cloud.

So here are our SOA-enabled Cloud announcements!!

First, IBM WebSphere Cloudburst! It is new hardware appliance that provides access to software virtual images and patterns that can be used as-is or easily customized, and then securely deployed, managed and maintained in a private cloud. The initial release is targeted for private or on-premise cloud computing environments, as well as hosted public clouds and software-as-a-service environments, to simplify and standardize repeated deployments.

IBM WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition is a version of IBM WebSphere Application Server software optimized to run in a virtualized hardware server environment, such as VMware, and comes preloaded in WebSphere CloudBurst.

Based on initial IBM projections, this test cloud environment can save clients as much as 50 to 75 percent on capital and licensing expenses and as much as 30 to 50 percent on operating and labor costs through automated provisioning and configuration of virtualized test resources. Additionally, these services can improve quality by reducing defects from faulty configurations and poor modeling by as much as 15 to 30 percent.

2. Public Cloud: IBM BPM BlueWorks - Available at IMPACT
IBM BPM BlueWorks is a key cloud-based tool to help businesses develop the smart skills to create and deploy dynamic processes. It is the world’s first business community that lets users model processes in the cloud and create business strategies. We are also making our software available in Amazon’s EC2.

BPM BlueWorks provides tailored content to increase understanding around how BPM can drive business improvement. Hosted business design tools allow businesses to explicitly map out goals, capabilities, tasks, and business measures to identify underlying processes and improvement opportunities. Businesses can speed the development of expertise through collaboration by leveraging insight from the community, and accessing shared process maps. Finally, BPM BlueWorks provides an easy on-ramp to BPM, allowing businesses to find, study, and extend process maps – and ultimately deploy them as working processes in their business.

If you are coming to IMPACT, you can see both of these great announcements

Redmonk's Provocative and Need I say, Insightful, Thoughts for IMPACT 2009!

Quite excited today to be sharing my conversation with James Governor, a good friend and co founder of RedMonk, the first open source analysis firm. James is an opinion leader in the enterprise middleware space and green technology. His blog Monkchips !Click Here! was recently names one of the top three industry analyst blogs.

Be sure to check it out!

Sandy: James, this will be your third time at IMPACT, the largest SOA conference in the world. What are your favorite things about the conference?
James: The people, the people, and uh, the people

Sandy: Why do you think SOA has been so successful in the marketplace today and give 1-2 examples of that success.
James: SOA is a 25 year overnight success. The principles have been around a long time, and this time they have been implemented with enough standards to make the approach useful. The need for more integration flexibility never lessens. It is very hard to isolate example of SOA success now- the Fortune 500 are all using the approach.

One of my favourite SOA examples right now is not a traditional high endian, WS-* SOA at all: Amee.cc is a web startup that provides back end carbon calculator services for B2B and web companies. Its simple but effective- a web service that can improve the world. It’s simple and effective. [disclosure: AMEE is a client]

Sandy: I know that you are leading a number of Green and Sustainability sessions. Can you overview your major take aways?
James: Sustainability and SOA go hand in glove. The key to successful SOA is helping employees and other stakeholders understand opportunities and responsibilities.

Sandy: What is the connection you see between Green and SOA?
James: That would be telling ;-) Suffice to say that Sustainability is the latest –ility to join reliability, scalability, availability and so on. Organisations increasingly need to be able to pivot around green issues for strategic planning. Rather than requiring an organisation to rewrite code every time circumstances or plans change, with SOA this can potentially be achieved via configuration.

Sandy: Do you think issues of Green & Sustainability will remain as hot as they were with the economic recession?
James: Sure – sustainability now means something it didn’t before. The concept carries ideas of survivability to major shocks, economics or otherwise. Sustainability is CSR taken out of the PR department and made into a stragetic, truly board-level concern. Six months ago I was worried sustainability and greening would drop off of the agenda, but I am a lot more comfortable now that won’t happen. Look at IBM- its agenda at the moment with Smart Planet is all about sustainability- and unless I am very much mistaken IBM looks a lot like the best run company in America right now – so far it has avoided major revenue shortfalls in the recession.

