WSO2 and SUSE–an open source stack that extends to the cloud

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Jonathan Marsh

On June 12th, WSO2 and SUSE announced an alliance that ensures that customers using SUSE and WSO2 technologies together have a seamless experience:

  • a recommended commercially supported, open source stack spanning from OS to middleware
  • synchronized releases
  • coordinated support
  • reference architecture for cloud

We’re very excited to be working with SUSE, for a number of reasons, of which I’ll limit myself to just three:

1) The partnership provides a greater audience for WSO2 technology as an alternative to JBoss — including areas where we have products not available in the RedHat/JBoss platform (API Management, Governance, Business Activity Monitoring backed by Big Data technologies), areas where we think we have a demonstrably stronger or more innovative offering (Enterprise Service Bus, Identity Server), and areas where we believe our vision for solving the new enterprise challenges is worthy of consideration (componentized middleware, PaaS, DevOps, BigData, API management, Mobile.)  For a more detailed comparison of WSO2 and RedHat/JBoss platforms you might want to read Chris Haddad’s high-level comparison at http://blog.cobia.net/cobiacomm/2012/08/02/red-hat-enterprise-middleware-comparison-with-cloud-native-middleware/.

2) Alignment of cloud strategy.  SUSE has been a groundbreaker in launching an open source IaaS offering SUSE Cloud, based on OpenStack. We’re honored SUSE has chosen to recommend WSO2 Stratos as the preferred PaaS to use with SUSE Cloud.  Together we’ve published a WSO2-SUSE Cloud Reference Architecture to help people get started using these two technologies together to bring the advantages of private cloud to all levels of the stack.

3) SUSE and WSO2 are great matches on the culture front.  While SUSE has a longer history of powering enterprises than WSO2, our cultures of openness, innovation, and deep customer relationships make us natural allies.  Our customers have similar characteristics and distribution around the world.  And each of us is on a mission to compete aggressively for the #1 spot in our industries!

I can’t tell you how much I’ve personally enjoyed working with a broad set of the SUSE team and am certain we will continue to deepen our relationship over the coming years with the joint aim of increasing customer delight!

Jonathan Marsh, VP Business Development
http://jonathanmarsh.net/blog

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New WSO2 API Manager introduces 2 industry firsts

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Sumedha Rubasinghe

I’m excited to announce the newest release of the WSO2 API Manager as it introduces two industry firsts. Featuring full native multi-tenancy, The WSO2 API Manager is:

  • The first API management product that can run on servers, in a private cloud, public cloud or hybrid cloud environment—all from the same software.

  • The first API management product that enables federated access to APIs across multiple entities, enabling new models for organizations to collaborate and monetize APIs.API manager logo

The 100% open source WSO2 API Manager offers an API Store, for IT organizations to set up their own Apple or Google Marketplace-like store where developers can easily subscribe to and consume APIs. And also provides API publishers with complete API lifecycle governance—from creating to publishing, deprecating and retiring APIs—as well as analytics and metrics to support decision-making and enforce service-level agreement (SLA) policies. Do download the latest version and let us know what you think.

You can also join Chris Haddad from WSO2 and guest presenter, API Evangelist Kin Lane, in akin lane Chriswebinar next week as they talk about API branding strategies. They will discuss  

  • Why you should create an API brand

  • What actions and presence influences API brand success

  • How to efficiently promote APIs through multiple branded API portals

I`m sure you would not want to miss out on this one!

– Sumedha Rubasinghe is a Senior Architect at WSO2 and leads the WSO2 API Manager team. He blogs at http://sumedha.blogspot.com

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Lets talk business agility for your next generation enterprise

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Chris

We are happy to announce that WSO2 is a Prime Time Sponsor at GigaOm Structure 2013, taking place in San Francisco next month.  The 2-day conference explores how real-time business needs are shaping IT architectures. gigaom-logo

I will be there to present a workshop on Achieving business agility with cloud APIs, cloud-aware apps, and cloud DevOps PaaS. You can also meet the team and get a preview of  new developments in our cloud PaaS and DevOps offerings, at the WSO2 booth.

Recently I’ve been talking a lot about business agility. With today’s “Now Generation”, business stakeholders, who drive revenue growth and customer retention, desire to rapidly seize opportunity and market share.  They often view IT timeframes and capabilities as a poor match for today’s fast business-pace. My webinar last week with David Linthicum addressed some of these concerns. We talked about

  • A path towards agile IT through the use of new approaches and emerging technology

  • New concepts around DevOps improvement

  • The use of emerging PaaS technology

  • Agility best practices that will guide you to success

If you missed out, the slides and recording are avaialble here: http://wso2.org/library/webinars/2013/05/accelerate-business-agility-paas

If you are in the area, I would be more than happy to talk about how we can help, at Structure 2013.

- Chris Haddad is VP of Technology Evangelism at WSO2. He blogs at http://blog.cobia.net/cobiacomm/

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WSO2, a Visionary in Comprehensive Application Infrastructure

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Paul Fremantle

Many IT leaders prefer to buy their application infrastructure software from a single vendor. In a recent report, Gartner helps teams understand the trade-offs associated with this strategy, and summarizes the strengths and cautions of comprehensive application infrastructure vendors.

