Software delivery and lifecycle patterns in a private cloud

Deployable models for IBM Pure application System and IBM Private Cloud platforms

Brief introduction

Companies are now facing frequent market changes and changing business models that need immediate response. To keep up and adapt to the situation, rapid innovation in software delivery and emerging platforms is imperative. At the same time, traditional applications and system audit functions need to be maintained and involved at a higher level of reliability.

The core of any successful response is effective collaboration and consistent quality. Whether the pressure comes from mobile devices, social media, big data, cloud computing or cost-cutting needs, two points are clear:

First, companies need to use state-of-the-art application Lifecycle management tools

Second, the software deployment process needs to be more lean and agile.

This article describes how to use cloud computing to implement rapid deployment software delivery and project lifecycle tools.

Technical Overview

IBM Pure Application System

Ibmpureapplication System provides a way to virtualize, distribute, optimize, and monitor applications and software in the cloud. IBM Pureapplication Systems provides an integrated system that includes hardware, cloud management software, and content. It provides a standardized cloud application platform in one machine.

Workload patterns

The popular Software Design pattern book (designed patterns:elements of reusable object-oriented Software), written by Gang of Four, establishes the pattern as a reusable and repeatable part of software engineering. One important difference between pureapplication System and other IBM Smart Cloud products is the use of software-mode delivery. Software patterns are predefined application architectures and required platform services that are deployed and managed by the system based on a set of policies. With the IBM Pure application Systems model, you can build a very practical solution that combines many integrated virtual machines, software components, and configuration elements together. In simple terms, this pattern enables you to implement complex solutions in a single deployable unit.

IBM Collaborative Lifecycle Management

The Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution provides requirements management, quality management, testing, change and configuration management, project planning, and tracking. CLM includes IBM Rational Team concert, IBM Rational Requirements Composer, and IBM Rational Quality Manager. CLM will manage complexity, improve software quality, accelerate delivery, reduce costs, and enhance collaboration across the entire team.

IBM Rational Application Developer

IBM Rational Application Developer is a powerful integrated development environment (IDE) built on Eclipse open source software. It accelerates the development and deployment of Java, Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE), Web 2.0, Mobile, OSGi, portal, and SOA applications. IBM WebSphere developers often use Rational application Developer to create Java applications.

Challenge

As explained in the previous section, the Rational software has a powerful set of tools that can be used to help collaborate and implement projects. However, some of their challenges make it difficult for users to easily take advantage of the advantages offered by CLM or Rational application Developer.

The cost of allocating and maintaining data centers is too high

Acquiring and allocating infrastructure for the development, testing, and hosting of applications can traditionally take a long time and high cost. This drives virtualization and the development of the cloud. Due to data security issues on the public cloud, companies are increasingly seeking private cloud solutions. Virtualization technology does not provide the software that is required to meet these requirements-services (SaaS), Platform-Service (PaaS), and monitoring capabilities.

Traditional installation and configuration is complex

One of the essential reasons for SaaS is that it is difficult to deploy enterprise middleware solutions. Take the CLM topology shown in Figure 1 as an example:

Figure 1. A typical CLM topological structure

This topology deploys a WebSphere application server, DB2 database, LDAP repository configuration, license server registration, and reverse proxy server settings. These are not easy tasks to accomplish. In the past, when organizations had fewer projects and specialized middleware teams, it was not a problem to accomplish this task. However, in today's environment, the deployment of an enterprise-ready ALM solution requires simplicity.