Sandy: Anything that you want to add?
James: I am excited about this being the first Impact under the IBM Smart Planet agenda, which is the most interesting umbrella strategy I have seen at IBM in the 14 years I have watched the firm. We all need to get smarter, better instrumented, make more effective use of data, whether at home or in business. An IBMer called Andy Piper describes it beautifully here: To bring this Q&A full circle, Andy is one of the guys IBM looking forward to hanging out with in Las Vegas at Impact. People, people, people.

Awesome, James, thank you for taking the time to chat!

Folks, come hear James Governor talk about going green, soa and sustainability on Wednesday, May 6th at IBM IMPACT 2009.

Follow him on Twitter @monkchips for his latest updates from IMPACT. Don't miss out

DataDirect at IMPACT 2009 - From SQL to SOAP to Events!

DataDirect Technologies is an IBM partner and provides data connectivity and mainframe integration software for corporate enterprises and independent software vendors. DataDirect Shadow is mainframe middleware software that accelerates the participation of mainframe systems with Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), data access or business intelligence (BI) initiatives, and/or composite application development- all with unique capabilities to dramatically lower mainframe TCO through specialty engine exploitation.

I had a great discussion with Gregg Willhoitt, the Chief Software Architect at Data Direct about lowering mainframe TCO and their views on IBM IMPACT kicking of in Vegas next week.

Sandy DataDirect offers some excellent cost saving strategies. What are some of the messages you'll be sharing to help customers thrive in today's economy?
(One of their Session Titles is 'From SQL to SOAP to Events - with zIIP: Cost Effective SOA Solutions for CICS TS V4.1)

Gregg: I think it is very important that mainframe customers understand the tremendous opportunity that exist for lowering mainframe TCO while still growing their SOA initiatives. Sounds too good to be true, but this is what happens with innovation. The catalyst for this was the introduction of specialty engines for handling specialized workloads on the mainframe. This allowed processing that would normally be handled by the General Purpose Processor to be diverted to the specialty engine, where it could run without incurring a charge against contracted mainframe MIPS capacity. Initially the benefit was isolated to DB2, Java or Linux workloads – but not anymore. DataDirect has introduced patent-pending technology to more fully exploit specialty engines, expanding the range of environments that can use the zIIP engine to reduce mainframe TCO. With Shadow, DataDirect’s mainframe middleware, customers can offload up to 99% of their SOA-related integration processing to the zIIP specialty engine. For CICS customers, this means more control over costs and the ability to aggressively pursue their SOA initiatives. But the benefit doesn’t stop at CICS. We know the heterogeneous nature of most enterprises, so with Shadow you can leverage the zIIP specialty engine for Web services, SQL or Event processing across a wide range of environments, including Adabas, DB2, IMS, IDMS, VSAM, and Natural. The end result is extra mainframe capacity - a dividend if you will – to support the development of new business services, and in this economy, doing more with less is definitely a strategy for success.

Sandy: How does the Impact 2009 SOA Conference help DataDirect, a provider of world class solutions in Data Connectivity and Mainframe Integration, reach new customers and maintain your expertise in today's marketplace?

Gregg: To be honest, industry trade events have not fared very well in this down economy; however SOA Impact has been the rare exception. The event has grown to become an excellent forum for all things SOA, providing business and IT management, as well as application developers and systems programmers a great educational resource for examining the practical aspects of how to align SOA capabilities with business goals. Taking part in the technology exhibition is a great way to meet prospective customers, get a better understanding of their integration requirements and provide them with an up-close product test drive. This year, I am sure the focus will be on CICS TS v4.1 and how Shadow complements and extends the product with mainframe Web services, real-time event capture or SQL access. The education outreach this event provides is the perfect context for DataDirect to explain our product’s value proposition for accelerating mainframe SOA enablement. In addition, our technical staff always looks forward to this event for technical presentations and demonstration of the latest IBM SOA products.

Sandy: DataDirect is an official sponsor of the Impact 2009 zZone which showcases SOA solutions for System z audience. In fact, this is the second year; you've been an Impact zZone sponsor. What's so special about the zZone?

