API Blog Series Part 1: APIs – The Next Evolution of Service Oriented Architecture

Talk technology trends today and you cannot complete the sentence without referring to SCM [Social, Cloud and Mobile]. These three domains have changed the way businesses use technology. In this blog series I will focus on the fourth key emerging area in the technology space – APIs - the foundation on which the Social, Cloud and Mobile revolution gains more adaption. In this blog entry I take a look at the evolution path of what is called API Management today.

Remember the SOA books or articles in early 2000. The most common picture I saw in every book –Provider, Client and UDDI [Yes, I still remember that acronym]. I refer to that era as SOA 1.0. The buzzword was ‘Web Services’. The standards (WS-*) were still evolving, the big technology vendors – IBM, ORACLE, TIBCO were still struggling to get mature tools and products to market and enterprises were still trying to understand this value proposition of services.

Then came the age of SOA 2.0 – the standards were formalized, interoperability was achieved, ESB was no longer a pattern – it was a product, it was no longer about Web Services – it was all about a disciplined approach called Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the new buzzword was “Governance” - UDDI was gone and an Enterprise Services Registry & Repository became the norm. However SOA 2.0 focused more on the Enterprise - services were more for internal consumption or to be consumed with key business partners outside the enterprise.

The innovation that changed the SOA world again did not happen at IBM or at TIBCO or at ORACLE – it happened first in Apple [iOS App Platform] and then at Google [Android] – The World was now Mobile and the new buzzword was ‘App’. Millions and Millions of developers who build mobile apps entered the ecosystem and they needed a standard way to access data and logic. Enterprises saw this as an opportunity to get into new business models to generate new revenues by tapping into these developers who could build new applications for the capabilities that an enterprise already provided. However they needed a standardized way for the development community that was completely outside their control to interact with their services. The world of SOA could no longer be confined to the walls of the enterprise – ‘It had to go public’.

Enter API Management and Welcome to SOA 3.0
While the acronym API is as old as technology itself, in today’s world, API Management is about publishing and promoting the core business capabilities of an enterprise as publicly available services. The intent of doing this is to allow the vast development community out there to consume them in a secure and scalable manner and use them to build new applications that will bring new business and revenue models for both the provider and the consumer of the API.

In the next set of blog entries on this topic, I will delve more into the key features of an API platform, the competitive landscape and will focus the IBM API Management Platform to build an end to end API Solution.

Next month, I will be attending IBM Impact. Prolifics, a Gold Sponsor, will showcase our BPM, Integration and Mobile solutions across various speaking sessions and at booth #G-1 on the Expo floor. To learn more about Prolifics' expertise, visit www.prolifics.com.

Rajiv Ramachandran is the Vice President of the SOA & BPM Practice at Prolifics and an IBM Champion for WebSphere. He has 15 years of experience in the IT field — 3 of those years at IBM working in the development teams at its Object Technology Competency Center in Bangalore, India. He was then a Solution Architect implementing IBM WebSphere Solutions at Fireman's Fund Insurance. Currently at Prolifics, he manages a 100+ member worldwide team that focuses on BPM, SOA & Decision Management. An author at the IBM developerWorks community, Rajiv has presented at IBM Impact and IBM WebSphere Services Technical Conference. He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Prolifics UK Helps High Street Retail Giant Refresh their e-Commerce Website

Business Challenge:
IBM believes E-commerce is “no longer simply about selling online, it's about delivering a consistent shopping experience across all customer touchpoints, including mobile, social and in-store”. In 2010, a UK High Street Retail Giant made the decision to relaunch its e-commerce platform. Their existing transactional web site, developed in the early 2000s needed to be totally re-engineered, so they embarked on a journey to find the right solution.

