Original Post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/announcing-new-mobile-mainframe-devops-dummies-book-saleem-padani In today’s era of digital disruption around cloud, mobile, and analytics, it’s imperative for the enterprise to drive toward faster innovation while ensuring the stability of the core IT systems. The need arises for what’s being termed as “bimodal” or variable speed IT. While innovative systems of engagement demand speed, agility, and experimentation, business critical systems of record also requires the... [More]

This blog post has been a collaborative effort with Marianne Hollier, Cindy VanEpps, Anita Rass Wan and Roger LeBlanc. Ever jump into a TV series in the middle of a season? Welcome to Episode 2, Season 1 of DevOps Scenarios for Middleware.  For an overview of this riveting and not-quite-Emmy-worthy blog series, check out the Overview blog here . We might rightly call this scenario “Democratic DevOps”.  It’s the basic starting point, an end-to-end scenario that treats planning, development, testing,... [More]

By: Vidhya V Kumar Last week, IBM® announced the release of Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) 6.0 .  Among the more exciting introductions in the new version is ‘Global Configuration Management’ (GCM) a feature set that can take your DevOps goal to the next level. As you know, DevOps is about being quicker and more flexible - quicker in getting product features to customers; and flexible in catering to multiple customer requirements at the same time.  The first requires automation and the... [More]

This blog post has been a collaborative effort with Marianne Hollier, Cindy VanEpps, Roger LeBlanc and Anita Rass Wan. Welcome to the first in a series of blog posts that will introduce DevOps scenarios for Middleware. Building middleware applications is challenging because of the multi-tier nature of the application. Discipline, communication and transparency between all the teams are required to be successful in this endeavor. “DevOps is an organizational capability focused on the agile relationship among the business, development, test... [More]

I’ve been sharing the 5 best practices my teams have learned during our own DevOps Journey in my latest blog series .. If you’re not caught up, here is a quick summary: 1. Expand agile practices beyond development and test to include client, business stakeholders, and operations to breakdown silos and improve outcomes. 2. Shift Left with continuous testing using automation and virtualization to eliminate long back-end test cycles and increase quality. 3. Build a delivery pipeline leveraging tools-as-a-service that enables developers... [More]

You can make the argument that in the Software Delivery Life Cycle (SDLC) value is created in two places.  First, when the software is created (development) and second, when the software is delivered to the customer and feedback received.  The rest is transportation.  The faster one can move code from the hands of the developer to the customer and receive feedback, the more value can be realized by both.  Don’t get me wrong, there is benefit to various “transportation” activities (testing, QA, staging... [More]

I am writing this on a flight from Washington, DC to Austin, TX. How long does it take me to get to Austin, you may ask? The flight is 3 hours and 3 minutes long. The time it takes me, however, is much longer as I do not live at the airport (although it surely feels like it). How long a journey takes depends on where you start. A question I get asked often is how long will it take my organization to adopt DevOps? First of all,  one does not just adopt DevOps . One starts a journey of adopting the capabilities that make up DevOps (more on... [More]

The other day a delegation of an IBM Accelerated Value Program (AVP) customer visited us in our support center in Amsterdam. One of our visitors expressed his concerns about finding documentation about IBM Rational software products. His concerns are valid. Isn't it annoying when you know that the information is there, but you can't find it? IBM has published a lot of information in the form of several doc types. First let's list the content types; then see what options you have to search for IBM software... [More]

Mainframe and IBM have been synonymous since 1952. Over the years mainframes have seen a lot of transformation to stay in tune with the market requirements and industry changes. With the New Year, IBM brings forward another change with the new mainframes in a signature moment. This change is in sync with the changing market requirements. We are living in the digital age, the current technological landscape and recent trends prove that cloud , mobile and big data are disrupting business dynamics globally.  They are creating opportunities... [More]