Gregg: The zZone makes all the sense in the world to us given as a product, DataDirect Shadow is singularly focused on the mainframe. Our goal for customers is to reduce the cost and complexity of integrating mainframe data and applications with Service Oriented Architectures, data-centric initiatives like Business Intelligence and Data warehousing, and new application development initiatives that rely on .NET or Java application frameworks. The zZone brings together an elite group of System z partners to complement the IBM System z experts and technology on-hand. It makes quite an impression to customers to see that big z10 mainframe sitting in amongst the exhibit booths. It is here, for example, where a customer can drill down into a technical discussion on zIIP offload or take a tour of our new mainframe TCO calculator for modeling MIPS savings, because it is the right context for that type of discourse. Also, the zZone is a destination for mainframe interests within a larger SOA context. Where else would you expect to find new strategies for redefining the economics of mainframe SOA? Last year, DataDirect was one of the founding members of the zZone at SOA Impact. It was then and still is an ideal setting for demonstrating how new technologies, like Shadow, can help accelerate the mainframe’s role within SOA. The new twist this year is how to make SOA cost-effective for the mainframe. In short, it is all about lowering mainframe TCO. Any mainframe customer looking for technologies to lower SOA-related integration costs will find it at the zZone at SOA Impact.

Great talking to you, Gregg! Don't forget to check out Data Direct at the Impact 2009 zZone.

ZSL is at IMPACT 2009! Read all about it!

ZSL is a sponsor at this year's IMPACT 2009! They are one of over 50 partners that clients can visit in our Solution Showcase of economic busters and agility enablers this year in Vegas.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Shiv Kumar, Executive Vice President, ZSL,Inc. There are some great insights and nuggets to take away from the below!

Sandy: First, Shiv, thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. First, tell me a little about ZSLs, people, process and product philosophy.
Shiv: It’s my pleasure to talk to you Sandy. ZSL has a long legacy of bringing People, Process and Product together to meet and exceed our clients and partners expectations.
We strongly believe that People make the process better. People and Process together can bring the value added Products and Services to delight our customers.

Sandy: We do a lot with web 2.0 and SOA. And I hear you have something called ‘Eco-Friendly Computing with Websphere sMash. I am intrigued. Tell me more!
Shiv: I am glad that you touched up on one of ZSL’s interesting initiatives as an ISV and Solution Provider, that is our GreenWare Computing. Our GreenWare Computing practice focuses in adopting green friendly software platforms such as Websphere sMash which utilizes the processing power at the optimistic level to deliver our Enterprise Web 2.0 and SOA based solutions. I strongly feel that ISVs can do more to show their social responsibility by building Green or Eco-Friendly software products and services. We are having two sessions dedicated on this topic at the Impact conference.

Sandy: To stay with the hot topics for our joint clients today, tell me about how ZSL is working with Cloud computing?
Shiv: We are seeing Cloud computing as an extension to SaaS while some of the industry experts put Cloud Computing under the SaaS 2.0 label. I personally feel, Cloud computing adoption is one of major steps towards in implementing SOA with demonstrable cost benefits.
SaaS and Cloud Computing make good sense and essential to consider in today's business landscape. Our Cloud Computing initiative is focused on offering our business solutions and services built around IBM Websphere and AWS. We feel proud about launching our first business solution called Enterprise 2.0 SocNet CiC(Collaboration in Cloud) built using Websphere sMash and Amazon EC2 at Impact 2009 conference.

Sandy: What do you see as your biggest piece of advice for clients in this economic time?
Shiv: It’s time to invest in optimizing and modernizing your IT infrastructure. Based on our education and recommendations, the majority of global clients deciding to begin SOA initiatives are doing so in a down economy in order to come out ahead of the competition when the turnaround hits. So think about creating ‘ Responsive Enterprise’ with the right technology investment.

Sandy: Finally, why did you sponsor IMPACT? What do you see as the value?
Shiv: As we strive to thrive in these challenging economic times, it’s important to invest our time and effort where the future lies. We strongly feel that our participation in Impact 2009 Smart SOA conference is a smart decision not only add value to our partnership with IBM but take lot value, best practices and industry knowledge from the conference to our clients on the emerging technologies such as Cloud, SOA, Web 2.0 and BPM.

Awesome! Folks, be sure to check out ZSL at the Solution Center at IMPACT 2009.

Ascendant Technology rocks the IMPACT floor!

