From the blog ‘Ben means Business‘, Ben Jones lists the 7 reasons why corporate blogs suck. I really like the first reason:

Reason#1: Fear of Transparency

People who read blogs expect to “know” the author, and participate in discussions with the author and other readers. They enjoy an atmosphere that is genuine and has a “living room” feel. In other words, they expect you to acknowledge problems, fixes, and incidents instead of using your blog to further validate cover-ups. Remember, PR ploys are for people who read the newspaper. Blog readers are a different breed and they respect and embrace what’s “real”.

I like to think that transparency is what I am bringing that’s ‘new’ to the area of business integration and enterprise software. I’m willing to talk about the frustrations of being a consultant in the field in an open forum.

I’ve been feeling pressures abound to reduce the transparency, but I fear that will just add DanZrobok.com to the list of useless ‘corporate’ blogs. I’m uninterested in parroting marketing feature lists and pretending the earth is flat.

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I think some of my readers need a refresher course on exactly what I’m doing here and everything that I’ve contributed to the external IBM community (aka, the community that IBM does next to nothing to help thrive).

1. I constantly post and answer questions of all levels in the two external newsgroups for WebSphere Integration Developer and WebSphere Process Server. The groups get about 10 posts a day and between myself and Neil Kolban, we’re the primary responders. If neither of us runs with an issue, it doesn’t get solved. Where do the unsolved questions go? A straight negative to IBMs bottom-line with a PMR. Or better yet, just another unsatisfied practitioner.
2. I constantly post to this blog outlining my personal experiences with the two products. I try to tackle the problems that I encounter along with their resolutions. The hope is that through my trials and tribulations, the external community can learn and avoid the productivity waste associated with running into insane exceptions.
3. I also try to post about my honest assessments of the product stack at the point in time. Sometimes I’m happy with the way everything works, and sometimes I’m extremely disappointed in the solutions. I think it’s completely fair to air these in the blog. I’m not here to be another marketing slide for IBM. Are the products good 90% of the time? Sure. Are they crap in the other 10%? You bet. Competing products either fail 60% of the time or just don’t provide the feature in the first place.
4. I’ve written articles for DeveloperWorks on WID.
5. I’ve completed redbook residencies on WebSphere Process Server.
6. I attempt to provide feedback back to IBM through the various IBMers who may swing by. I’ve found that since I left IBM my voice carries more weight than it ever did internally. I’m hoping the right people can stumble around here to make the future software revisions even better.
7. I’ve also worked with numerous people who email me with problems. I prefer it when they’re posted to the newsgroup but I can accept someone needed a critical answer quickly.
8. I’m pretty much open 24/7 for YOU the Business Integrator. I solicit comments/topics/questions as much as I can  in the hope that it doesn’t take you three years to skill up on the product set like it did for me.
9. Oh yeah, my actual job. Implementing SOA solutions with WID/WPS. Spreading skill to the field by working hands on with customers.

Anyway, I’ve hit a very big crossroads with respect to the external IBM community and my role in it. Over the next few weeks there will likely be some large changes that can range from status quo daily blogging to ceasing my newsgroup activities to flat out deleting danZrobok.com and forwarding it to icanhascheezburger.com forever.

If you read between the lines, I’m at a very VERY low point in my blogging career. If you have any kind of pick me up, I can use it right now.

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I’ve been running danZrobok.com now for about four months now and I’m curious as to who my readers are. Feel free to comment to this post as an introduction. I’m always in the market for topics to talk about in the blog or features of the IBM Suite of products that you’d like to know more about.

Some questions I’d like to know:

• Who are you?
• Where are you?
• What company do you work for?
• Are you an SOA practitioner?
• Do you have any topic suggestions?
• Likes/Dislikes about the blog
• Do you twitter?
• Whats your feeling about Business Integration and where we’re headed?