  Today is a very exciting day.  IBM has just unveiled z13, the world’s most advanced mainframe system, which offers unprecedented performance and scalability and transforms the economics of IT.  Today is also the first time in history where all compilers on z/OS (COBOL, PL/I and C/C++) are simultaneously providing Day 1 support for a new z processor while delivering new programming features.  In addition, we have added a new compiler to our z System lineup – XL C/C++ for Linux on z Systems.   These new... [More]

IBM Power Systems are based on modern, high performance processors. They are at the forefront of both commercial and technical computing. The latest systems built with POWER8 technology are cornerstones of IBM’s Power System portfolios. They offer industry leading performance and superior economics.   Unlike previous generations of POWER processors, the new POWER8 processor is capable of running in both big- and little-endian modes. Endian is a term used to describe how bytes are ordered in memory.  Big endian refers to... [More]

Mobile app developers recognize the importance of responding quickly to problems that their users experience. But I frequently get asked for advice about how to most effectively stay in tune with what's going on with a mobile app, both the code running on the phone as well as the code running in the cloud that forms the mobile back-end services. The IBM Bluemix platform offers lots of services that enable mobile app developers to easily keep an eye on the health of their apps, and instantly be alerted when there are problems with the app -... [More]

Mobile app developers recognize the importance of responding quickly to problems that their users experience. But I frequently get asked for advice about how to most effectively stay in tune with what's going on with a mobile app, both the code running on the phone as well as the code running in the cloud that forms the mobile back-end services.   The IBM Bluemix platform available through the IBM Cloud marketplace offers many services that enable mobile app developers to easily keep an eye on the health of their apps, and... [More]

Hybrid Cloud has become an extremely common term in the Cloud space. It is used to describe multiple cloud adoption scenarios where either multiple cloud technologies co-exist, or cloud and physical infrastructure co-exist. Let’s understand ‘hybrid cloud’ better by looking at various cloud adoption scenarios: Cloud and physical infrastructure: This is an extremely common scenario. Unless an organization is born-on-the-cloud, this is actually the default scenario. Any given organization has workloads and applications that run... [More]

In my previous  blog post, I shared the 5 best practices my teams have learned during our own DevOps Journey.     1. Expand agile practices beyond development and test to include client, business stakeholders, and operations to breakdown silos and improve outcomes. 2. Shift Left with continuous testing using automation and virtualization to eliminate long back-end test cycles and increase quality. 3. Build a delivery pipeline leveraging tools-as-a-service... [More]

We’re approaching a tipping point at IBM with our internal adoption of DevOps practices.  It was rather energizing for me as both a user and provider of DevOps solutions to participate in a meeting at the IBM Design Center in Austin, Texas in July, surrounded by hundreds of IBM business line and development leaders at various stages of DevOps adoption. For some it was an opportunity to do a bit of chest-thumping with early and measurable success. For others, it was an opportunity to drink the Kool-Aid, so to speak, and better... [More]

I recently had the opportunity to talk about DevOps for Enterprise Systems at both IBM Enterprise2014 (Las Vegas) and the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2014 (San Francisco). Co-presenting with me were Slavik Zorin, CEO of Synchrony Systems, an IBM Business Partner, and Carmen DeArdo, Director of Application Development at Nationwide Insurance, respectively. I heard a lot of positive feedback, and I thank them both for sharing their stories.   What follows is a summary of the key takeaways from the two events. The main point... [More]

If you are on a software development team these days, you are feeling the pressure to deliver faster. But you still need to deliver value. And don’t forget – you must keep costs down, too. A tall order! How do teams “deliver at the speed of business?”   Consider this simple analogy… You drive your car to the store or to work every day. You know the path and how long it should take because you’ve done it many times. Can you anticipate the risks you might encounter along the way on any given day? Some,... [More]

How can you deliver applications faster without sacrificing quality or control? How do you deliver 10X faster business innovation instead of 10% incremental improvement? New and established companies using DevOps have transformed their software delivery process and achieved dramatic improvements in speed, quality and business satisfaction. If you want to hear real life experiences improving operations with DevOps, watch the on-demand webcast.    

