Wednesday, December 19, 2012

TCO Analysis: IBM WebSphere® Application Server V8.5 vs. JBoss® Enterprise Application Platform V6

With an array of products in the JEE Application Server markets, Prolifics set out to compare IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment (WAS ND) version 8.5 and the Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) version 6. During this extensive analysis, Prolifics compared features and total cost of ownership (TCO), including tests that covered a wide variety of conditions and factors and using the same hardware, OS and patch levels and vendor agnostic applications to ensure that no vendor had an unfair advantage.

In this study, Prolifics found that in most environments, while acquisition costs for JBoss EAP are lower, IBM WAS ND provides lower overall TCO due to its advantages in stability, high availability, manageability, documentation and performance. In fact, over the period of 5 years, “free” JBoss is 35% more expensive than WAS ND.

The cost of web application server ownership doesn't end with the initial purchase. When choosing the best server for your organization, it's important to be aware of the additional costs that come with open source software. Read this in-depth analysis for more on the study.



Prolifics has over 12 years of experience in the Java sphere and is the leading specialist in migrating applications between application server environments and upgrading existing applications to newer standards. For more information, visit www.prolifics.com or email solutions@prolifics.com.

Monday, December 17, 2012

BPM on the Go with IBM Worklight - Part 1

Many enterprises have been making tremendous investments in the area of business process management. With human tasks forming a critical element of these business processes, providing required information in a timely and efficient manner is key to improving the overall process and making informed decisions.

However, in an increasingly mobile and geographically dispersed business world, people are constantly on the go. Extending your business processes to support mobile use helps to bridge this gap, providing seamless and efficient human interactions.

In this 3 part series, we will look at capabilities that are needed to achieve efficiencies in business processes, a mobile framework that addresses the capabilities and a real world example that illustrates the same.

The following capabilities are the key to achieve efficiencies in business processes:
  • Send prompt notifications as a process waits for decision
  • Connect to processes on the move
  • Access the decision data in a secure disconnected mode for review and approval
Figure 1 - Efficient Business Process

Mobile has been growing exponentially over the past few years with Smartphones and Tablets overpowering Desktops for the first time ever in 2011. Given the projected growth rate , it is imperative that business processes are optimized for mobile devices and provide much needed capabilities like Notifications and Offline access in a seamless manner.

There are various solutions available for developing smartphone applications ranging from Native Development to Hybrid Apps to HTML 5 Sites. IBM’s answer to address the smartphone conundrum is IBM Worklight. Before we get into any details, let us take a quick look at IBM’s Enterprise Mobile Strategy.

IBM’s Enterprise Mobile Strategy to address today’s challenges is plain and simple:

IBM Worklight accomplishes each of the above strategies’ by providing a platform that seamlessly integrates with existing suite of products and opens new avenues to businesses.

To conclude, we understood the challenges facing current BPM landscape, capabilities needed to achieve efficiencies in business processes and IBM’s Mobile Strategy. In next part of this series, we will take a deep dive into IBM Worklight and understand how it addresses each of the required capabilities in detail.

Prolifics will be a sponsor at the upcoming IBM Connect conference, held January 27-31 in Orlando, FL. During this conference, we will be showcasing our end-to-end mobile development solutions and sharing some recent success stories. Want to meet our team? Stop by booth C18-19 in the Solution Showcase or reach out to solutions@prolifics.com. For more information, please visit www.prolifics.com.

Laks Sundararajan is a Solution Architect at Prolifics, an IBM Champion for Collaboration Solutions and a key member of highly specialized team working on IBM WebSphere Portal, Content Management and Collaboration technologies. He has led implementations of many global projects using IBM WebSphere Portal and has extensive background in design and development of enterprise portals. He specializes in providing Enterprise SOA solutions leveraging WebSphere Portal, Content Management and Tivoli. He holds a Masters in Information Technology from Carnegie Mellon University and Graduate Degree in Engineering from BITS, Pilani.