Infosys’ BPM-EAI blog offers a platform to discuss the latest trends in the Business Process Management and Enterprise Application Integration spaces. Exchange thoughts, ideas and opinions with Infosys experts on how BPM and EAI programs can be leveraged to achieve operational excellence and maximize your return on investment.

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March 13, 2012

From the Enterprises' Perspective: BPM in the Cloud

Every now and then we come across differentiating new technology which creates significant hype and reshapes the technological and business world. It changes the way the business operates and facilitates enterprise to achieve competitive advantage. Cloud is one such technology which has proven this and everyone is aware of. Forrester has predicted that cloud computing market will increase from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion by 2020, with a year-to-year growth of over 20 percent. This shows tremendous traction towards cloud based technologies and platforms among corporates. It is creating tremendous buzz in the technological front.

Continue reading "From the Enterprises' Perspective: BPM in the Cloud" »

Posted by Saravanan Balaraj at 10:59 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 9, 2012

Enterprise Gamification - The Next Big Paradigm

In case you haven't been living under a rock for the last few years, I am sure you have heard about social computing and its pervasive nature within the Enterprise of today. What started off as a fad for teenagers, has emerged as the most compelling and disruptive paradigms of the last few years.
One of the most interesting spin-off concepts, which is as disruptive as Social Computing, if not more, is the concept of Gamification of the Enterprise.  The concept is at a very early stage and thought leaders around the world are still trying to analyse the impact of this approach on the current stakeholders who work within a very different organizational construct. 

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Posted by Maloy Patnaik at 11:32 PM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

January 23, 2012

Tipping Point for Enterprises towards Cloud...

There is one objective for IT operations - reduce the existing operations cost and ensure a good sense of predictability on discretionary spending towards growth and scalability. All the initiatives whether it be SAAS, Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Virtualization are all aimed towards the same basic objectives. But enterprises still clamor for the right fit, fail in many of the initiatives and reducing the cost becomes a challenge. The IT vehicle hits the brakes on the road towards its supposed destination
It seems as if Cloud solutions could provide the mix of reducing the cost as well as provide tools and accelerators for new development. Sometimes it becomes a risk when the information transacted is part of the cloud and not “in” the Enterprise Infrastructure.
Some questions posed to the IT leaders are whether and when to go for cloud? Next is what all should go in the cloud? Should one have multiple clouds or single cloud? Should you have a mix of Private and Public clouds? and so on…
The theme of this write up is whether the “Enterprise Integration Services” could serve as the tipping point for the cloud and pave the way for exponential growth in usage of Cloud across the enterprise technologies.

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Posted by Narayanan Chathanur at 8:49 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 21, 2011

Clouds in my coffee!

In the place where I live on this planet, monsoons come twice. However, in the virtual world of IT services, it has been raining all through the year, due to the “clouds”. The concept of “cloud” based provisioning is not new to mankind. During the Agricultural civilizations - clouds from vapors of water ensured that consumption needs of the humans are met. During digital civilization - “clouds” are provisioning digital consumption needs of people today.

The foundation for contemporary cloud based computing takes us back to early 20th century where the world was witnessing the “first war of the cloud” between Tesla and Edison- for the best model of transmitting “electric power” in a “cloud” model [Grid-based-AC vs. Short-distance-DC]. At the same time, in Cambridge UK, Alan Turing, proposed a model of computing, later called ‘Turing Machine’ which has infinite memory [tape], infinite computation capability. Grid based supply of electric current has always been compared with the Cloud-based computing facility.

Continue reading "Clouds in my coffee!" »

Posted by Anil Prasad Kurnool at 11:22 AM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

November 10, 2011

Managing NFRs and Predicting Performance

In one of the past engagements, an SOA solution involving around 80 services being defined did not have any documented NFRs. When we requested to the business team, the response was quite timely - that all services need to respond within one second, all should be highly available, all should be available in multiple data centers and should be part of disaster recovery.
There is nothing incorrect in having such a requirement but it is neither realistic nor beneficial.

In another case, a programme going live in another few weeks was doing its load testing as the last phase of testing but most of the test cases were failing and not meeting the NFRs putting a risk to the programme.

