IBM Software Strategy and Product Overview

At WebSphere Technical Exchange 2006, Julie King--IBM Distinguished Engineer and Sub-chair of the Software Group Architecture Board (SWG AB)--spoke about IBM's roadmap for the IBM Software Group.

General Strategy

SWG technical strategy

• Ongoing committment to standards
  • Compete on how, not what
  • Hetrogeneous environment assumed
• Enable our clients to embrase SOA
• Enbrasing SOA ourselves (within IBM)
• Open-source strategy--very important
• Focus on consumability--making products easier to use
• Strategic acquisitions--add products that compliment our own

Simplifying development

• Development is too much about technology
  • EJB, etc.
• Needs to be more about the task to be achieved
  • What the user wants

Service Components (SCA)

• Encapsulate components for reuse
• Wire them together for composite applications
• Data flows between them as business objects (SDO++)
• SCA enables tools that are specific to type, role, and skills

Apache Tuscany Project

• Open source project to implement SCA and SDO specs
• SCA and SDO: Programming model for SOA
• Attract participation and feedback for evolving specifications
• SCA and SDO implementations in Java and C++
• Work to support other languages
  • JavaScript, PHP, XSLT, Ruby, XQuery, C, COBOL

SCA (Service Component Architecture

• Easier development of SOA applications
• Open standards, cross industry approach
• Open source to gain mindshare, community participation, and market share

SWG platform and open source

• Long history with open source, both contributing to and consuming from
  • Eclipse, Derby, JSP support (Tomcat?), Linux
• Use open source to extend our platform to other languages and other communities
• Basic application servers and tooling are commoditizing
  • Extend and manage (compete on how)
  • Value added--SDOs and connectors

IT Complexity

Some current SWG technical initiatives

• Standards for runtime interoperability, tool interoperability, and service portability
• A simplified, integrated runtime on WebSphere (WAS)
• Focus on complete developmentlifecycle and composite apps
• Simplified programming model for SOA
• Business events
• Recipes, patterns, and templates

What is IBM doing to address the complexity of IT?

• Promoting techniques that eliminate or hide complexity
  • Patterns and templates
  • Automation techniques
  • Simpler programming models
  • Richer, more intuitive methodologies (like AJAX)
  • Consistent user interfaces and capabilities

Patterns

• All different levels: business architecture to deployed solutions
• Improve developer productivity
• Patterns knit together to solve larger problems
• The IT industry is excited about patterns

Pattern Solutions Web site on developerWorks

• One stop entry point for pattern solutions
• Publicly hosted RAS repository
• Free downloads
• Free training material

System Management

Automation of system management tasks

• IT Service Management (ITSM)
  • Key IBM and Tivoli initiative
• Management of and management using Web services
• Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM)
  • Enables resources to be managed via Web services
  • WSDM instrumentation: A universal plug and play device driver
• Demonstrates embrasing SOA internally
• WAS exposes admin tasks as Web services
• SOA service management processes (BPM) for system management
• IT organization service catalog home page
  • Processes for new desktop computer, antivirus software, report problems, etc.

Enabling information as a service

#	Data complexity, inconsistency, and inaccessibility	Consistent, reusable services for trusted info
#	Multiple versions of "the truth"	Master data services
#	Unleveraged and unexplored content	Reusable services for integrated content
#	Unleveraged and unmanaged XML	Integrate XML and relational data, management thereof

Information services feed processes with actionable information

Business Process Management (BPM) with SOA

• Process-centric
• Content-centric
• Document-focused
• Accelerate process improvements (BPR)

Enterprise Software

Enterprise software revolution

• Webify: Prewritten, reusable, industry-specific SOA services
• Webify Industry Fabric
• Webify Industry SOBAs (service-oriented business applications)
• SOBA lifecycle methodology

Beyond J2EE

SWG platform beyond J2EE

• Add support for PHP, Perl, Ruby, etc.
• LAMP
• Leverage PHP for just-in-time applications

Tools for non-IT professionals

• Flexible customization and integration of enterprise data
• Content manipulation and analysis
• Immediate feedback, instant deployment
• Examples: Business rules editors, Wikis, custom report generators

QED Wiki example

• Quick and easily done (QED)
• Wiki paradigm for mashups

Lotus Sametime 7.5

• Platform for office intercommunication
• Instant messaging
• Web conferencing
• Communities, broadcasting
• Business cards, selective do-not-disturb
• Group chat, late joiner history
• Savable chat history, Inbox for reviewing
• Web conferencing

Improving Consumability

Improving consumability

• Different development methodologies
  • Outside in Design (OiD)
  • Green threads
  • Business scenario based development
  • Consumability scorecard
  • Federated integration test
    • Complex app combo to test affects of patches
  • Integration verification test
    • Complex app stack to test compatibility

OiD in practice: Green threads

• Workflows through end-to-end scenarios
  • Tests products working together
• Cross-product, customer-focused designing
• Test scenarios for product milestones

Ex: "System in Trouble" green thread

1. Detect problem
2. Report problem
3. Develop patch
4. Deploy patch
5. Validate fix

Scoring example

• Different aspects for how easy a product is to use
  • Easy to do business with
  • Establishes positive first use experience
  • Readily integrates into customer environments
  • Readily adapts to customer requirements
  • Simplifies ownership and operations
• Levels of scoring
  • Just fails, so painful, not so bad, cool, magic

Rational focus on consumability

• Key customer use cases
  • Customer creates offering from RAD, RSA, open source, 3rd party plugins
  • Customer deploys to 3000 desktops
  • Customize offerings by role, control downloads by role
  • Auditing of enterprise install base

IBM Support Assistant (ISA) with Problem Determination (PD) scripts

• Automate problem reporting
• Automate must gather info
• Suggest solutions
  • Based on common scenarios from Level 2 support
  • Programmatic analysis

Summary

Summary

• Standards, open source, heterogeneity
• Enabling SOA
• Strategic acquisitions
• Improving consumability
• Enabling new application types (like Web 2.0)

And with that, she took questions.