As the Managing Editor of the developerWorks Middleware hub, I get a front row seat to the latest trends on the IBM middleware stage. This year, two trends took center stage in our library:
- Moving application development from the enterprise to the cloud
- Becoming a cognitive business
Let’s review how these trends made their mark in 2016 and see my picks for top articles related to these trends.
Connect to cloud
There’s no denying that to stay ahead in today’s API economy, you need to be a digital transformer, and you need to be innovative. For enterprise environments, this means taking the leap to the cloud. IBM provides several ways for you to make the move to cloud. In our hub, the methods that were most evident were the Connect series from IBM and the release of IBM WebSphere Application Server V9.
Connect series
At InterConnect 2016, IBM announced the Connect series to help you accelerate your digital transformation. With the offerings in this series, you can easily connect to the cloud and quickly unlock hidden value across your mobile, IoT and API projects.
This series became quite a hit in our hub, with new articles featuring API Connect, Business Operations Connect, and WebSphere Connect, and more articles are on the way for 2017. Here are my picks for getting started with the Connect series:
You might also be interested in reader picks of the top Connect series content from 2016. Also, be sure to look at the developerWorks Connect to Cloud learning paths, which contains curated resources and articles that are organized by your level of experience and goals.
WebSphere Application Server V9
In June, IBM released WebSphere Application Server V9, fully equipped to help you extend your enterprise to the cloud. In V9, you can optimize your application infrastructure to reduce costs with hybrid capabilities. You can connect existing Java applications to the cloud and unlock new value with API lifecycle management and cloud services. And, you can create and deploy cloud-native and web-based apps and microservices quickly with a light-weight and composable production runtime.
With the release of V9, our WebSphere Application Server gurus provided the latest resources to get started. I highlighted several of our key WebSphere articles and resources earlier this year in this community.
Here are a few of my favorite WebSphere articles from 2016:
In addition, we updated several of our classic WebSphere articles that are also reader favorites. Here are just a few examples:
You can find these articles and more in our library, in addition to the wealth of WebSphere resources in our hub.
Cognitive business
In October 2015, Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President, and CEO, forecasted the marriage of digital business and digital intelligence as the dawn of a new era – the dawn of cognitive business. Cognitive computing paves the way for businesses to reimagine how their organization operates and engages with their environment. By becoming a cognitive business, enterprises can make better operational decisions, understand customer wants and needs, communicate in real time, and optimize business.
In 2016, cognitive business soon found its way to the developerWorks Middleware hub, particularly to extend the possibilities of IBM Business Process Manager. My colleague Amy Reinholds highlighted several articles showing how enterprises can use IBM Watson® services in her blog post The best cognitive business operations content from IBM developerWorks Middleware.
Here are my favorite picks for cognitive business articles this year as influenced by our readers:
You can find these articles and more in our library. Plus, see the developerWorks Cognitive computing hub to learn more about how you can use Watson services.
Onward to 2017
As you look ahead to 2017, you might find that it’s time to reinvent your enterprise. Whether you take that leap to the cloud and venture into cognitive business, IBM can help. Here are a few resources to get you started:
- IBM Cloud Advisors. These experts understand trends, regulatory implications, and clients’ needs to help them to set goals and develop plans to achieve those outcomes. They help clients adopt and transition to the cloud in a way that makes sense for their unique business requirements. You can learn more in IBM Cloud Advisors: The disruptor’s quick start to the cloud in the developerWorks Blog.
- IBM On Demand Consulting service. This service is a subscription service that gives you access to the experience, knowledge, resources, and skills of a worldwide team of IBM experts. You can learn more about this service in Beyond imagination to innovation with IBM On Demand Consulting in the developerWorks Blog.
- IBM developerWorks. This dynamic resource provides innovative how-tos, tools, code, and communities to help you solve the complex problems that you face as a developer in an enterprise organization. You can find the latest news on the developerWorks front page and the most recent articles and tutorials in the developerWorks library.
Are these the trends you found in 2016? Do you foresee your enterprise following these trends into 2017? Let us know by adding your comments below.
To help you keep up on the latest developerWorks Middleware news, subscribe to our bi-monthly newsletter. You can find our latest edition here. If you have an idea for an article or tutorial, let us know! We’d love to hear about it! For application development, messaging, and integration topics, send me an email, and for process transformation and IBM Connect topics, send email to my partner Amy.