Datapower Service Cache with with IBM WebSphere XC10, Usability --- aah that is not important! lets focus on release date instead!

Folks it has been a few weeks since I have shared my thoughts…that is because Retail industry is keeping us all busy to get ready for Holiday shopping season! After all the work we put in, I am not sure that many of us will have time to shop… :)

I would like to share the following thoughts, and I do look forward to your thoughts!

I. We should focus on Usability:

This week I would like to focus on Usability, and I have always admired Apple products and as I read on the development of many of Apple products such as iMac, iPod etc they all have one thing in common and that is ease of use… and the results are evident that these products are not only technically sound but have viral adoption pattern…world loves it, and will pay a premium for it! So why not adopt the same design principles in our own products!

The most common complaint that our clients have is that what ever feature they desire it is always slated for next release…. To me that is not leadership! I am compelled to write about many products that would look like if it were to adopt “Steve Jobs” driven – Design principles and product development lifecycle. And while the development lifecycle make take longer ( and hence the cost), a better design speak volume of products, thought leadership and not to mention the savings in support costs which is far greater that initial investment in design.

So I question, and would love you feedback… why are release deadlines so important? That we are willing to release a half baked product and willing to compromise the quality for fixes in future date?

II. Topic in Focus: Datapower Service Cache with with IBM WebSphere XC10

The XC10 and XI52 Integration are compelling. The idea behind the XI52-XC10 integration is to enable faster lookup of cached data and reduced processing at backend tiers, with use of XC10 as a general purpose caching appliance. The XI52-XC10 integration has opened up many possibilities to economize on infrastructure costs and further leverage XC10s caching mechanism to speed up XI52 Authentication process. In simplest terms this integration amalgamates the better of two breeds of appliances. This integration speeds the lookup and processing done by XI50, by extensible and scalable cache enabled by XC10.

Main Points to Note:

1. Address Scalability Challenge - core of XC10 business value.
2. By off-loading the storage/look-up and retrieval of XML documents in XC10, we are also offloading the processing to a tier parallel to XI52/XS40, this does two things:
   -Speeds up the response -- hence improves performance.
   -Prevents requests going to back end 'middleware' tiers -- addressing scalability.
3. XC10 can be scaled as need for data grows - classic WXS/XC10 (collective) feature for Scalability proposition.

The idea behind the XI50-XC10 integration is to enable faster lookup of cached data and reduced processing at backend tiers, with use of XC10 as a general purpose caching appliance.

Have a great thanksgiving weekend!

:)
Nitin

Why Innovate?

So I have been busy and pondering over this questions on Why Innovate?
We have many large corporations that have Innovation somewhere in their values or catchy Slogan. However, true Innovation comes from -- I think, necessity , one has to foster the culture of innovation by allowing failures, and that marks the cornerstone of an 'experienced' and progressive set of values.
I want to explore this with a n example... Amazon once a largest bookseller, came up with with EC2 or Amazon cloud, while technologies powerhouses are still struggling to define themselves in the 'cloud play'.. why is that a book company was able to envision a computing platform while selling books and organizations whose core business was computing could never lead with it? -- Vision.

I think It all boils down to vision and execution... and yes I think failures goes along the way... but what a vision brings is amazing things like iPOD, iPAD and Amazon which is hosting many things from applications to platform for netflix to stream movies.
I still think that with middleware in cloud, the industry is focused on provisioning and automation, and missing the bigger picture.. where there is no focus on utility model, or application design that includes amazing capabilities to linearly scale...speedier access by employing caching technologies, smarter awareness of me the customer --- I do not think we need a lot of money or investment into these insights, we just need the will and reason to innovate!!

Thoughts?

:)
Nitin