Archive for the ‘DataPower’ Category

WebSphere Appliance Management Center

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

I haven’t posted anything product related since the release of WebSphere ESB 7.5 in June last year where I hinted at pastures new. Those of you that I’m connected to on LinkedIn will know that I subsequently became Technical Lead for a product called WebSphere Appliance Management Center. WebSphere Appliance Management Center provides off-box management and monitoring of multiple WebSphere DataPower SOA appliances. The development for the management component of the product moved to Hursley shortly after the initial release (named 4.0 after the coincident firmware release). The new team put together a fix pack later in the year which delivered support for the new Service Gateway XG45 appliance.

Today saw the announcement of the next chapter in the WebSphere Appliance Management Center story. Significantly, you will find this in the WebSphere DataPower Appliances firmware V5.0 announcement letter as the next version will no longer be a chargeable product in its own right. Instead, it will be freely downloadable and supported free of charge for all customers with a current support entitlement for a WebSphere DataPower SOA appliance.

Not only will it cost you less – but we’ll also be giving you less! The team has been working flat out to create a much lighterweight offering which is faster to install and less resource intensive. The management user interface has also been extensively reworked to be more responsive and better support user interaction patterns. In particular, the current restrictions around managed set membership will be lifted allowing much great flexibility for firmware and configuration deployment. In addition to the existing domain management capabilities, you will also be able to manage configuration at the service level. All of this will be available for download on June 26.

For those attending IBM Impact next week who’d like to find out more about this exciting new release, I’ll be co-presenting on WebSphere Appliance Management Center (Monday, 5:15-6:30pm, Lando 4305). We will also be hosting a series of round table sessions in Toscana 3701 (Monday, 10:45-12:00; Tuesday, 1:20-2:45pm; Thursday 3:15-4:30pm) which will be your chance to shape the future direction of the product. Alternatively, please feel free to contact me directly or post questions in the DataPower developerWorks forum.

New WebSphere blogs

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

There has been a recent push to get more of the WebSphere development team out in to the blogosphere in the run up to the release of V7 of the Application Server. The standard form seems to be to advertise new blogs on the WebSphere Community Blog. So far there is one covering WebSphere and Java Persistence, and likely to be of particular interest to readers of this blog, one on WebSphere and Messaging. Note that the latter doesn’t cover WebSphere MQ (see this blog if that’s your area of interest) but rather the default messaging provider in WebSphere Application Server. Expect to see lots of good material on some of the new features and make the most of the chance to interact with the development team. Whilst on the subject of new blogs, if DataPower is your bag then you can read all about a forthcoming book from some of my ex-ISSW colleagues here.

Thursday @ WSTC

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

Went along to see my UK colleague Andy Piper‘s presentation on "Using Social Software to Improve Your Effectiveness at Work". Andy’s an engaging speaker and his presentation was well thought out and put together. As a result I signed up for a twitter account but we’ll have to wait and see whether it gets much use let alone improving my effectiveness at work. It did also prompt me to revisit an internal file sharing tool which, having previously not realised that access could be restricted, I had discarded as much of the material I want to share is of a confidential nature.

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Wednesday @ WSTC

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

The first slot of the day was one of those rare occasions where I wasn’t quite sure what to attend. In the end I opted for Alex Polozoff’s "Large Topology Tactics and Tradeoffs" presentation as I have great respect for his opinions. The emphasis here was not so much on the technology but the processes and the people. Most of it seemed common sense (at least to me) but the presentation should be a useful resource for anyone embarking on large scale WebSphere topologies.

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Integrating DataPower with WebSphere MQ

Monday, March 26th, 2007

Nepotism rules so here is a plug for an article by two of my close colleagues Peter Crocker and Ben Thompson on Integrating WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliances with WebSphere MQ.