Questions that naturally arise - How should one manage the NFRs in an enterprise without getting into ‘obvious’ troubles? How can we use the NFRs to predict the performance even before the solution is in build or even design phase?, What-if, after doing this exercise and the resultant prediction itself is leading to unexpected values?, Can we chart out a plan to get to the end goal with right justification to the cost?

These are exactly the questions that need to be answered through Performance Engineering.

Continue reading "Managing NFRs and Predicting Performance" »

Posted by Narayanan Chathanur at 11:08 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 31, 2011

Why Private Clouds are not the most ideal choice ...

It's usually not the best reader retention technique to give out the "punch" of the post in the title, but then there are some messages that are best delivered straight up.  
Well, in my opinion, the debate of public cloud versus private cloud as the preferred starting point of an Enterprise's computing platform transformation is as old as the buy versus build choice. Having seen several large programs struggling with delivering complex application using open source coding platforms such as JEE, I am convinced that it's often a better idea to buy a product and customize it rather than try building it from the scratch. 

Continue reading "Why Private Clouds are not the most ideal choice ..." »

Posted by Maloy Patnaik at 2:11 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 31, 2011

Enterprise Fire Fighting Cell

This write up is a continuation from the blog titled 911. When these different cases are dealt with, they are pseudo named as “fire-fighting” even in technology world because they are fires trying to engulf the IT infrastructure and if not stopped will burn up a lot of $$$. The operations cost of IT today range between 50% to 75% of the overall IT budget and to reduce this cost overhead and optimize IT resources, it is important that many such sporadic issues and cases are not masked with tactical solutions and allow the ‘fires’ to turn up again and again. The loses due to such issues are not directly accounted but surely affects.
In the world we live, any fires that occurs at a home or an industry is dealt by Fire fighting department and they don’t stop by just stopping the fire, they investigate till they find the root cause and advises steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Continue reading "Enterprise Fire Fighting Cell" »

Posted by Narayanan Chathanur at 9:24 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 4, 2011

SAP NetWeaver Gateway changes the game again...

I have been pretty enthusiastic in the last few months about the emergence of the Enterprise App. What seemed to be the domain of I-Yuppies (pardon the phrase) is now slowly but surely making its way into the Enterprise domain itself and one of the most significant offerings has been from the ERP giant SAP. 
For the major part of the last quarter SAP focused on the NetWeaver stack. SAP NetWeaver provided the development and runtime environment for SAP applications and could be used for custom development and integration with other applications and systems. This was part of the "applistructure" (applications + infrastructure) platform strategy where a single vendor offered the complete suite of products required to get the Enterprise Up and running. 
However, over the past few years, there has been another equally significant, and in my opinion, much more disruptive, project that SAP has been working on called "The Gateway Project". The results of this project debuted on the third and final day of SAPPHIRE NOW as the SAP NetWeaver Gateway. 

Continue reading "SAP NetWeaver Gateway changes the game again... " »

Posted by Maloy Patnaik at 11:32 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 14, 2011

Scalable Application Clusters - Key to the truly Elastic Cloud!

One of the three principle tenets of the Cloud Computing paradigm is On Demand Elasticity (the other two are Pay Per Use and Virtualization). What this basically refers to is the ability of the Cloud system to provision additional computing power and storage space to meet the demands of the resource hungry enterprise. With increasing globalization, business integration and consolidation, business critical processes are extremely sensitive to data server scalability, reliability, security and availability. The System z platform and DB2 for z/OS have continually set the "gold standard" by which other system implementations are measured. However, one of the key bottlenecks of this system is the underlying server system which may not be able to scale up to the meet the requirements.

Continue reading "Scalable Application Clusters - Key to the truly Elastic Cloud!" »

Posted by Maloy Patnaik at 4:46 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 21, 2011

Disaster Recovery and High Availability

There is always something to learn when nature creates ruckus such as the recent Japan earthquake plus tsunami cascading its effect on radiation leak but through man-made nuclear reactors. Most of the organizations create Disaster recovery (DR) processes and DR data centers to ensure that the businesses work as usual or with minimum downtime. Most of the IT platform kicks up activity in DR center if the main Infrastructure data center gets affected by similar disasters though even on very lesser scale such as a simple case of power failure.

A simple question is what is the effective way to plan and create strategy for DRs and high availability? There are some traditional but effective thoughts to it.