Solution:
IBM’s WebSphere Commerce suite is at the heart of the new web site. IBM describes their WebSphere Commerce suite as allowing Customers to “deliver a seamless, cross-channel shopping experience through contextually relevant content, marketing and promotions, while extending their brand across all digital and physical customer touchpoints.” The product does so by providing “a powerful customer interaction platform for cross-channel commerce”, providing “easy-to-use tools for business users to create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalogue and merchandising across all sales channels, allowing them to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy.” WebSphere Commerce is further described as “a single, unified platform which offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), with businesses (B2B), indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models), or all of these simultaneously” and “a customisable, scalable and high availability solution built to leverage open standards.”

Prolifics in partnership with IBM, assisted this High Street Retail Giant successfully implement their WebSphere Commerce solution by providing deep product expertise to ensure a stable and scalable application infrastructure for the Customer’s new flexible, e-Commerce platform. This new platform puts this Retail Customer ahead of its competition and enables their cross-channel selling strategy.

(Quoted reference: IBM website. Learn more about IBM WebSphere Commerce here: http://www-142.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/websphere-commerce/)

To learn more about Prolifics, visit www.prolifics.com.

Craig Murphy is a Senior Consultant with 13 years experience in the IT industry working with top-tier consulting companies. Throughout his career, he has performed multiple key roles in development & solution architecture, project delivery management and technical sales. His current focus is on Solution Architecture and Application Infrastructure Development for IBM's large Retail Customers. Craig holds a Degree in Computer Science & Information Systems from Rhodes University; is a Certified IBM Professional holding 13 IBM certifications and he is a Professional Member of BCS - The Chartered Institute for IT, making him a world-class resource to his customers, colleagues, and company.

Charting Capability in Portal using WEF V8 and DOJO APIs

Charting capability in Portal using Web Experience Factory (WEF) V8 and DOJO APIs This article will show you how to create Charts in WEF V8 using DOJO Charting API to develop custom charts using other than commercial APIs like Fusion Charts or Highcharts JS APIs. So I started building a sample chart demo in WEF V8 using DOJO APIs which shipped with WEF designer.

I followed following steps to create sample Dojo chart in WEF V8:

1. Created an empty model called dojochart_view.model in one of existing WEF project.

2. Added Page builder as first builder.

• Inside the page1 code, added two separate div, one for loading chart component and other for the chart legend.

• Also, at the top of the page1 html, added two separate span one for loading the DOJO css and other for loading the DOJO JS code.

3. I added a "Client JavaScript" as second builder and selected dojo.js api shipped with WEF V8 designer, path as /factory/dojo/dojo/dojo.js.

4. Then I added Style Sheet as third builder and selected the claro theme as below.

5. I added another "Client JavaScript" builder to add the basic code to load the DOJO charts. In this JS I load the charting DOJO require apis and sample data to display the chart. To develop this, I referred one of the samples Dojo chart example from http://dojotoolkit.org/documentation/tutorials/1.8/charting/ code.

5. Finally added Action List builder to add the main function to load the page1 and saved the model. I could have made page1 as main to avoid this builder.

6. I ran this model in the browser and DOJO charts appear as below -

Conclusion:
This is one of the quick ways to develop chart in any WEF Portal application using DOJO APIs and customer experience can be enhanced. Using DOJO charting APIs developers can create dynamic, unique, and functional charts from different sets of data. Also DOJO Charts provide multiple theme and different types of charting support.

To connect with me, follow me on Twitter: @vishwanathsinha

Vish Sinha, a Senior Consultant for Prolifics, is an experienced Portal and JEE Architect. He specializes in providing Enterprise SOA solutions with different IBM WebSphere stacks and portal solutions. Currently his main focus area is leveraging Web Experience Factory in providing Portal solution to customers. He has played different IT roles ranging from being an Architect, Technology Consultant, Technical lead and Software engineer for several large projects. Vish has done an excellent job in implementing solutions across verticals like Finance, Insurance, Telecom, Retail, and Healthcare for several of Fortune 1000 customers. Vish has a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering.

