IBM Interconnect 2015: Hybrid Cloud Integration Framework with iSOA Group and Monsanto

Bryon Kataoka, iSOA Group, CIO along with Jon Ward, Senior Middleware Engineer at Monsanto discussed the challenges and opportunities when deploying a hybrid cloud infrastructure at IBM's Interconnect 2015 Conference (session 6907).

Like many companies, the iSOA Team works with, Monsanto has a variety of legacy applications  along with cloud based enterprise applications such as Salesforce.  The key to realizing the business value of these applications was for Monsanto to create a secured, integrated, and flexible architecture that would support their effectiveness in sharing information such as inventory of offerings with their sales teams and customers.

The presentation, link to slides is below, at IBM's Interconnect 2015 documented how a Hybrid Integration Framework was developed for Monstanto highlighting the value of an SOA architecture including leveraging IBM's DataPower Gateway appliance providing:

• A solution with a RESTful and SOAP framework that incorporated REST/JSON, SOAP, OAuth and CORS to easily pave the way for establishing a secure gateway.

• An architecture strategically extended by using IBM's WebSphere Cast Iron, WebSphere DataPower XC10 Appliance and MQ in the SOA architecture

• A well architected hybrid integration framework Monsanto not only established a framework for local applications and the cloud (Salesforce) opening the door for mobile as well as future API opportunities. 

If you would like to learn more, please contact the iSOA Group team at info@isoagroup.com

Slides from iSOA and Monsanto Interconnect 2015 Presentation

Can I Have One Common Code Set that Runs Across Various Devices for My Mobile Apps?

Last week, Tim Cook unveiled the latest iPhones – the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C – to reporters at Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, California. While the iPhone 5C will be Apple's first plastic phone, making it more affordable for those who want an iPhone on a budget, the iPhone 5S will include fingerprint recognition software, a dual LED camera lens and a 64-bit A7 processor. This is a far cry from 2007 when Steve Jobs was explaining what the original iPhone was to reporters at MacWorld. In fact, Cook remarked that over 700 million iOS devices have been sold since 2006.

However, Apple is not the only name in town when it comes to mobile devices. In fact, it's not even the biggest name – that would belong to Google. There are many different types of devices that use the Android operating system and the total amount of those devices combined far surpasses iPhones, iPods and iPads. And let's not forget about Windows. Although much smaller than the other two, Windows has seen 133% yearly growth and has over 3% of the total market share. Because of the divided market and various devices out there, businesses have a dilemma on their hands when it comes to app development.

There's no question that a business can hire third party developers to create apps in a native environment for each type of device and operating system, but this would be very expensive and difficult to update and maintain. Rather, many businesses are looking for a way to have one common code set that can be across a wide variety of devices for smart app development and maintenance. They have found their solution through the IBM Worklight platform. Here are several ways customers can benefit from this mobile application platform.

• Savings in Development: Worklight enables developers to use and reuse most of the coding for every platform. In addition, only one project is created rather than a single project for each specific platform.
  
• Savings in Integration: Rather than hire a third party developer to develop and integrate software, must of the work is done internally when using Worklight. This creates savings now and in the future for the development and integration of apps down the line. As with development, integration can be done in a single project to simplify the process.
  
• Savings in App Maintenance: Once you develop and implement a mobile app, you're not completely done with it. Correcting bugs, upgrading content and adding functions are just of the many things included in app maintenance. By using the IBM Worklight platform, you save greatly over having to perform these tasks for every single project in a native environment.

For more information on the IBM Worklight platform, contact an iSOA representative today. We specialize in systems integration consulting and can help you determine if the IBM Worklight is right for you.

How Can Businesses Stay One Step Ahead of Hackers?

For those out there who think that e-commerce is the future of retail, you’re slightly right, but many would argue that e-commerce is dominating the present as well. In 2012, shoppers in the US spent $226 billion on goods in online stores. That number was up $24 billion from the year before. By 2016, Forrester Research Inc., a global research advisory firm, estimates that online sales will go up to $327 billion. This number will account for nine percent of all sales. While this is great news for online retailers, it also creates some headaches for them in regard to data security.

Earlier this past summer, five men were charged with the largest cybercrime case of all time. It’s estimated that they were responsible for more than $300 billion lost for various companies and organizations, including J.C. Penny, Visa, JetBlue, Carrefour SA, and Nasdaq. According to the indictment, the five men would steal credit card numbers through hacking into the various networks and hide their actions through anonymous web sources. Although two of the five men are behind bars, there are a number of hackers behind them ready to jump in their place.

You’ll need an answer to withstand their efforts.  An IT consulting firm can help you find the best security solution for your particular business, but how do you choose?
You’ll need an IT consulting firm who has

• A proven history of implementing integrated software solutions
• Partnerships with IBM and other top technology providers
• Certified professionals who are experienced in a wide variety of industries

We are iSOA Group, and we’re an IT consulting firm who can help secure and integrate your business environment for online sales.  We will help your business stay on top of security on your web and mobile services through IBM DataPower SOA Appliances. As an IBM Premier Partner, our certified professionals have complete knowledge of DataPower and can tailor a solution that is unique to your needs.

For more information on what we may be able to do for your e-commerce strategy, please be sure to check out this Case Study on our work securing online transactions for a large specialty store looking to expand their online revenue. With the right partner and solution, your business can fully benefit from the expanding e-commerce market without the security threats that can accompany it. Contact us today to get started.

