Outlook Series | DEVELOPER ARCHIVE

Bonjour Networking

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and the cosumerization of IT are a trend that is changing network architectures in almost every enterprise. With the increasing prevalence of Apple devices on both enterprise and education networks, it is necessary for the network infrastructure to be natively aware of Bonjour, Apple’s service advertisement and configuration technology. Bonjour (or Zero-Configuration Networking) is used to configure services like printing, file services, and remote display with Apple TV.
So, to gain a competitive edge, services such as AirPrint and AirPlay need to be usable across large, multi-subnet networks regardless of the underlying topology. We interview Abby Strong to gain Aerohive Networks' perspective on Bonjour Networking.
Abby is the director of Product Marketing at Aerohive Networks. 14 Minutes

Seapine ALM 2012

Quality-centric application lifecycle management (ALM) solutions enable you to deliver quality software products faster and within budget. Tightly-integrated ALM tools help streamline communication, improve traceability, achieve compliance, and deliver quality. Top solutions in this space enable you to automate stress and boundary tests without virtual machines. So, to gain a competitive edge, leverage a solution that offers calculated fields which allow you to analyze workflow using custom metrics, and implement risk management and issue triage strategies using your own scoring formulas. We interview Jeff Amfahr to gain Seapine Software's perspective on What's New in Seapine ALM 2012. Jeff is a Director of Product Management at Seapine Software. 24 Minutes

Information Architecture Tooling

Improving enterprise alignment to enable better business intelligence and information management is a key challenge facing forward thinking companies. However, data architecture is no longer enough to create a connection between business and IT. To make that connection, many organizations are selecting a model-driven approach to improve business intelligence and Information Architecture. Top solutions in this space support alignment by leveraging an enterprise glossary and a user interface that can be completely customized by role. To gain a competitive edge, look for a solution that leverages metadata management with a 360 degree view of key information assets and an enterprise-wide impact analysis capability. We interview David Dichmann to gain Sybase's perspective on modeling and architectural tools. 35 Minutes

Requirements Traceability

You know you need traceability in your product development process to ensure quality and manage the impact of change. You may even think you’re pretty good at it. But how strong is your traceability? Strong enough to guarantee quality in every product, every time? Strong enough to help you eliminate wasted time and dollars? Strong enough to pass a compliance audit? You may think so, but if your company or department exhibits certain symptoms your traceability may not be as strong as you think. Achieving traceability within a product development lifecycle helps ensure that changes are shared across teams, in order to maintain quality and compliance. Traceability is especially critical for achieving compliance with ever-stricter government agencies. We interview Peter Varhol to gain Seapine Software's perspective on requirements traceability. Peter is a Solutions Evangelist with Seapine Software. 46 Minutes

Gain Visibility & Control with EPM

Project and portfolio management helps organizations improve visibility and control across varied portfolios. Effective PPM solutions need to provide organizations of different sizes and maturity levels with the right tools to ensure that teams can successfully collaborate to deliver projects on time and realize their anticipated return on investment (ROI). Even departments within a large organization might have divergent PPM requirements. To stay competitive, select an EPM solution which provides executives, portfolio analysts, managers, and team members with productivity tools to effectively manage all work throughout its life cycle, and to ensure alignment with an organization’s business strategy. We interview Arpan Shah to gain Microsoft's perspective on Enterprise Project Management. Arpan is the Director of Product Management for Microsoft Project. 23 Minutes

Mobile Tagging

Mobile is the global mass communication medium—in the sense that it includes all the capabilities of its forerunners (print, radio, movies, TV & Web). If there is any doubt about where your business must go, one thing is certain: it must go mobile. Customers expect no less. Anything that makes instant access to relevant content cumbersome is about to become a deal spoiler. Consumers expect all media to be available on their mobile devices. And people want to access mobile content from any of their devices. Business leaders can choose to strengthen the connections between their brands and mobile consumers. More than that, you can choose to engage and entertain consumers through mobile media, and you can do it in immersive and measurable ways. We interview Brian Fleisher to gain Microsoft's perspective on Mobile Tagging. Brian is a Senior Director of Product Management and Business Development for Microsoft Tag. 25 Minutes