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Posted by Narayanan Chathanur at 8:07 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 7, 2011

Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud (E2C) -- Introduction

Cloud Computing is relatively new term for the Information Technology industry but it was first visualized by Douglas Parkhill long back during the childhood of Information Technology Industry in 1966. He visualized it by comparing the hybrid supply models of the other industries like electricity distribution industry.

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Posted by Ravi Shah at 9:41 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 3, 2010

Vendor Lockin

In a fictional drama based on characters of the great epic Mahabharatha, a Telugu poet/dramatist Mr. Chilakamarthi Lakshmi Narasimham, talks of a great war, which was averted at the last moment due to intervention of Gods. The story goes this way Gaya, a Gandharva King (Gandharvas can be considered “being of heaven”) was moving across the skies and spat the pan. It fell into the open palms of Sri Krishna (An Avatar of Lord Vishnu), praying to the sun god Surya. Sri Krishna gets very angry and vows to kill him. Then the Gandharva king, being a great devotee of Krishna, begs him for mercy and Krishna doesn’t concede.

Narada (Son of Lord Bramha, a divine sage) advises Gaya to approach Arjuna (one of the Pandava brothers of epic Mahabharatha) and first seek his assurance of protecting him and only then reveal the name of person out to take his life. The king does the same and after taking Arjuna’s promise to protect him, he reveals that Krishna has set out to kill him. Arjuna is surprised and yet sticks to his vow. It might be noted that the friendship and relation between Arjuna and Krishna is supposed to that of ideal relation between Nara (human) and Narayana (God).

Any number of dialogues between Arjuna and Krishna make no dent to their respective vows, Arjuna to protect Gaya and Krishna’s to kill Gaya, resulting in an impending war between the both. Those days, unlike now, word given by self was considered paramount than life of self.

Almost when they are out for a head on collision, Lord Siva (an important Hindu Deity, and one of the Trinity) appears before them and averts a possible disaster to the world. This is later explained by the Lord Krishna as a test for Arjuna before the impending Mahabharata war. [For details about Mahabharatha etc. please Google.]

Continue reading "Vendor Lockin" »

Posted by Anil Prasad Kurnool at 6:24 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 19, 2010

Future of Computing

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll - was his pen name) a mathematics professor in Oxford University, wrote in his famous book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland“[1] some strange occurances in curious places.

To reassure herself that she understood the strange happenings, Alice says: “I’ll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is - oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate.”

In his notes to Carroll’s book, The Annotated Alice[2], a mathematician Martin Gardner provides a nice explanation for Alice’s bizarre multiplication table. He proposes that Alice is simply using bases other than 10. For example, if we use base 18, then 4 X 5 = 20 will indeed be written as 12, because 20 (base 10) is 1 Unit of 18 and 2 Units of 1. [1X18(1) + 2X18(0)].

Continue reading "Future of Computing" »

Posted by Anil Prasad Kurnool at 5:21 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 3, 2010

How does Smart Grid fit into the cloud (computing)?

The cloud computing concept cuts across verticals. And another one which goes along in utilities is Smart Grid. What do they have in common? Cloud computing being consumer focused at this time and even though smart grid aspires to be a consumer focused technology it is likely to get onto the cloud to get into mainstream.

Today, there is no visibility on the chain of power generation to determine how and where it's being used and whether its delivery is as efficient as possible. Like today's data center for computing purposes there is no equivalent in Utilities to effectively manage power. The data level / technical implementation include real-time alerts and other notifications based on the urgency of the event and require attention immediately, whereas bulk transactions can be process at higher time intervals. With the shift to cloud computing as an upcoming change in the industry, part of this shift attributes to the opening of cloud platforms. This means managing demand better, participation by consumers, which means better analysis and management of power demand; giving consumers higher control such as being able to generate their own energy, being able to sell the extra energy by sending it back to the grid. Optimizing assets and operating efficiently that can control the players of the grid to save un-used electricity meaning more distribution of power generated. One of the main features for the grid is self-healing that can be achieved on the cloud. If anything goes wrong at one place, network should be able to route through other sources. Moreover, making the grid hacker-proof as much as possible and ensuring innovation through new products, markets and services. The idea is how much can the cloud be leveraged than only using web services. However, cloud computing not only provides more computing resources based on demand but also provisions new services and capabilities as needed by individual customers. Implementation of smart grid will mean utilities needing to store much more data about customer usage, meter information, readings etc. than now.

