CEO Blog

Leveraging StrikeIron with your Platform-as-a-Service

There seems to be a clear movement these days from applications built internally upon on-premise systems, to applications built leveraging the platform of the Web, or, more specifically, on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

If you don't know what PaaS is yet, perhaps you've heard of the Google App Engine, or Salesforce.com's Force, or even smaller players such as Cog Head and Bungee Labs. The idea is that it's cheaper to leverage technology you pay for as you use it versus having to host a variety of tools, databases, and servers within your firewall.

Clearly, this is the future of software development. More and more core business processes are finding their way outside of the enterprise, but there are core requirements that you need to consider when moving this direction, namely data. As part of your PaaS strategy, you need to consider how your existing enterprise data will be accessed by your PaaS-based applications. Moreover, you must consider how to bring live data and reusable services to your PaaS.

StrikeIron exists on the platform of the Web, and we provide PaaS applications with two major features.

First, using StrikeIron's IronCloud product, we have the ability to create a service externalization platform -- delivered on-demand -- to provide a mechanism to externalize existing enterprise data which is accessible as data services within the PaaS. What does this mean? If you're looking to access your core enterprise data as services from PaaS-hosted applications, you can leverage the StrikeIron platform as a point of integration that facilitates all aspects of service externalization, including integration, protocol mediation, semantic mediation, logging, exception handing, etc.. All of this, delivered on demand through a subscription-based service.

Second, using the existing StrikeIron marketplace, you're able to bring live data into your PaaS-based applications. This includes D&B Data, stock quotes, address validation, tax rate information, and more than 120 additional services that exist in the marketplace. Thus, you can leverage this information, mixing and matching as needed, to create the application that will have the most value for your business. Of course, this is all delivered on-demand as a subscription, with 24x7 reliability, a consistent programming model, core administration facilities, and the value of leveraging a Web services provider that's been doing Web services since 2003.

If PaaS appears on your horizon, remember StrikeIron.

Mashups Exploding…SOA is Along for the Ride

It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that the mashups are moving from something that's conceptual and fun, to something that's productive and businesslike. The fact is developers are leveraging mashups to solve all sorts of business problems these days, and the speed to production and value of these little applications is compelling.

However, when one looks at mashups, you're not only looking at the mixing and matching of resources found on the Web and/or within the enterprise, but at a true composite application as we've been defining for years in the world of SOA. Thus, mashups are indeed SOA, and SOA is indeed including the concept of mashups.

Thus, when talking about mashups in the context of architecture, you're typically talking about SOA. In fact when considering mashups, they are one of the most successful aspects of SOA, and the use of mashups is exploding now, and thus the best proof point of SOA.

Or, if you're talking about "webby" applications than perhaps WOA, or Web oriented architecture is a better term. It really does not matter to me, as long as we're discussing the use of Web-based, and enterprise-based, resources/services that are knitted together to form a solution. Or, more importantly provide the ability to recreate the solution (the composite) without a lot of latency. In essence, adding the notion of agility.

Most who are building mashups don't think of it as SOA. However, the core notions of SOA/WOA are clearly working when considering mashups. I view mashups as a mechanism that's proving the SOA concept, and as time goes on the concept of mashup will morph into traditional development, and part of the architecture.

 

Can the Emerging Web See Your Enterprise?

Web 2.0 is one of those marketing words I don't like to use that often. It's really a change in platform at its essence, and moving forward your enterprise needs to integrate with the emerging platform of the Web. If your enterprise can not, perhaps StrikeIron can help.

What's important to remember is that there is a huge resource that is being created on the Web these days. This includes access to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, such as Salesforce.com, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) systems, such as Google App Engine, that are better than their enterprise bound counterparts. Moreover, service marketplaces, such as StrikeIron's Web Services Marketplace are picking up steam quickly. Also, other mash-able applications and/or services that you can mix and match with other Web applications, or enterprise applications, to solve business problems are quickly providing ROI for business. We're at the beginning of a huge paradigm shift now.

However, having such a resource available for the price of a broadband connection does not mean you'll be able to leverage it properly. The best approach is to design and deploy your core enterprise applications with the emerging Web in mind, or in other words making your enterprises systems "exposable" to services or applications outside of your firewall. This is harder than it sounds, and chances are your current systems can't see outside of their own operating systems.

That's why we've built IronCloud. A comprehensive PaaS that provides you with an entire infrastructure quickly allowing you to expose, provision, and manage your core enterprise services for you outside of your firewall. In essence, it's a complete service exposure and management platform that speeds the time to productivity, and does so at a fraction of the cost of custom development.