Seapine ALM 2011

At the end of the day, all customers’ desire from you is a product that works right 100% of the time. To build high quality software, you need to begin with the end in mind. You need to build products using a quality-centric development process, backed by quality-centric software tools. Furthermore, your teams need to deliver quality software faster, work more agilely, and comply with standards and regulations. A key component in accomplishing this mission is an enterprise reporting platform that provides complete visibility over the application development lifecycle. We interview Jeff Amfahr to gain Seapine Software's perspective on What's New in Seapine ALM 2011. Jeff is a Director of Product Management at Seapine Software. 27 Minutes

Complex Event Processing

In order to be a global competitor, you need real-time agility, and you must driven by events. A delayed response to changing conditions can mean missed opportunities, and overlooked threats. To meet this challenge, CEP is being leveraged to identify patterns in fast paced, high-volume data streams that move through business systems in real time. But building low-latency event driven applications that can distill insight from the noise of incoming data has been difficult—until now. Quickly building and deploy new applications with rapid application development is key to achieving an enterprise view of the market. Rapid application development represents a third option to the perennial “buy vs. build” debate, by letting you have the flexibility and fit of a custom solution at the lower cost and reduced implementation time of an off-the-shelf solution. We interview Neil McGovern to gain Sybase's perspective on CEP. 54 Minutes

EA Modeling

Achieving alignment between an organization’s core goals and the IT infrastructure that supports an enterprise’s strategic direction is an ongoing challenge. So, you need to find ways that business processes and the data for information systems can be used to align business needs and information technology. Furthermore, aligning business processes with data from information systems enables the development of a model-driven approach that ultimately leads to heightened agility and greater productivity across the enterprise. Data modelers, analysts and information resource managers will appreciate the ways that different data flows can be used to visualize, understand and contribute to effective business processes when business models and data models meet. We interview David Dichmann to gain Sybase's perspective on EA Modeling. David is a Product Line Manager for Design Tools at Sybase. 44 Minutes

Agile Development

Agile development can boost the productivity of developers, QA testers, product owners—and ultimately, increase the value of what is delivered to customers. Agile also enables development teams to collaborate better, and shortens release cycles. So, even if your team is not completely immersed into agile development, you are probably seeking to make parts of your process more Agile. To meet that challenge, you need the flexibility to run Agile and traditional software development projects in parallel without different teams having to use different tools. Whether your organization is using iterative waterfall, scrum, or another development methodology, you need a solution that adapts to the way your team works. We interview Paula Rome to gain Seapine Software's perspective on Agile Development. Paula is a Product Manager at Seapine Software. 20 Minutes

End to End Encryption

Today’s bankcard networks are generally considered to be highly reliable and secure. However, cardholder data is typically unencrypted – visible in clear text – as it leaves a merchant’s terminal and makes its way through the payments network. At certain points in its journey, the data is potentially exposed – making it valuable prey for professional hackers who have developed increasingly sophisticated methods of hijacking it. The numerous systems that have been compromised over the last several years are stark testimony to the success of these criminals. Protecting sensitive cardholder and payment account information throughout the lifecycle of a transaction from card swipe through transmission to the card brands is the ultimate goal of end-to-end encryption. We interview Steve Elefant to gain Heartland Payment Systems' perspective on end to end encryption. Steve is the CIO for Heartland Payment Systems. 23 Minutes

IMDB Drives Extreme Performance

In Memory Databases IMDB enable data virtualization and scaling which are critical to meeting the needs of high data volume and high concurrent user organizations, whether deployed in public cloud or private data center environments. Leveraging a fully integrated in memory database eliminates the need for application changes and provides the flexibility that allows IMDB to be configured to meet application requirements. In data centers, the IT challenge is to increase efficiency and availability while lowering data center costs. At the same time, application deployments in grid and cloud computing environments are increasing the requirements of transaction processing systems to support large volumes of concurrent users with high transaction rates. We interview Raj Rathee to gain Sybase's perspective on in memory databases. Raj is a product manager for Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise. 24 Minutes