Providing a who’s who in the vendor market, this research offers basic profiles for vendors that qualify to provide a comprehensive set of application infrastructure supporting an organization’s projects in the next three to five years.

Gartner cites WSO2 as a visionary in all three Magic Quadrants for Application Infrastructure including SOA Application Projects, Systematic Application Integration Projects, and Systematic SOA Infrastructure Projects. Of the vendors listed as options in the Comprehensive Application Infrastructure report, WSO2 is the only open source vendor included.

gartner-tabeSource: Gartner (January 2013)*

At WSO2, we are committed to working closely with our customers and the open source community to deliver a lean and highly adaptive middleware platform that addresses the demands of modern enterprises, whether their applications reside on-premises or in the cloud.

Click here to read the complimentary Comparing Vendors of Comprehensive Application Infrastructure Suites Report and see what Gartner has to say about WSO2.

 - Paul Fremantle, CTO and Founder of WSO2

*This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from WSO2.

**Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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PaaS for business/IT agility, inspired by Black Eyed Peas?

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Chris

The Black Eyed Peas recognize today’s business growth imperative and IT customer demands. When they sang, “Big money, give me mo’ money/Yeah,I want it now,….Cause if time can’t wait Then I sure can’t wait, I ain’t got no patience, No, I just can’t wait, not today”  they underscored how stakeholders pressured to grow the business today will be irked by misaligned delivery timeframes.

Even in 2011, Gartner presaged the ‘now generation’ sentiment and consumerized IT ownership shift we see today in their Top Predictions for 2012 and Beyond report:

In my latest blog post “Accelerating Business Agility with App Factory DevOps PaaS”, I examine how a DevOps PaaS can serve as a new IT model for today’s fast business pace, since it:

  • Enables faster execution.
  • Offers widespread accessibility.
  • Fosters grassroots innovation.
  • Increases resource availability for IT projects.

While you can read the full blog here: http://blog.cobia.net/cobiacomm/2013/03/19/accelerating-business-agility-with-app-factory-devops-paas , you can learn more about WSO2 App Factory, where we deliver a configurable DevOps PaaS that can be readily adopted by teams without extensive implementation effort, by visiting http://wso2.com/cloud/app-factory/

WSO2 App Factory presents a simplified and unified user experience to complex development tools, processes, and team hand-offs.  By integrating software promotion best practices, test automation, continuous integration, and issue tracking, App Factory raises software quality while reducing delivery timeframes.

Feel free to get in touch if you’ like to participate in the beta program.

For more pop inspiration, read the full BLACK EYED PEAS – NOW GENERATION LYRICS and watch the video.

 

- Chris Haddad, VP of Technology Evangelism at WSO2

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The team heads to OSBC, you can too

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Hasmin AbdulCader

We are happy to announce that WSO2 is a platinum sponsor of Open Business Conference (OSBC) 2013 in San Francisco. The 2-day conference takes place this month on the 29th & 30th, and covers the open source strategic challenges that IT management deals with on a daily basis. In addition, this year, the conference will feature content such as cloud, data, mobile, and how to capitalize on cutting edge open source technologies, for the developer community.

As an open source technology company building middleware for the enterprise cloud and enabling you to be a connected business, we feel that this is a great opportunity to showcase what we have to offer.osbc-mail-v2

Chris Hadded, VP of technology evangelism will present a talk on A New IT Plan: Enterprise DevOps PaaS, APIs, and Ecosystems, and John Mathon, VP, product marketing, will be a panelist at the Opening Up the Cloud discussion. See agenda for details.

If you are in the area and would like to attend, you can qualify to win a free pass to OSBC by telling us your top 3 wow factors about WSO2. To submit your responses and for more information, please visit: http://wso2.com/osbc-2013-giveaway/

You can meet up with the WSO2 leadership team and get a preview of our new DevOps platform, WSO2 App Factory and new developments in our cloud PaaS, WSO2 Stratos, at the WSO2 booth. This event provides the perfect opportunity to network with open source peers and learn how open source has fuelled innovation in cloud, data and mobile technologies

– Hasmin AbdulCader, Director of Communications at WSO2

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Charting new territories in defense systems

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Adam Firestone

 

This is an exciting time to be involved in defense computing technology.  We are at a critical point in defense system architecture, one where the WSO2 technology stack is uniquely situated to play a pivotal role.

I was excited to join the WSO2 team as Director of Defense and AdamGovernment Solutions earlier this year.  I’ve spent the better part of 25 years both using and designing defense systems ranging from precision guided munitions  and unmanned aerial vehicles to those supporting amphibious warfare and humanitarian demining.  

WSO2 software represents a disruptive, transformative capability that could allow the US defense and intelligence communities to both leverage legacy systems and develop new ones in an agile and sustainable manner.  This is especially relevant in an environment of contracting defense budgets.

In the next few months I will be crafting WSO2’s strategy for this new sector as well as engaging my colleagues in the defense community in an effort to introduce them to the capabilities offered by WSO2 technology.  To this end, I’ve written 2 white papers

  1. Engagements: The Role of the Middleware Vendor in the Defence Industry – outlines how the advent of open source middleware creates the conditions for a new revolution in military affairs.
  2. Integration Platforms and App Factories: The Transformation of Legacy Defense Systems – explores how service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles around granular, modular, composable and interoperable services—applied either on the platform or the cloud—can overcome infrastructural challenges within legacy defense systems.

I also presented a talk at WSO2Con 2013 in London earlier this year on the topic “Sharpening the Spearpoint: Empowering the Edge Through SOA”. A recording of this talk can be found here. 

There’s lots more to come – the subject is important, relevant and timely and I believe that one of the best ways I can serve the defense and intelligence communities is to publish my thoughts in a way that will start the dialogue rolling. I’ve got a regular blog at www.adamfirestone.org for anyone who’s interested.

 - Adam Firestone, Director, Defense and Government Solutions

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Be an early adopter of the WSO2 App Factory

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Dimuthu Leelarathne

WSO2 App Factory, is a platform for managed application development for the entire lifecycle of your enterprise apps. You can now create, develop, test, verify, deploy to production and retire applications all in one single user interface. With the cloud opening doors to new business models within enterprises and across their partner networks, WSO2 App Factory provides a shared, multi-tenant and elastic cloud-based enterprise DevOps platform.

What this means is that the WSO2 App Factory can accelerates business growth by delivering a self-service development collaboration platform that extends business capabilities across a connected ecosystem of participants which accelerates their business activity. In addition, an App Factory powered Ecosystem PaaS creates business opportunity by enabling lower interaction cost and managed integration across a value web of suppliers, channel partners, distributors, and customers.

CIOs and other senior-level IT executives who have PaaS initiatives would find our new beta program useful to learn more about the WSO2 APP Factory and get early access to foster innovation and enable collaboration among business units and/or with partners.

The team and I are presenting a 3-part webinar series this month introducing WSO2 App Factory and how it can be used in your enterprise. For more details and to register for the sessions, please visit http://wso2.com/landing/app-factory-webinar-series/  appfactory-preview

Feel free to explore the preview version as well https://appfactorypreview.wso2.com We’d love to hear your feedback and comments.

 

 

Dimuthu Leelarathne, WSO2 App Factory Product Lead

Read Dimuthu’s Blog http://muthulee.blogspot.com

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Forrester places WSO2 in top 2 for API Management

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Sumedha Rubasinghe

A few weeks ago, Forrester Research released The Forrester Wave: API Management Platforms, Q1 2013 report. The report’s findings were based on a 15-criteria evaluation of commercial and open source vendors that deliver products for the emerging API management platforms market, including API consumer experience, integration capabilities with various back-end and third-party systems, analytics and monitoring features.

We were thrilled that Forrester cited us as a leader in this report.  We believe that it validates our commitment to democratizing API management by making it affordable to acquire the software, easy to control APIs and manage the API lifecycle, and simple to find and subscribe to APIs. We have expanded on that commitment with significant enhancements in WSO2 API Manager 1.3 and in our continued evolution in enhancing the customer experience. (version 1.4 coming soon too!)

The WSO2 API Manager enables you to securely and confidently extend data, processes, and services out to customers, partners, and business units.  The enterprise-ready product transforms your cloud service or web service delivery by offering on-demand self-service API subscription, API lifecycle governance, key management, access provisioning, and API usage monitoring.
You can download the full report by visiting http://wso2.com/resources/analyst-reports/forrester-api-management-wave-2013/

Sumedha Rubasinghe,
Software architect and Data Technologies MC Chairperson
http://sumedha.blogspot.com

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Kudos for WSO2Con 2013

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Hasmin AbdulCader

We had an amazing 3 days last month at WSO2Con 2013. Nearly 400  IT professionals joined us in both London and Colombo with as many watching the live stream online. In addition to the keynote presentations, technical sessions and tutorials which explored best practices in API management, SOA, open source, cloud computing, mobile, data and analytics, application development, enterprise integration and governance, a highlight of the conference was a demonstration of the WSO2Con mobile application built using WSO2 Carbon enterprise middleware and running on a cluster of 24 Raspberry Pi computers—offering a proof of concept for building applications that are optimized for small form-factor devices.

The technical teams also showcased beta versions of hot new products such as WSO2 Stratos2 and WSO2 App Factory. You can watch a recording of these sessions and more at http://wso2con.com/agenda/

Here are just a few comments we saw over Twitter

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wso2con2013quote4           wso2con2013quote5

 

You will find pictures of the conference on our Facebook Page; http://www.facebook.com/wso2con/photos_stream

A big thank you to all those who joined us and helped make WSO2Con 2013 a resounding success! For those who couldn’t make it to London or Colombo this time, stay tuned for our next user conference coming soon.  

Hasmin AbdulCader,
Director, Communications http://www.twitter.com/hasmina

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