StrikeIron IronCloud manages the cost and complexity of controlling data distribution. IronCloud is the only comprehensive Web Services Delivery Platform that opens up new channels for data distribution and consumption through Web Services. Enterprises of all sizes can now reduce the cost and complexity of managing the challenges of data distribution including metering, monitoring, authentication, and concentrate their focus on making information easier to access and use. Find how this reliable business technology can keep your business on course!

• Create Custom End Points for Data Access
• Superior Controlled Access
• Reliable Integration Out of the Box
• Managed Infrastructure, Scalable Architecture

IronCloud Now Available…Web 2.0 Exploding

I'm at the Web 2.0 Expo this week, my 3^rd time here. This is a cool show, and the only one I attend where I'm not speaking. Thus, more relaxing and more time to learn from others, rather than teaching.

If there is a clear trend at this show it is that the Web 2.0 is no longer about social networking, SaaS, Web communities, or rich internet applications, it's about moving as many of the core business processes as you can to the platform of the Web. Or, perhaps better put: Web-enabled process outsourcing.

You only need to consider the number of products that are now moving way beyond SaaS, to application development, storage, interface design, and middleware…all delivered as a service over the Web. Indeed, there is not much you can't do with the Web-born tools around today, inclusive of the new Google App Engine on-demand application development platform product just released. So, the trend is re-hosting of core enterprise applications, business processes, information, and much of the enterprise architecture we see today, so they are much more efficient, agile, and cost effective…in essence living up to the core objectives of SOA.

At this show StrikeIron announced our on-demand Web services-enablement platform called IronCloud. Building on existing Web service marketplace capabilities, IronCloud streamlines the process of on-ramping enterprise data to the Web, using an on-demand platform that makes enterprise information available as managed and secure Web service APIs. In essence, providing a cost effective way of making critical business data available for mashups, SaaS, or other Web-born, or enterprise, computing applications.

So, let's see. Now you can design, build, deploy, and test applications completely using on-demand platforms delivered over the Web. You can access information on-demand, and now you can even share your core enterprise data on-demand.

This goes to the whole WOA banter that's been a large part of the SOA blogosphere for the last few weeks. We are now finding it easier and more cost effective to place much of our core business processes out on the Web, where there are many resources, information, and tools all available as a service, either free or at a low cost. Thus, you can get up-and-running faster, create automation solutions that are much more cost effective, and meet the needs of your business better than you could in the past. It's a paradigm shift that's hard to ignore.

 

 

 

Web Oriented Architecture (WOA) Picking Up Steam

As I'm heading out to the Web 2.0 Conference this week, we seem to be riding a new wave…or the combination of two waves really…the Web and SOA.

As Dana Gardner points out in his most recent post, the amount of thought leadership that's been going on around this concept has increased exponentially. Dana points out recent posts by myself, Joe McKendrick, Tony Baer, Dana, Phil Wainewright, and Burton Group's Anne Manes.

"Moreover, others have been also developing concepts and methodologies for providing the means for enterprises to exploit pure web resources for advancing developer productivity and business process extensibility."

Keep in mind, as Dana points out, that:

"The logic is not to supplant or dismiss Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), but rather to examine how WOA — also known as lightweight, Web 2.0 applications development and deployment — should provide an onramp to and stepping stone for SOA generally. WOA and SOA together — in a harmony that unlocks both the power of cloud computing and of traditional enterprise architectures — presents a very interesting future indeed."

That sums up the way I'm looking at it as well.

The general notion is that the Web provides another location for core business processes using outsourced infrastructure, and reusable business processes accessible on-demand. These Web-born systems/architectures provide better development speed, access to pre-built resources, such as those provided by StrikeIron, and much more value when compared with traditional enterprise approaches. Thus, why SOA is proving itself on the platform of the Web more so than within the enterprise these days…it's just faster, easier, and provides more initial ROI.

The trend is clear. The use of Web-born resources, such as on-demand Web services such as those provided by StrikeIron SaaS, and on-demand tools such as Google's new App Engine is creating more of a grass roots movement towards SOA/WOA. This movement is moving from the developers to the architects, not from the architects to the developers. The former is much faster.

The same pattern was seen with the rise of SaaS. Salesforce.com, for instance, did not sell to IT. IT would block any attempt to leverage remotely hosted applications. Instead they sold to those who had the pain, and needed a quick and easy solution, and SaaS filled that need nicely.