Optimizing IP Networks

New IP-based technologies are creating increased demands on network infrastructures. Those demands require higher levels of performance, availability, and mobility. For instance, the migration of voice and video to IP Networks presents new challenges that are revolutionizing the way networks are built and managed. Similarly, new network based business applications and processes that improve collaboration and productivity – along with the dramatic growth of wireless networks and mobile devices such as smart phones, IP phones, and point of sale devices – all require higher levels of network performance. Moreover, consolidation and virtualization initiatives are further driving the need for higher network scalability. We interview Gene Gertson to gain Brocade's perspective on IP Network Infrastructure Services. Gene is the Lead IP Infrastructure Services Consultant for Brocade Global Services. 20 Minutes

Business Process Mobilization

We have only just scratched the surface of the productivity gains that are likely to grow from the development of mobile technology. Furthermore, the paradigm is shifting from portable voice transmission and email delivery to a complete pocket office and control center that can replicate every function available at company headquarters. Companies that embrace the new technology will enhance their existing IT investments, increase their workforce productivity and put themselves at the forefront of the new business mobility that can help companies manage their business more effectively and more profitably. Moreover, you can now leverage a new level of access to information and management control of processes and operations than has previously been thought possible. We interview Bryan Whitmarsh to gain Sybase's perspective on business process mobilization. Bryan is a senior product manager with Sybase. 26 Minutes

Outsourced Network Monitoring

Enterprise data centers not only need to keep their networks and business applications up and running, but also performing optimally. However, monitoring and managing these heterogeneous, and increasingly virtualized environments can be challenging -- requiring significant time and multidomain expertise. Given the complexity of these networks, IT organizations usually find it difficult to quickly troubleshoot network issues or determine the cause of application performance degradation. To meet this challenge, more and more organizations are turning to a SaaS model to improve application availability and proactive management. By doing so, they are reducing capital and operational costs, mitigate risk and improving service levels. We interview Nupur Thakur to gain Brocade's perspective on Network Monitoring. Nupur is a product manager for Brocade’s Network Monitoring Service. 21 Minutes

SOA Testing, Validation & Virtualization

Companies are adopting Virtualization in the data center to reduce the server costs of supporting SOA. Furthermore, if you are tackling the hardest quality and integration challenges, you need to eliminate dependencies among teams throughout the application development lifecycle. That can be achieved by virtualizing the behaviors of complex services-based applications. Moreover, expanding on the value of server consolidation and test lab virtualization beyond the enterprise data center, is key to providing faster time-to-market and quality across the full lifecycle of developing, testing and maintaining highly interconnected services-based applications. We interview John Michelsen to gain with iTKO's perspective on SOA Testing, Validation & Virtualization.
John is the Chief Scientist & co-founder of iTKO. 45 Minutes

Holistic Virtualization Strategies

Organizations are leveraging virtualization technologies to help them consolidate resources, reduce costs, and improve management for their server and storage infrastructures. But in doing so, many fail to consider the overall impact of virtualization on the data center – thereby opening the door to degraded application performance and increased management complexity. As a result, they may be unable to satisfy SLAs or meet data growth requirements. However, the right data center virtualization strategy will optimize application and fabric performance and improve data protection. By leveraging a holistic strategy, you can take advantage of virtualization without experiencing unnecessary costs and headaches while reducing business risk and achieving a faster ROI. We interview Todd Broadhurst to gain Brocade's perspective on virtualization strategies. Todd is a Professional Services Manager with Brocade. 36 Minutes