Not forgetting the customer, getting them involved, provide them access to the data that is being captured by the utility, that too real time is essential for the entire solution to be effective. If it's for a "Smart" cloud it would dynamically manage the capacity as it relates to power, just the same way when user demand changes. This capability provides both the customer and the utility with benefits. These issues all point to the greater need to understand how we're using our valuable resource. I believe that the future strength is the ability to maintain the level of growth which depends on successful adoption of Grid.

Posted by Raksha Kadam at 11:36 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 11, 2010

Cloud Computing in the Trough of Disillusionment??

The reputed analyst group Gartner has released its 2010 'Hype Cycle' graph for emerging technologies, which lists Cloud Computing as having reached the peak of its hype cycle and thus poised for moving into user disillusionment (Link).

For the uninitiated, a hype cycle (a term coined by Gartner) is a graphic representation of the maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies.

According to Gartner reps, Cloud computing has "tipped over the peak and will soon experience disillusionment among enterprise users..".

The next phase on the cycle following the peak of Hype is of course the Trough of Disillusionment where they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. This is usually accompanied by lower interest in the press and mass media thus leading to the veritable through in the interest in the technology.

Those familiar with the Hype Cycles in the past will note that most technologies usually drop off the the emerging technologies hype cycle after a year or two.

As an analyst and practitioner of Cloud Computing, I believe that it might be a bit pre-mature to place Cloud Computing on the wrong side of the peak on the hype cycle. Let me explain why.

Continue reading "Cloud Computing in the Trough of Disillusionment??" »

Posted by Maloy Patnaik at 2:57 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 1, 2010

Impact of Cloud Computing on Package implemention Services from SI.

Will Cloud Computing bring a major change in the way System Integrators (SI) provide services especially in implementation of  BPM, EAI and B2B Packages?

In my opinion a typical SI  is normally engaged to configure a B2B-BPM-EAI package on hardware and provide a solution that meets the business requirement of the organization. This part of the business may not have a major impact especially where the SI is involved in the package implementation as the expectation is the package and hardware utilized will eventually be cloud compliant. Hence with a minor changes to its service offering an SI is already compliant to provide package implementation service on cloud.

Continue reading "Impact of Cloud Computing on Package implemention Services from SI." »

Posted by Dinesh Johri at 5:40 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

September 24, 2010

The Empire Strikes Back... almost...

Off late the hype around virtualization realized through Cloud Computing has reached a crescendo and everyone and his uncle has a view on why Cloud Computing heralds the end of the Iron Server Box. Given this scenario, it was only a matter of time that the biggies in the Old World of Enterprise 2.0 responded with their offering which would reinstate their supremacy and relevance on the world of Server technologies.

Continue reading "The Empire Strikes Back... almost..." »

Posted by Maloy Patnaik at 6:55 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

August 16, 2010

Composite Application Platform on Cloud - Gaining Ground

Today Cloud has moved on from just another though leadership discussion to a possible strategy for delivering business value. However the trick out here is to think beyond infrastructure and focus on PaaS (Platform as a service). Composite Application Platform (CAP) on cloud is an option which is gaining ground at a tremendous pace and more and more organizations are considering it as a sandbox for innovation. And this is where we will see cloud changing from a cost lever to a value differentiating lever. 

Continue reading "Composite Application Platform on Cloud - Gaining Ground" »

Posted by Manas Kumar Sarkar at 11:34 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

July 23, 2010

Content Delivery Networks - Helping the cloud become reliable

The Cloud Computing paradigm involves the delivery of services utilizing a distributed set of assets each connected seamlessly through a high speed communication link over the Internet. This makes the entire solution universally accessible while providing enhanced agility and reduced cost. However, the entire solution uses the Internet as the backbone for data/information exchange and therein lies the Achilles heel of the mantra.

Continue reading "Content Delivery Networks - Helping the cloud become reliable" »

Posted by Maloy Patnaik at 8:52 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 5, 2010

Delivering Integration Platform as Private cloud - Part 2

As discussed in Part 1 the key motivations behind delivering Integration Platform as a private cloud are

  • Minimize environment management overhead
    • Uniform configuration accross environments 
    • Basic integration platform QoS is delivered to all business initiative including capacity management
    • Automated deployment of services with minimal intervention by Integration team
    • Optimum utilization of hardware infrastructure 
  • Apportion Integration Platform cost based on 
    • Integration solution complexity
      • Solution type
      • Volumetric
      • Application to be integrated
    • Usage of Integration Platform

Considering Integration platform forms the enterprise backbone, the motivation presented above becomes the key input for architecting & engineering Integration Platform for deriving better ROI using a private cloud based hosting model

Continue reading "Delivering Integration Platform as Private cloud - Part 2" »

Posted by Manas Kumar Sarkar at 9:51 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 30, 2009

Delivering Integration Platform as Private cloud - Part 1

Cloud computing today has become the buzz word in the IT industry and being seen as the big thing to address IT's ROI pain. However being involved with Integration, SOA and BPM for years I am constantly trying to see the value of Cloud in Integration or SOA or BPM space for the customers who already have invested heavily on a stack integration, SOA and BPM platform or on different individual platform to address all these areas.

Continue reading "Delivering Integration Platform as Private cloud - Part 1" »

Posted by Manas Kumar Sarkar at 1:01 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 9, 2009

Are we growing on a fundamentally doomed DNA for tomorrow's IT eco-system?

Trust me, I struggled hard to frame the title of this blog and could not make it any simpler. So you need to stay with me on this, read this blog little carefully so that you really know where I’m going with it. Most of this is based on my exposure to industry for EAI, BPM, SOA, SaaS, Cloud and all that can take you to cutting edge and leave your bleeding (if you are at the receiving end unfortunately) without any first aid. Before I get to core of my blog, I think it’s important that I explain the title of my blog so that we are on the same page. Here is the brief blueprint of the blog title.

Continue reading "Are we growing on a fundamentally doomed DNA for tomorrow's IT eco-system?" »

Posted by Rakesh Mishra at 9:19 AM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

October 26, 2009

How does the Cloud Computing story affect Enterprise Architecture?

The T-Mobile’s wonder toy Sidekick has recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons. For the uninitiated, the Sidekick is a Smartphone meets Iphone (no puns intended) device which boasts of a whole plethora of tools and features for the mobile generation making it an affordable wireless e-mail/phone/PDA hybrid.

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Posted by Maloy Patnaik at 3:55 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 3, 2009

Cloud BPM - All Thunder, No Rain ?

As if the world of BPM wasn’t amazing enough, we now ironically have something called cloud brightening up the spectrum of benefits that BPM can provide to an organization. Cloud computing no doubt has taken the IT world by storm, a storm which is almost on the verge of transforming into a hurricane (hopefully not as damaging!).  Cloud computing obviously has its advantages and I don’t need to talk about that here. The subject of cloud computing, like SOA, is already being beaten to death by everyone, even as the application of the concept is yet to come completely alive. What fascinates me however is that BPM particularly appears to have a lot to gain with the advent of the cloud model. Besides lower cost, no infrastructure, low maintenance and quicker implementation that a cloud does offer, cloud is making BPM more interesting and affordable for various other reasons as well.

Continue reading "Cloud BPM - All Thunder, No Rain ?" »

Posted by Arup Raha at 10:46 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

April 2, 2009

“Cloud Computing” – A Silver lining in the ‘Clouds’ that helps enterprises battle the economic slowdown

The world economy is passing through one of the worst economic times in the recent history since the great depression of 1930s. There is hardly any industrial sector that has not been impacted by the economic slowdown. Many Governments all over the world are increasing the spending and adopting fiscal measures which in their view will help revive the global economy. The debate amongst the economists of the world, between the appropriateness of the Government intervention led policy as enunciated by Keynes and the non interventionist policy of Milton, rages on and there is no clarity on when the economy will revive and when things will get back to normalcy. The discretionary spending by the industrial houses especially in the IT function has witnessed cuts in these tough economic times. Enterprises are exercising caution in their spending and more than the actual impact of the economic slowdown the fear of the unknown is keeping spending by the enterprises at bay.
 In the current scenario, where in the discretionary spending and capital expenditure in IT function is being scrutinized to a great extent, new paradigms like Cloud Computing might just be the prescription to address the needs of the enterprise.

Continue reading "“Cloud Computing” – A Silver lining in the ‘Clouds’ that helps enterprises battle the economic slowdown" »

Posted by Deepak Kumar Pelluru at 6:09 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)