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As my gig here in Toronto doing WebSphere Process Server implementations comes to a close, I’m going to be moving on to a new opportunity using Oracle Fusion and Oracle BPEL. This should be very interesting as I will be able to directly compare and contrast the two integration engines from the perspective of someone who knows the IBM software (some would say too) well.

I may have to update the title of the blog now

Of course, the WebSphere focus of the blog likely won’t change too much, but I do hope to keep everyone up to speed on what I think of the Oracle Platform as I go.

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This is the course that I am attending this week. This will be nice as I’ll have a hardcopy of the course contents. Also, being able to go through the content slowly over a week with hands-on usage of the datapower box will be a huge bonus. When I was trying to learn the machine without  the help of the exercises, I was overwhelmed by the number of options available and unsure when to use what. So far, I see nine attendees in the room. Lower than the other two times I’ve been here (WebsSphere Application Server v6.1 admin had a maximum room of 20 and WebSphere Process Server was the same).

Additionally, for attending this course I have two certificates for free certification test (WebSphere 284 firmware v3.6.0 and WebSphere 289 v3.6.1) .

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Sometimes the stars just align perfectly. I’m trying to get my DataPower Certification and IBM’s business partner relations team is offering a free course on DataPower next week in Markham. It pays to be in a city with an IBM Office. I’ll be in attendance there and hopefully sitting in the room for 5 days will put me over the edge.

Naturally, I’ll try and blog it.

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I have a theory as to why I don’t see my mapped data objects in my result business object. I’ll give a write up once I figure out what’s going on. I was ready to point fingers all over the product stack, but it looks like (as always) the finger will end up on me, aka user error.

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It’s a Canadian holiday on Monday, so I’ll be back blogging on Tuesday. Cheers.

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IBM provides a variety of self-help tools and other support resources to help you maintain and troubleshoot systems that are based on WebSphere products. In addition to these, IBM also provides three levels of Premium Support that can be customized and added on to your Passport Advantage support agreement. This article describes the advantages of IBM Software Premium Support and how these additional services would impact your day-to-day operations. (IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal)

I can't help but notice the similarities between my old SWAT Team job and this new Premium support concept. In the SWAT role, I was a developer from the development organization sent around to early adopters of WebSphere Integration Developer in order to help them get into production as smoothly as possible. This involved providing a single contact point back into the IBM hierarchy, managing their Problem Reports and guiding best practices.

This problem with SWAT was that it was the right role, but provided by the wrong organization. Development should be focused on developing products, not pro-bono consulting work. Now we see the "Premium Support" package arrives which uses ISSW consultants to basically do the same job that SWAT did but within the proper services organization. I'm sure it will as big a success as SWAT was.

But my issue with "Premium Support" is that the service they provide are all things that the pre-existing support channel should be doing. When a customer spends a few million dollars for software/support, is it really too much to ask to have a single point of contact inside the company? Someone who will champion your issues within the organization and provide regular feedback of their status.

My second concern with the Premium Support package is that it lands up providing even more incentive for IBM to cut testing cycles on product releases. Testing a product costs money. Billing a consultant generates money. It's easy to see which one is preferable. If you can generate a large revenue stream from support contracts and numerous engagements for Premium Support at high billable rates, they can only be sustained by releasing poor products. A rock solid product running without issues doesn't have Premium Support revenue streams: It's not needed.

I'm also concerned what impact that this team will have with the long-term building of an external SOAcommunity. If customers can solve the issues on their own, why would they buy this services offering? Premium Support revenue will grow based on stifling the information that is released beyond the firewall.

The Premium Support product is an interesting concept that I'm sure some companies will get on-board with immediately, I'm just concerned about the long-term issues a team like this may cause.

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I will arrive from Las Vegas in the early monday morning red-eye, so don’t expect any updates from me today.

I am still working on writing up my notes from a very good WTSC2008 session about how to be an “excellent IT Architect” amongst some other goodies from Las Vegas.