Ascendant is a premier IBM business partner and an end to end solution provider and software reseller dedicated to our IBM technology specializing in web-based solutions.

I spoke to Jim Deters, Ascendant's President on our partnership and for a preview on the exciting announcements coming up at IBM Impact in Vegas next month.

Sandy: Ascendant has been a key provider of solutions based on IBM offerings for some time now, can you share with us why this partnership has worked?
Jim: The partnership between Atech and IBM works because IBM is producing and delivering world-class and innovative technology that resonates in the marketplace. We in turn take this technology and create solutions and offerings for our customers that help them innovate and drive their business and, in turn, the planet forward. We often call ourselves IBM’s muse. Additionally, the partnership is successful because both Atech and IBM understand how to partner and share common values centered on the customer’s success. In many engagements, we have worked as an extension of one another’s teams, creating the optimal mix of talent and assets from our globally integrated organizations, to deliver for our collective customer.

Sandy: What types of solutions are your customers asking for in light of these challenging economic times?
Jim: First, and the most obvious, solutions customers’ are requesting are those that reduce costs. Everyone has to do more with less and this is especially true when it comes to existing IT infrastructure investments – the applications and environments already running. Having deep experience in large, sophisticated WebSphere environments, we created an automation and configuration framework dubbed WICA. WICA is an acronym for WebSphere Installation and Configuration Automation. We were recognized with the SOA Innovation award at last year’s Impact for WICA. In short, it is a framework for reducing costs in SOA and WebSphere environments by automating the management and configuration of the WebSphere Infrastructure. IBM is now OEM’ing the asset and it will be launched as an IBM Rational product at this year’s event.

With WICA in place, we then focus on driving more throughput from the environment – further rationalization of the IT investment by consolidating or extending applications. We are working with many of our WebSphere Portal customers to do just that. We have used WICA to automate and manage the WebSphere Portal infrastructure and are now consolidating legacy and other customer applications onto WebSphere Portal.

After automation and software rationalization, our customers are selectively investing in new initiatives that are strategic to adapting their business to their industry’s changing landscape. We are working heavily in the health care space, both payors and providers. Additionally, we are currently engaged with several Blue Cross Blue Shields across the country to optimize their member portals and create more agile, online business processes. We have created and combined a unique set of capabilities for our customers. By combining user experience architecture, requirements engineering, and business value measurement with an SOA execution, we are helping health care payors align key business metrics to the user’s experience and then ensure end-to-end execution of the solution. The technical solution often encompasses many parts of the IBM platform, including WebSphere Portal, Process Server, Lotus Connection, DataPower, Rational Team Concert and Build Forge.

We are also helping customers across a variety of industries adopt and execute social computing strategies. We are currently working on many corporate communication and collaboration strategies and are creating “internal Facebook-like” solutions, extending online communities to partner communities. Working with a variety of large brands to improve their online shopping experience, we are stressing the importance of “social commerce” applications and strategies in the shopping experience. Commerce is everywhere and the impetus of the “shopping inspiration” usually doesn’t occur on the vendor’s e-commerce site. We are helping customers develop strategies to leverage Facebook, iGoogle widgets, ratings and reviews, and online communities within their WebSphere Commerce implementation.

Sandy: In spite of these challenges, I know that it is a very exciting time right now with the Impact 2009 show almost upon us, Without giving away any big surprises, can you share with us some of the excitement that Ascendant is preparing for the event?

Jim: We have a ton in store for Impact that align to the comments above and we are happy to have you get the word out!

First, on the social commerce track, we are doing making several exciting announcements. We will be running a VIP suite (check www.atech.com/IMPACT in coming weeks for the official schedule) to provide an intimate setting to meet and ask a variety of industry, Atech and IBM experts questions. Topics will include.

We have created a strategic partnership with Pluck, a valued IBM partner, and we will be showcasing WebSphere commerce integration through iRise simulations. iRise and Atech are strategically taking to market and entire suite of simulations for IBM software customers. At Lotusphere 2009, we launched a simulation starter for Lotus Connections. At Impact, we are focused on WebSphere Commerce, and specifically WCS and Pluck and a killer “social commerce start store.” Be sure to check out our South Park parody, to be released April 20th! It will be posted to www.atech.com/IMPACT

Industry aligned session for Health Care Payors. We are going to be highlighting our end-to-end capabilities through the eyes of a health care payor. The presentation will start from the very beginning of strategy definition & value measurement, user experience, requirements and process engineering through the technical solution architecture.