Prolifics Welcomes 15 New Hires!

Earlier this year, Prolifics welcomed our largest group of college hires as 15 talented new consultants joined our family. Each new hire is an exciting addition to our team and we look forward to watching their careers grow at Prolifics! Over the course of several new blog entries, we will provide some brief introductions to these bright, young consultants!

Joshua Hatfield

"As someone who recently graduated college with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, finding a job in the field of technology was my number one priority. While I researched several positions, Prolifics emerged as the clear choice for the start of my career. No other company offered the value that the College Hire program presented as far as exposure to a wide variety of technologies, a thorough training program, and an established and well-reputed network of employees with unrivaled expertise to work with. I am looking forward to learning everything this training program has to offer, as well as mastering the technologies I will be leveraging as a consultant.”

Greg Sullivan "I graduated from Touro College in 2011 with a degree in theoretical mathematics, and in the mean time I was enrolled in Baruch College for a Masters in Information systems and I was doing math models for companies privately as a means to earn extra income. I believe consulting is an excellent way to learn new skills, interact with various people, and become more informed in business overall. I am excited to be a part of Prolifics as it is providing me the opportunity to acquire new skills and to grow within the company. The college hire program is an excellent idea as it helps us develop into pivotal members of this company."

Aditi Bhaumick

"I graduated from Columbia University with a masters in Electrical Engineering. I took a couple of courses from Computer Science but this program is awesome because it gives us hands on experience as well as an opportunity to learn from the basics."

Focus on IBM Security: IBM Security Policy Manager and IBM Security Access Manager for e-Business

Many customers have asked me "Why do I need an additional Authorization product when I have IBM Security Access Manager for e-Business?"

I recently attended a discussion focused on IBM Security Policy Manager (SPM) and IBM Security Access Manager for e-Business (SAMeb). IBM Security Policy Manager can be used in the following ways:

1. Fine-Grained Authorization Control as opposed to coarse grained SAMeB group to J2EE Role Mapping (Sample: Policy to restrict a money transfer that exceeds $500 in a single transaction)
2. Authorize and Audit Communications between application modules. (When Modules are independent and belong to different organizations/Access External Interfaces)
3. Can have Multiple Policies on a service, each with multiple roles
4. Centralized Policy management for Web Services
5. Data Power could be used as a Web Service proxy and TSPM as the Policy Decision Point
6. By Default all web services are denied
7. Policies can be attached to Web Service/Port/Operation/Message

Here is a side by side comparison:

Next week, Prolifics will be at IBM Pulse in Las Vegas, a leading security intelligence conference. If you would like to learn more about Prolifics' Security solutions, visit booth #E525 and visit our IBM Pulse Page.

For more information about Prolifics, please visit www.prolifics.com or email solutions@prolifics.com.

Rama Yenumula is a Senior Consultant in the Security practice at Prolifics.

IBM Pulse Session Preview: Simplifying Administration and Maximizing Time-to-Value with SmartCloud Application Performance Management

In less than 2 weeks, I will be representing Prolifics at IBM Pulse 2013. I am looking forward to attending keynotes and sessions, speaking with industry experts and meeting attendees at Prolifics' booth, but I am most looking forward to presenting in two sessions focused on Application Performance Management.

I am hosting my first session at the start of the conference on Sunday, March 3. During this session, we will explore how our clients have achieved a quick time-to-value, and vastly simplified administration, when deploying IBM SmartCloud APM to monitor their middleware infrastructure by taking a unique approach. Attendees will learn how we simplified the often complex management aspects, and reduced implementation time, by leveraging the APM UI; eliminating the need for Managed System Lists (MSLs) by leveraging the little-known Situation Groups; and how they addressed the unique challenges of monitoring a pooled WebSphere Application Server infrastructure.

To learn more about my speaking session and to see what else Prolifics has lined up for IBM Pulse, click here.