The adoption of Web-born SOA, or WOA, is finding a similar adoption pattern. Composite applications will be, and are being built within emerging on-demand tools such as Google App Engine and StrikeIron to meet tactical needs, and will at some point become strategic. Moreover, enterprises will seek to externalize existing enterprise data to WOA as well, and thus the logic behind the new StrikeIron platform offering, providing a managed and secure on-ramp to the Web using a proven managed infrastructure, on-demand.

Once this trend is clear, as it's becoming today, we'll find that more sophisticated core architectural technology will become more mature on the Web as well. This includes SOA governance on-demand, service directories inclusive of visual and non-visual services available for mashing up into solutions.

In essence, process-by-process, application-by-application, and service-by-service, we're re-hosting core business processes, applications, and services on the Web. StrikeIron will serve as one-stop-shopping for those seeking core services and data for their mashups, Web applications, or the enterprise. Moreover, we're providing core service externalization capabilities as well, allowing you to expose core business processes and critical business information to the emerging Web at a price point, and delivery speed that provides a very quick ROI.

While science fiction just a few years ago, it's happening today. StrikeIron will be leading the way.

 

Mash What? How APIs are changing the Way we Leverage the Web

David S. Linthicum

It's what you don't see about the emerging Web that has everyone excited these days. Namely, it's the powerful application programming interfaces, or APIs. APIs are nothing new and have been traditionally cryptic and difficult to use. However, the advent of Web services along with the notion of mashups has changed the way we consider and leverage APIs going forward. With our new platform offering StrikeIron is looking to lead the way to the next generation Internet.

So, what changed? In short, the emergence of API consumers, including service-oriented architecture (SOA), browsers that support rich client features such as AJAX, and the notion and popularity of mashups.

SOA is having an impact since architectures are moving to both consume and produce services, and these services are able to extend well beyond the firewalls using the appropriate platform services. Thus, partners and customers are able to take advantage of both systems behavior and data now locked up within legacy enterprise systems. In turn, these enterprises can now speak to Web services, consume information and behaviors from other remote systems (such as SaaS, partner applications or Web services providers), and do so without a significant change in infrastructure.

The emergence of Web-based applications that look and feel like native applications are driving the API movement as well. With approaches such as AJAX, browser-based applications are now dynamic and able to interact with users analogous to native applications. Typically these applications leverage a client/server type of a model, where the front end dynamically interacts with the user, and then communicates with a back-end. The back-end typically contains sets of APIs which provide information in the context of structure, as well as functional application behavior. Thus, the emergence of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) drives the need for many emerging API services, and also provides the common platform for mashups (discussed next).

Although mashups use RIA approaches such as AJAX, mashups are really in a category by themselves. The notion has been described to death so we won't dwell on it here, but for our purposes we can consider mashups as quickly built composite applications that combine information and behaviors (services really) from two or more service providers. These services can be anything from data services, which are non-visual, to visual services, such as mapping and office automation systems. The notion is to combine many things, using standard and well-defined APIs, to create something quickly that's both new and useful.

So, how does one create and leverage APIs? There is an art to the creation of APIs for both private and public consumption. When looking to externalize an API you have to consider the current interfaces around the system you're looking to externalize. In many instances these are existing legacy APIs, information access points, or middleware that already communicates with the existing system. From there you define the design patterns of the existing interfaces, and the design patterns of the APIs you wish to expose. Then it's time to bring both together into a set of common and final design patterns around the API.

Moreover, you must also consider the importance of normalization of APIs as a feature of an API platform. This allows you to reduce consumption complexity. Without normalization differently-implemented API integrations can add a whole new layer of integration complexity, even defeating some of the purpose.

Building the APIs for private or public use requires an API platform service, an on-demand service that can manage the externalization of that API on your behalf. These services are able to monitor the interaction with the existing system interfaces and map those interfaces into something that's consumable by other systems, known and unknown, over the Internet. Moreover, these API platform providers should also provide user management services, security, exception management and monitoring, performance management and monitoring, and fault tolerant capabilities…in essence, managing the system interaction from the source (the existing system(s)) to the end consumer of the service/API.

The new Web is all about how systems communicate with systems, applications with applications, and interfaces with interfaces. Where the traditional Web was about content and information as exposed to humans, the new Web will include core business systems as well, which is even more exciting. We're quickly moving into an age where all information systems will have access to any information required, on-demand, in near real-time. You can only imagine the possibilities.