When I was young and just starting my career one of the key lessons I learned from one of my first mentors was to always look for ways to improve.  Actively look for ways to learn more, and be open to new ideas. At the time this was revolutionary to me because I thought I knew a lot more than other people about certain things; this is one of the drawbacks of youth I guess. But I thought about it, took this advice to heart, and remember it every day. Always look for ways to improve what you do.    When I started playing on a... [More]

Code Rally is a racing game with a twist: instead of driving a vehicle around a track using a controller you code an AI (Artificial Intelligence) to drive the car around for you. This Fall, the Code Rally Online Challenge will be held in North America, Europe, Brazil, India and China. Compete amongst your peers to put your skills to the test and race for the fastest time!  You will have the chance to compete on multiple race tracks for some awesome prizes. Looking for more? If you become the fastest racer in your region, get... [More]

In my last blog post , I shared the 5 best practices my teams have learned during our own DevOps Journey.     Expand agile practices beyond development and test  to include client, business stakeholders, and operations to breakdown silos and improve outcomes. Shift Left with continuous testing using automation and virtualization  to eliminate long back-end test cycles and increase quality. Build a delivery pipeline leveraging tools-as-a-service  that enables developers to... [More]

IBM Innovate is  now   IBM InterConnect 2015 , taking place February 22 – 26 at the Mandalay Bay and MGM in Las Vegas, Nevada. At InterConnect, you’ll find  DevOps   and   Continuous Engineering  sessions, demos, and labs covering all aspects of software and product development: Agile Collaborative Lifecycle Management Continuous Verification  and testing  Requirements Management Enterprise Modernization Embedded Software ... [More]

Welcome to the world of performance testing . I hope that this blog helps decision makers understand performance testing. What is performance testing ? Here is a non-exhaustive list of different aspects of performance testing . There are many.   Types of performance tests   Load testing Load testing is appropriate when you want to know what your application does under a specific load. For example, what are the response times when 100 users send requests to your application at the same time? Stress testing Stress testing indicates what... [More]

Recently, Gartner, Inc. positioned IBM as a leader in the  2014 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites (ISQ)  report. For the report, Gartner evaluated 14 worldwide vendors, placing IBM in the number one spot in the leaders quadrant based on its completeness of vision and ability to execute. Testing is one of the key processes in the software development life cycle. The market has been steadily maturing to deliver improved user success, but technology changes like... [More]

In my role as worldwide support engineer for IBM Rational Robot , I received many questions about migrating Robot to Windows 7 as Windows XP went out of support April 8, 2014 . Wondering what's the big deal about moving to Windows 7? I'll explain what to do and present features made available again. The latter makes a migration even more rewarding.   Windows 7 and Rational Robot A big difference between Windows XP and Windows 7 is security, which makes migration no picnic. The first... [More]

IBM partnered with Software Quality Engineering to execute a survey  that explores where today’s testers are spending their time, what obstacles they most often encounter and where they think their attention should be focused.  These are the responses from 250 test professionals - primarily quality managers, test managers and test leads - from around the globe, all with 6 or more years of experience. Check out the complete results of the survey.  

Do you have data that is spread across many lifecycle tools and projects around your company? You can aggregate all that data and show it in reports in a single view in a Jazz dashboard.    There are two different types of data sources with the Jazz Reporting Service. With IBM Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM), the data source is the data warehouse; with Rational Engineering Lifecycle Manager (RELM), the data source is the Lifecycle Query Engine.   Using the Jazz Reporting Service, you can report on the data in a... [More]

Look around you. Do you see an item that is manufactured? Perhaps you see a car, or desk, or the device that you are reading this on. And chances are the manufacturer of that thing has more than one model of that item. All those model types make up a “product line” for that manufacturer.   How do manufactured products get created? They are engineered. Teams of people work on creating that device for you to use. Business analysts create requirements of what the market desires. Systems, electrical, mechanical and software... [More]