If you are interested in learning more about IBM SmartCloud, I have included a video by Prolifics' APM Practice Director and IBM Champion for Tivoli, Dan Kern. In this video, Dan discusses increasing the availability, visibility and virtualization of business-critical applications with IBM SmartCloud solutions.


For more information about Prolifics, please visit: www.prolifics.com.

Brian Fisher is a Solution Architect at Prolifics focusing on monitoring and application performance management. He is a Technical Sales Specialist equipped with six years of innovative portfolio experience serving a broad base of IBM Tivoli clients, as well as sales specialists.

The Congruence Model for Security

From management literature (Tushman & O'Reilly), the congruence-based problem solving is a method to quickly and accurately identify the root cause of performance or opportunity gaps. In the context of security architecture, the congruence model can be applied to creating comprehensive security assessments for an organization. The model emphasizes analysis of the relationships among four core components of an organization (shown in the graphic below) also called the building blocks whose alignment relationships are the focus of congruent security architecture techniques. The goal is to leverage the relationships and interactions between those core components to reveal the underlying security posture of an organization.

Each congruence relation is important in forming organizational diagnoses that help us understand the current state of security in the enterprise, and the causes of the vulnerabilities. Analyzing these relations tends to define the political map and how the players tend to navigate it. It helps identify organizational behaviors that are helpful, neutral or detrimental to the security architecture initiative.

Analyzing the following three alignments using an appropriate "congruence questionnaire" is crucial to determining the security posture of the enterprise.

The Task and People Congruence Relation:

1. Do people have the required competencies to perform the critical tasks that ensure safety of data and process?
2. To what extent do the skills, abilities and motives of today’s human resources fit with security planning, architecture formulation and implementation requirements?

Identification goals: task-human resource inconsistencies that inhibit the ability to execute on security strategy.

The Task and Formal Organization Relation:

1. Do the formal linking mechanisms between units facilitate security task integration, security team building and agility from a product delivery perspective?
2. Is there a company wide vision for security and a strategy for addressing regulations, audit and security breaches?

Identification goals: task-structure inconsistencies that inhibit necessary integration among SBUs, needed to deliver a comprehensive security solution.

The Task and Culture Relation:

1. Does the existing culture energize the accomplishment of critical tasks?
2. Does the informal communication network and informal distribution of power help get the work done?
3. Is there a reluctance to take action? Is there reliance on being told what to do? Identification goals: culture-task inconsistencies that drag performance down and inhibit consensus on security goals.

This due-diligence analysis can help identify the need for managers and their teams to realign the formal structures, people processes and cultural aspects of their organization with the critical tasks necessary to achieve the overall security vision. Managers and their teams should learn from this process, and even re-initiate the process iteratively within their own SBUs if necessary.

Next month, I will be attending IBM Pulse 2013 in Las Vegas, the industry-leading conference on Security Intelligence. Prolifics will exhibit in the solution showcase and host a number of sessions throughout the conference. To learn more about Prolifics' presence at IBM Pulse, visit: www.prolifics.com/pulse-2013.htm. If you would like to connect with me before the conference, please click here.

Javed Shah is a Practice Director for Security at Prolifics with more than 12 years experience in identity and access management architectures. He has broad exposure developing identity and access management solutions, and system software components that deliver reliable data security, web enablement and user lifecycle management services to customers. Before joining Prolifics, Javed founded and ran a professional services company in India for 6 years. Spanning over a decade, Javed has led identity management projects to successful exits at Nestle, University of California San Francisco, Kaiser Permanente, ABM Industries, BRE Properties, UPS, Tampa General Hospital and E*TRADE Bank. He was also the leader of the ITIM Level 3 defect resolution and analysis team in India where he was responsible for handling all customer defects for North America and Asia. Javed holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a Certificate in Implementing and Managing an Enterprise Architecture using the Zachman Framework and the CISSP certification. He is also currently pursuing an MBA from the Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley.