Do it yourself

The Do it Yourself (DIY) movement while ageless is experiencing a rising tide of popularity perhaps due to the economy’s lethargic performance. You can judge this popularity by the number of cable channels dedicated to building anything from a bookshelf to an entire new house. Hoping to do more with less homeowners now take on tasks that in the past would have led them to an expert or specialist to do. With a little help from these DIY channels they get the job done.   

What about IT Operations Shared Services and DevOps? The concept of “Self-service” is the IT world’s answer to DIY. While company profits have increased the budget for many IT teams remains flat. Yet there is still work to do. “Self-service” is the answer and is the IT world’s version of DIY. One area needing self-service or DIY is WebSphere management and monitoring.

A Self-service solution for IBM WebSphere MQ

IBM WebSphere MQ (WMQ) is nearly ubiquitous in large enterprises. It is a very effective way to integrate applications together in a loosely-coupled manner and still interoperate and share data. IBM WMQ is used in payment systems trading claims processing and many other mission-critical applications. Think of it as the plumbing or pipes that connect all the parts together.

Yet only few users have access and control over this essential tool. Most often control over the usage and configuration of IBM WMQ rests in the Shared Services or Middleware group. Before users in the development QA or TEST groups test IBM WMQ applications or reproduce production problems they must first contact the Middleware group and request their help. This is laborious time consuming and expensive.

How can we improve this? We can provide Self-service and enable the stakeholders who would benefit from direct access to IBM WMQ. Nastel offers a solution: AutoPilot On-Demand for WMQ that provides Self-service for IBM WMQ.

AutoPilot On-Demand for WMQ

AutoPilot On-Demand enables safe secure and controlled delegation of views to the various users who require real-time visibility of their applications in an IBM WMQ environment. The solution delivers Self-service access to the application development team and operations greatly reducing the load on middleware administrators. This Web-based product does not require an installation and delivers on the need for immediate access to IBM WMQ. Developers using this product can view their queues channels and other components; test and act on messages; and perform diagnostics all with in a safe secure and audited environment.

Boosting employee productivity

Usage of Self-service for IBM WMQ reduces the load on the Middleware group and improves the effectiveness of development. With Nastel AutoPilot On-Demand multiple teams can now have immediate access to critical information about their applications without having to involve the shared services center. This solution’s self-service model reduces the load on the middleware team while providing the necessary real-time data that other groups require in order to improve availability and performance of their business applications.

Reproducing production problems can be challenging

Complex composite applications have a critical dependency on message-queuing systems like IBM WMQ to interconnect with other applications. Such connections to the applications of trading partners occur within the datacenter and across corporate boundaries to the applications of trading partners. 

However the Development organization rarely has online access to middleware diagnostics. This makes the task of reproducing production problems in middleware contexts very difficult. Since the diagnostic tools that these teams use are different than Operation’s monitoring tools it becomes difficult for the two groups to speak the same language about these problems.

Enterprises begin evolving towards a DevOps culture once they conclude that their application environments have become far too complex to deploy and manage with silo teams and stand-alone tools. The resultant cross-functional group needs the right tools to act as a bridge supplying a “common language” across these teams. AutoPilot On-Demand for WebSphere MQ can be that bridge enabling development with visibility and diagnostics for middleware.

Secure Flexible and easy to use

AutoPilot On-Demand for WMQ is a web-based highly secure multi-user solution for accessing IBM WMQ resources. It is delivered in a virtual appliance with zero installation. 

Capabilities include:

• Web-based management for IBM WMQ
• Secure audited access controlled by personnel with administrative rights 
• Views of IBM WMQ resources such as queues channels queue managers and subscriptions
• Ability to view and manipulate messages generated by applications
• Views of queue status and applications
• Resource utilization displays such as queue depth channel usage
• Ability to act on application specific messages (move copy edit route replay create).

Key Benefits:

• Reduce the load on the Middleware Administrator
• Improve the productivity of users needing access to IBM WMQ
• Secure multi-user access
• Secure message management
• Simplicity: Easy to deploy and use as it delivered as a virtual appliance image and accessed using a web browser. Download-Unzip-Play. 

How it is different from other IBM WMQ Management Tools

Nastel AutoPilot On-Demand for WMQ is web-based is agent-free and provides strong role-based security.

 “DIY” IBM WMQ and try it yourself via the Freemium version of AutoPilot on Demand for WMQ.

This image illustrates AutoPilot On-Demand with a user viewing the contents of a message. Users can also replay create modify and re-route messages.