Friends, Associatetes, and Customers: We want to hear from you!

Our valued customers and associates:

At iSOA Group we have recently undergone some solution focused changes to our website.  As we continue to roll out new content and display a growing array of solutions we would like to make it as easy as possible to hold dialog with our partners, clients, and associates.  

 We have increased our social media presence in an effort to bring as much useful and relevant information to you as possible. Whether it is helping customers to migrate off of an old version of software, working on a mobile strategy, or working through integration challenges, with these and other topics we are striving to bring you relevant information that concerns you today in the most efficient way possible.

So please, whichever is easiest for you, join and engage with iSOA Group, on FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and/or Google+.  And of course, visit our website at: www.isoagroup.com. We promise we won’t overwhelm you with unnecessary and excessive posts; and you might even hear about a chance or two to win some unique prizes in our Giveaways.

Sincerely,

The iSOA Group Team

Why Businesses Need to Embrace Mobile Technologies Now

Let me ask you a question? What are you reading this blog post on right now? If this were five years ago, you probably would have said your desktop computer or your laptop. Smartphones were just on the verge of making it mainstream, and tablets wouldn’t really make a dent in the marketplace until 2010. However, today, the times have truly changed, and most people use smartphones and tablets to browse the web, socialize with their friends and make purchases.

In a post written by Kristen Lauria, Vice President of Marketing for IBM Mobile Enterprise, the question of what businesses will need to do to adapt to this market change comes about, and she offers some interesting insight that any business that offers a service or product of any kind can come to appreciate. First and foremost, let’s take a look at the numbers.

1. According to Forrester Research, mobile commerce should exceed $31 billion by 2016.
2. In 2020, there will be more than ten billion smart devices in the world.
3. IT leaders in mobile are twice as likely to experience a ten percent increase in revenue

Given, this information, it’s imperative that businesses consider this new mobile dynamic to leverage their marketing strategies and IT infrastructure around. Otherwise, they could be left in the dust by competitors who better understand the future business climate. How do you become a player in the mobile economy? Here are two key factors:

• Make sure your IT infrastructure is up to the task: 86% of mobile leaders believe that enlisting the services of an external IT services provider is important to making sure employees have the tools necessary to create the perfect customer experience. That’s because an overextended IT staff won’t have the time nor anticipatory foresight to create apps and integration processes that meet demand before it becomes a necessity. By looking into IT consulting firms, you can find ways to facilitate the IT infrastructure necessary to meet upcoming demand.
• Marketing Services that Coincide with Mobile Use: Those that are spurring this new growth in mobile use are from the Millenial generation. As they graduate from universities and entry level jobs, they will have deeper pockets, which mean greater revenue potential. Milennials are more social with their purchases and opinions as they are the social networking generation. If they like something, they pin it. If they have a problem with customer service, they tweet about it. Successful businesses will create the same brand experience throughout all mobile platforms and encourage active SM engagement to increase visitors and potential leads.
• The Right Apps: With 90 percent of mobile users keeping their device within arm’s reach 100 percent of the time these days, your business needs assurance that mobile apps can be deployed instantly and across a range of mobile devices including iOS and Android phones and tablets. IBM can help you do that and was recently recognized by Gartner with a position in the Leaders quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms.   

The new Gartner report places IBM in the Leaders quadrant as measured by completeness of vision and execution ability of IBM Worklight, our mobile application development platform -- a key component of the IBM MobileFirst Platform. According to Gartner, Leaders must not only be good at cross-platform development and deployment, but also have a good vision of the multichannel enterprise, support for standards, a solid understanding of IT requirements, and scalable channels and partnerships to market. Leaders must provide platforms that are easy to purchase, program, deploy and upgrade.

iSOA Group, as a Premier IBM Business Partner is working with clients on their mobile strategies and can help them adapt to this emerging market.

DPAdmin Benefits

iSOA Group's DPADMIN© is a command line utility for DataPower which can not only be used for managing DataPower devices but also for Configuration Management, Script based Automated Application Deployment and device run time operations.

Benefits of DPAdmin:

DPADMIN can have concurrent deployment and also manage many devices in a multi-threaded mode. These features can benefit companies in lot of different ways. Companies can:

• Provide Repeatability, Accuracy and Reliability.
• Provide High Speed Deployment using Parallel Mode.
• Reduce the cost
• Have complete control of the deployment from the command line
• Have Total Platform Independence
• Provide Reusable XML Scripts across various platforms
• Provide XML based automation interface.
• Maintain accounting for every command/script run using this tool.

To know more about this tool, please click here

New website, new solutions, and free wine!

iSOA Group, Inc. is located in beautiful northern California wine county.  By partnering with a local winery, Adobe Road, we have the exclusive opportunity to give away some fantastic wine to those who participate.

In a continuing effort to constantly improve our website we want to know what you think about it.  Your opinion matters and we want to use it to improve our webpage. Does it read smoothly?  Did you notice any errors, spelling or grammatical?   Are the solutions we offer clear?  What do you think about the color scheme?  Let us know any thoughts that you might have and we have a special prize for you to win a weekly raffle. 

Step 1: Check out the updated website.  www.iSOAGroup.com

Step 2: Find something you like, any errors, or come up with a comment in general.

Step 3: Email us the feedback at contact@iSOAGroup.com along with your Name, Email, and Phone Number.

Step 4: Automatically be entered in a raffle to win a bottle of fine Sonoma County wine from Adobe Road Winery.

Thank you for your participation!