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Crossing the chasm | Creating new value with MQ Advanced accelerated with IBM Aspera

By Leif Davidsen posted Wed January 01, 2020 11:42 PM

  

Crossing the chasm. Creating new value with MQ Advanced accelerated with IBM Aspera
By Leif Davidsen 

Screenshot 2019-12-23 at 15.23.08

Imagine a stretch of river. The river here is wide, and deep. The water flows swiftly through the year. The farms either side of the river are owned by different farmers. On the left side of the river the fields are best at growing grains. On the right side of the river the land is more suited to raising animals like cattle and chickens. The farmer with the grain would love to sell their crop to the farmer on right with the animals. But the nearest bridge is many miles away, making it uneconomic to trade with each other. This is all about to change. A group of people visit. First on one side of the river and then the other. Later they return, with more people, and then equipment. Very soon a bridge has been built across the river. New possibilities are opened up for the first time. The farmers trade with each other, both becoming more successful. Local roads are built to get to the bridge. Settlements spring up. Communities grow up. Businesses thrive. People are happy. All sparked by the power of communication as demonstrated by the bridge making it faster and simpler to connect two places separated by distance.

Screenshot 2019-12-23 at 15.24.48

We have seen this before throughout history. Roads and bridges. Railways. Telegraph and telephones. Now we will see if with business-critical enterprise messaging. With the latest V9.1.4 release of IBM MQ, we have now opened up the possibility of crossing the chasm of what was previously impossible thanks to the addition of the Aspera FASP streaming gateway.

 

Aspera is world-leading technology built on the FASP protocol to get past the problem of sending large amounts of data over networks that typically span long distances – much like a bridge spans a river or a chasm. It has seen huge adoption in some industries where they have seen insuperable problems in sending large files across networks. But in our global business environment, which is drowning in a sea of data, there are new possibilities and opportunities with the right vision for the future. In the same way that an architect and an engineer can look at a river and see the possibilities that a bridge at that point could bring, so an IT architect and a software engineer could imagine the possibilities of moving more of their data at speeds over long network distances.

Not every business has a 10GB video file to send daily over a network link that could be 100s or 1000s of miles long. But plenty of businesses send many millions, billions or even trillions of MQ messages per day. And while most of these messages might be within the same data center, there are certainly a growing number of messages that get sent beyond the data center. But why is this?

 

One reason might be these are messages to or from remote business locations. Maybe the main data center is in New York, but there are other business locations in London, Frankfurt, Zurich, Singapore and Sydney. Today there would be good reasons to have a limited flow of messages between these locations. Sure, you can send messages, but there is a delay, both down to physics, but also to the way that TCP/IP works over longer distances. This would put an impediment to any plan to move higher volumes of messages between these locations to be part of any meaningful timely business flow. But I want you to think back to our scene from the start. The river without the bridge, not achieving the growth possible from the opportunities.

Screenshot 2019-12-23 at 15.31.45

Now let’s consider the possible use of the Aspera fasp.io gateway as a feature of MQ Advanced. MQ Messages sent between New York and Singapore that take advantage of the gateway, seamlessly called by MQ, will be delivered up to 4 times faster, offering new business opportunities and advantages. If you send 1 million messages per day between these locations, the new responsiveness will allow for measurable benefits as well as the option to increase the rate of messages between these locations.

 

Other use cases could be connecting the business to supply-chain partners, such as distributors or manufacturers. In the past, with slower message delivery rates, this might have forced the selection of different partners. Now either to help lower costs, or to expand for growth, network connectivity length shouldn’t be a factor in performance and throughput, widening the potential for business to expand and grow, and try new options in new locations.

 

Soon, with the combination of MQ Advanced and the Aspera fasp.io Gateway, the world will open up with communities and possibilities connected by the bridge of rapid, reliable and secure MQ messaging that can overcome the chasm of network delays.

Screenshot 2019-12-03 at 11.24.46

With MQ Advanced or MQ Appliance entitlement providing the option to deploy the Aspera fasp.io Gateway at no additional cost, you can explore and build new business. What opportunities will be created when you take advantage of this new acceleration? How much will your business grow if you understand how you can now do things that were never possible before?

You can download MQ 9.1.4 today – bridge that gap today, and cross the chasm of lossy or high latency networks. Read more about what was new in MQ 9.1.4 in my previous blog entry.



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Wed January 01, 2020 11:55 PM

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