The launch of a new asset – the DataPower Automation Framework. Following the patterns of WICA, we have automated Data Power for the management across proxies and as part of an SOA strategy by streamlining the management of a Datapower infrastructure.

Lastly, we will be launching Enterprise Blue ™. Enterprise Blue is our suite of fully-managed, cloud based solutions. Atech and IBM are working closely with Amazon Web Services to help customers get the best of both worlds – all the power of IBM’s enterprise software with the flexibility and low-cost of leveraging Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Jim, thanks for visiting with me on my blog and I can't wait to hear more about Ascendant at IMPACT.

IMPACT is less than two weeks away. Don't miss it.

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Jeremiah - Social Media Guru -- At IMPACT 2009! Hear what's on his mind!

Social Media Guru at IMPACT 2009!

I got to know Jeremiah at a Social Media thought leadership event in the Valley. He is truly a leader and visionary in this space. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeremiah and wanted to share what he has planned for IMPACT 2009!

Sandy: How has the economic downturn changed the way people leverage social networking
Jeremiah: Our Technographics Research shows an increase in adoption of social tools from 2007-2008, in fact some pretty large jumps in behaviors. Basic common sense and logic tells us that social media usage for consumers will go up during a recession. Why? People will want to connect with others during crises, build personal brands, learn new skills by reading blogs. Also those who are in between jobs will have more time and certainly need to connect with others to find new job opportunities. Furthermore, we’ve found that 53% of marketers have decided to increase their social media spend during a recession on social, however it’s important to note we’re not talking about sizable budget amounts, these are still small potato budgets –all things considered.

Sandy: Is social media superficial branding, or does it truly change the company?
Jeremiah: Sadly, many companies are slapping social features on their corporate websites or launching blogs –yet they are not walking the talk. Many brands don’t truly live an open an transparent workstyle, and as a result, customers see right through it. This research is telling, corporate blogs aren't trusted by consumers.

Sandy: What is the biggest finding from the many interviews you’ve done with corporate social media teams, what’s the one trend you’re finding?
Jeremiah: Many companies are starting to get organized and are appointing key roles, such as the social media strategist and a handful of community managers. These specific roles, while often perform other traditional marketing tasks, are key to delivering true social media programs to the market. Why? Like all business programs, internal champions are still needed for success –especially new mediums

Sandy: On a lighter note, what's your take on the Ashton Kutcher @aplusk and CNN @cnnbrk race to 1 million followers?
Jeremiah: While silly and trivial, this is a true milestone that Twitter and other social tools are about to go mainstream with media coverage. This however, doesn’t suggest they are mainstream tools, as they don’t have mainstream adoption.

Sandy: How do you feel about celebrities using Twitter? Oprah has 92,000 followers before she ever posted 1 tweet, are celebrities changing the way Twitter is being used and any lessons to be learnt by companies?
Jeremiah: Expect celebrities to monetize this microblogging tool far faster than Twitter themselves. They will extend this tool to help their sponsors reach new audiences, pimp their own shows and content, and use it to broadcast content. Most celebrities won’t understand the true dialog opportunities and will use it like their other tools –broadcast. As a result, early adopters of Twitter will move on, and create a new community that hasn’t become saturated.

Sandy: You will be at IBM IMPACT in Vegas next month talking about the importance of social networking for today's commerce opportunities. Would love to get a sneak preview on this session.
Jeremiah: Social Network adoption is one of the highest participated social activities by consumers –as a result, brands want to be there. In my session we’ll talk about what works, and what doesn’t. I’ll have some practical examples and best practices, and will make it interactive. I hope folks show up, and Tweeting is certainly encouraged!

Gang, come and see us at IMPACT. We have some great social media adventures planned like blogger box seats, Paint your Facebook, and more! Sign Up Here!

P.S. As everyone knows, Jeremiah's puppy is famous and no blog would be complete without a picture!