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

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From DeveloperWorks, The Support Authority: Leverage the advantages of IBM Software Premium Support Services

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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• My Contributions To The IBM External Community – The 24/7 Answer Man

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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• IBM Certification Tests
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One of the benefits of having this blog is that I can see the search terms visitors are using in google to get here. Search terms include ““event sequencing” lock“, “com.ibm.wbiserver.manualrecovery api“, “fault handling websphere” etc. I actually do have more information on all those topics. It’s just a matter of being able to prioritize them for my readers. If you have a topic that you’d like me to address please feel free to contact me or drop a comment on one of the previous posts. I’m pretty good at responding to questions in a timely manner.

Cheers.

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It turns out that due to a weird twist of fate, I may be in attendance (and presenting) in Vegas for Impact 2008. Impact is:

(an) annual conference on SOA and WebSphere offers unparalleled technical education about SOA and IBM thought leadership for LOBs, CIOs and practical application for users. From IT practitioners to senior business leaders, you’ll get more from the one conference that brings it all together.

In non-marketing speak it’s the chance for the customers to learn about the latest and greatest from IBM. I may be there co-presenting with my current client about their business case for WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Integration Developer. One of my personal goals this year is to do more presentations and become more comfortable giving them. Naturally, I jumped at this chance as I enjoy talking about these products.

Of course, it doesn’t really take much to twist my arm into going to Vegas.

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I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my first article published to developerworks (Co-Authored with Richard Gregory). It’s about the WebSphere Integration Test Client and learning about the features that are beyond “enter data, press continue, watch module run”.

Here’s a short list of the things that you’ll discover:

* Testing modules: selecting one or more components in a module to test and testing multiple modules.
* How to reuse common values.
* Attaching to a module when an external client calls components.
* Emulating broken or missing parts of an assembly diagram.
* Saving and rerunning tests

I, obviously, recommend that WID developers read it. Hopefully you can shave a few seconds or minutes off every test and save a substantial amount of time in your development cycle.

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I’m a large supporter of the IBM DeveloperWorks Forums for WebSphere Integration Developer and WebSphere Process Server (including WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus). Having the wealth of experience on this platform that I have, I tend to respond to 75%-80% of the questions. Sometimes, a question appears that sparks my brain with a rant or deserves a deeper explanation. I created this site to capture that information.

In addition, I’m going to blog about my own experiences with IBM’s Business Integration suite and SOA in general. This’ll include the times when things are great, and (more likely) the times when they aren’t so great.

I’m currently Perficient-ly titled a ‘Technical Architect’ which means I spend a lot of my work day writing architecture and internal implementation documents. I’m also going to tackle a lot of the design decisions that I make in a project that leads to the systems my clients create.

I’m also a large proponent of idea sharing. I’ve learned most of what I know through the intellectual generosity of my professional colleagues through the years and would like to take this opportunity to give back to the community. So I encourage any readers to feel free to send me emails with suggestions of topics you’d like to know more about.

In summary, this blog will contain:

• My own take on Business Integration and SOA
• In depth answers to questions I encounter
• Design Decisions
• Reviews of Articles I find on the internet on BI and SOA
• Quirks/Questions/Issues that occur with my engagements
• Information on new products that I get a chance to play with (ex. WebSphere Business Services Fabric)
• Whatever else evolves in this space down the road

Cheers.

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Perficient has a semi-annual employee newsletter and I was selected for mention in the “Get to know you” section. I figure if it’s good enough to introduce myself to my colleagues where I work, it’s good enough to introduce myself to the internet

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