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Well I must say I was taken aback when I saw that that my SOA Jam ESB question was responded to by Steve Mills:

Steve Mills is a senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software Group. In this capacity he is responsible for directing the development, marketing, sales and support of IBM’s software portfolio. Mr. Mills is a member of IBM’s Operating Team, Performance Team, Values & Integration Team and the Asian Task Force.

It’s not everyday that you get someone at Steve’s level to respond to something you say. Of course, I’ll be right back in there with my rebuttal but this definitely made my day.

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The marketing says that it’s WebSphere’s 10th birthday on Tuesday. To celebrate, IBM is asking for revised lyrics to the well-known Birthday song. Never being one to pass up on a free chance at bizarre creativity, I’ve shilled-out and submitted:

WebSphere *IS* big blue
What Can it not Do?
We praise you, Dear WebSphere
Ten more years for you!

Thats the clean submitted one, I give you the tongue-in-cheek one:

WebSphere makes me blue
Ten years of stack spew
Fix my PMR, Please WebSphere?
"It will be in version 9.2"

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On a migration project, you sometimes come across a system that’s been around for a long time, does a pretty small task and hasn’t been touched in years. The question that arrises is “Should it be migrated to the new platform?”

Now. You could solve this problem by phoning up stakeholders and try to find someone who is actually using it. You could read the documentation… You could try and find the documentation in order to read it. You could even attempt to monitor the flow of traffic on the system to determine usage.

I say, forget all that time wasting due diligence . The best way to determine if a system should be migrated should be based on the number of complaints that occur when you shut it off.

If the number is above, say 5, you’ve found a system still in use and needs migration. You should also be aware that you may have to filter your number of complainants. You could snare some poor support guy monitoring general server heath. He’s just following his checklist, doesn’t count. If you land up snagging a VP (or better) complainer who questions why the system is down, you can just mutter something about the flux capacitor needed to be re-ionized and not worry about the method of your madness being questioned (VP: “Oh yes, the fax appropriator.. of course”).

If no one complains, you’ve just performed the fastest migration project in the history of IT.

Pat yourself on the back.

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You’ll notice there’s a hot new disclaimer added to the website, in the top left corner. For some reason, I just feel the need to re-iterate that this blog is Dan’s thoughts about that topics that Dan deals with on a day to day basis. They could be right, wrong, biased or a combination of all three. Like any source of data found on the internet, it’s up to the readers (thats you) to determine if the word written has relevancy or value.

On the flip side, today was the first day the blog cracked 100 page views (which includes my own refreshing and editing) ending at 302. The previous day high was 50.

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Just thought I’d outline my current thinking towards which tests I’m going to prepare to write at the WebSphere Services Technical Conference 2008:

1. 284 - IBM WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliances Firmware V3.6.0
2. 093 - IBM WebSphere Process Server V6.0, System Administration
3. 252/253 - IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment V6.0/V6.1 Core Administration
4. 664 - SOA Fundamentals
5. 807 - Web Services Development for IBM WebSphere Application Server V6.1
6. 735 - Developing Applications with IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5

284: Top priority for me as I foresee a lot of opportunity in this space and a potential skill gap that I could fill.

093: Sweet revenge for failing this last year.

252/253: WAS 6.1 server is the latestet even though most of my experience is on WAS 6.0. So it will be a game time decision over which one I choose.

664: This is a prerequisite to becoming a “IBM Certified Administrator for SOA Solutions” (664, 093 & 252/253 prereq).

807: Leverage all the experience I have with WSDL and XSD into a certification.

735: Before I left IBM, I wrote a few fun utility plugins for SameTime 7.5. The first would just display the last message received into a text box. I used to be involved in group chats and didn’t want to give focus to the window but still wanted to read what was being said. The second (and far more fun) was the “Early Warning System”, a plug in that could detect when someone had opened a new chat window with you but hadn’t yet started typing. It could give you a chance to either surprise them with a “hi”, or for the more devious, jump off line and plead ignorance. Alas, I wrote them both at IBM so they’re IBM property. If you are an IBMer and interested in either I can direct you to someone internal who has them.

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