Author Archives: Alan Street

About Alan Street

I work at IBM.

Strategic Technology: Web Site Platform (WebSphere Portal)

This entry is part 23 of 33 in the series Strategic Technologies

A Web site goes beyond an app.  It is the internal or external home base for an entire organization and represents a common entry point to all of the organization’s information and digital services for a particular audience, be it customers, partners or employees.  For this reason it needs functionality to bring together many elements of control, content, applications and technologies.

A Web site platform should support responsive design or some equivalent, allowing a single set of Web pages to display and accept input properly on devices of different screen sizes and in different orientations.

IBM’s technology in this space is WebSphere Portal Server.  JSR-286 portlets are the UI componentization scheme used to bring together different applications and technologies.

The Web site platform needs to integrate with other closely related technologies including:

Strategic Technology: Lightweight Web Development Tooling (IBM WEF)

This entry is part 22 of 33 in the series Strategic Technologies

Lightweight Web development tooling goes hand-in-hand with Web content management for creating a sustainable commercial Web site.  To continue to draw users a Web site must constantly freshened with new content and functions that are tailored to the individual visiting the site.  This would be very expensive to accomplish if a team of expert Web developers were needed to do it.

Fortunately, lightweight development tooling and content management allow business users, Web designers, and less experienced developers to make many of the day-to-day changes.  Some setup by expert developers is generally required, but once this is accomplished other users can make significant changes to the Web site without deep technical skills–no coding required.

IBM’s primary lightweight Web development tool is Web Experience Factory (WEF).

Strategic Technology: Web Content Management (IBM WCM)

This entry is part 21 of 33 in the series Strategic Technologies

WordPress, which I use to produce my blog, is an example of a content manager. WordPress allows me to create my blog without writing any code or HTML by separating content from presentation.  The content that I enter is stored in a database.  I can select from various themes that control how it is displayed.   All of the functions required for blogging have been built into the platform by people who know a lot more about blogging than I do.  I can enter blog posts, store images, use images in blog posts, etc.  I can add plug-ins that provide additional functionality such as arranging posts into a series, filtering out SPAM comments, etc.  Look at my “Blogging” menu for more info about WordPress and blogging.

Enterprise class Web content management technologies such as IBM Web Content Manager (WCM) bring more sophisticated functions such as ease of use for business users and workflow that enable the types and uses of content needed by organizations.

IT Capability: Secure the Enterprise

This entry is part 2 of 10 in the series Strategic IT Capabilities

Securing the enterprise is a broad capability that would map to business capabilities that represent broad strategic imperatives such as:

  • Maintain a trusted brand
  • Mitigate reputational risk from security incidents
  • Mitigate the risk of financial loss from security incidents
  • Protect the privacy of client data.

This capability can break down a couple of ways:

  • Physical / digital
  • Identities / endpoints such as devices / servers / data / network / applications / fraud / social media and email.

I have put this capability first because you need to design security into everything from the very beginning.

 

Reading List: OASIS Reference Architecture Foundation for SOA

It is reasonable to suggest that the art of designing digital services, such as systems of engagement, would quickly progress to defining IT services, and that would quickly progress to integrating systems of engagement to systems of record, and that would quickly progress to Services Oriented Architecture.

A paper worth reading is the OASIS Reference Architecture Foundation for Service Oriented Architecture.