End to End Virtualization

The business case for virtualization is based in part on server consolidation. But, in spite of an impressive growth rate, server virtualization has yet to become main stream. However, virtualization can drive capacity utilization, cost reductions, increased security, improved reliability and accelerate your response to business imperatives. The real challenge is to navigate the virtualization stack to enable the selection of the right strategic vendor with the best solution set for you business. This challenge can be meet by leveraging a complete, end-to-end virtualization solution. We interview Simon Crosby to gain Citrix's perspective on end-to-end virtualization. Simon is the is the CTO of Citrix's Virtualization and Management Division. 40 Minutes

Mass Market SOA And Web 2.0 Apps

Rich Enterprise Applications arise from the convergence of two major trends in the development of Web applications. Those applications have become more complex, and any project that is targeting the goal of “retiring” an old outdated system often ends up, not only replacing the old functionality, but actually adding many new functions to the system. Furthermore, enterprise developers must serve two demanding groups of masters at the same time: consumers desiring all of the user interface aspects of Web 2.0 and businesses wanting more and more functionality.

We interview Fima Katz to gain insight into meeting the Web 2.0 challenge with a components-based approach.
Fima is the CEO of Exadel. 43 Minutes

Collaborative Software Development

Distributed development organizations are often limited by conventional build and test processes that are not designed to provide the flexibility, optimization and processes to meet the operational challenges associated with building and testing software in highly distributed environments. To overcome this limitation, centralized LAN-based approaches are being displaced by a distributed Collaborative Development Environment (CDE) approach. The goal of a CDE is to unify project managers, developers, and business users within a single development environment accessible from anywhere in the world. We interview Nick Bonfiglio to gain COLLABNET's perspective on build and test governance capabilities. Nick is the VP of Worldwide Operations for CollabNet. 40 Minutes

Ajax Optimization

Ajax is emerging as the preferred development approach for web 2.0 applications. While the asynchronous nature of Ajax applications makes them fundamentally different from standard Web applications, Ajax applications are still built upon standard Web infrastructure. Moreover, Ajax behavior does not obviate the benefits of application acceleration. Indeed, this asynchronous behavior can make request switching and high-availability functionality more important to an Ajax application than to a standard Web application. We interview Prabakar Sundarrajan to gain Citrix Systems' perspective on optimizing Ajax applications. Prabakar Sundarrajan is the CTO of Citrix Systems’ Application Networking Group.
36 Minutes

Better Decisions With BI Reporting

A sales meeting is in full swing, but it immediately stalls because none of the sales figures in the PowerPoint presentation match the data compiled by the sales managers. Then reports generated within HR show an alarming increase in the rate of turnover. But further investigation uncovers information indicating that retention is at an all-time high. Which set of data is right? These scenarios are real and occur every day in businesses around the world. So what can be done to get consistent, trusted data to the people who need it?
We interview Tim Lang to gain insight into how to make better decisions with embedded reporting.
Tim is is a vice president of developer programs for Business Objects. 49 Minutes

Improving User Interaction With RIA s

While the web deployment model has reduce the cost of software deployment, it has also created a community of underserved business users that long for a return to the usability and responsiveness of desktop and client/server applications. Fortunately, forward-looking IT professionals are now turning their attention to design patterns and technologies that can improve the client side of the equation. As a result, we are now seeing widespread deployment of rich Internet applications (RIAs), which combines the responsiveness and interactivity of desktop applications with the broad reach and ease of distribution of the web.
We interview Duane Nickull to gain insight into web development with actionable blueprints. Duane is a Technical Evangelist with Adobe Systems 58 Minutes

Ramping Up Packet Processing

Advances in semiconductor technology are making way for low-power multi-core processors. This transition enables embedded and communications applications to more broadly deploy systems with multiple execution cores due to the more favorable economic and thermal characteristics of this generation of processor technology. This transition to multi-core processors promises more than an increase in the number of execution cores to increase computation capability.

We interview Aaron Kunze to gain insight into how multi-core processors can significantly increase performance for packet processing applications.
Aaron is a Senior Engineer with Intel. 31 Minutes