The power of the ecosystem: Magic happens!
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Throughout the year, I've blogged about the power of the ecosystem. Whether it was a focus on the http://socialbusinesssandy.com/2014/02/27/pulse-cloud-ecosystem-announcements-a-summary-infographic, the http://socialbusinesssandy.com/2014/02/05/the-power-of-the-entrepreneur-and-the-ecosystem-ibm-entrepreneur-week/">entrepreneur ecosystem, or <a href="http://socialbusinesssandy.com/2014/01/07/social-business-is-all-about-people-in-2014-3-big-priorities/">empowering folks to create a digital ecosystem</a>, I'm a big believer that nurturing an ecosystem is essential to success.
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I'm always encouraging companies who have smarter, game-changing, industry-disrupting solutions to build and engage their ecosystem. As a result, I've seen tremendous opportunities come to life... magic happens!
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At the IBM Connect conference in January, two IBM Business Partners, <a href="http://www.isw.com.au/wps/portal/isw">ISW</a> and <a href="http://www.trustsphere.com/">TrustSphere</a>, met for the first time on the trade show floor. What makes this really special is that ISW and TrustSphere both have a presence in Australia, but met for the first time in Orlando, Florida. They quickly realized the value that could be gained for each company in collaborating with each other!
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Working together, these two companies developed a new social solution, called <b>Kudos Insights for IBM Connections</b>. According to the TrustSphere website, "Kudos Insights for IBM Connections can now leverage the power of Messaging Intelligence to deliver better collaboration insights when managing on line communities and accelerating social adoption."
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What a great business success story! And I can't think of a more powerful way to underscore the value of participating in an ecosystem, and, of course, on being an IBM Business Partner!
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How can you do the same? Attend our next conference: <a href="http://www-01.ibm.com/software/events/insight/">IBM Insight 2014</a>! Early registration discount is available.
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I hope you will attend. Magic can happen!
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A Triple Treat for our Developers on Cloud, Cognitive and IoT!
Today I have three huge announcements for you about GitHub, Swift, and developerWorks. Things are about to get even better for members of the IBM Developer Ecosystem!
IBM and GitHub, a community where more than 12 million people build software together, have joined forces to bring you GitHub Enterprise as a new service available on IBM BlueMix - IBM Cloud platform. I’m so excited for this news, as it brings together the rapid, collaborative development process GitHub’s famous for to our robust cloud environment. We’re supercharging developer’s apps with IBM’s leading cognitive and IoT APIs, and more.
We’re talking agile development on IBM Cloud, seamlessly integrated GitHub Enterprise on Bluemix, and more.
Now, you can build with confidence thanks to the new developerWorks Architecture Center! Available now at developer.ibm.com/architecture, this site has dozens of architecture patterns with content for web, mobile, big data, micro services, and IoT domains and capabilities for DevOps, Security, Hybrid, and Enterprise Integration. We’re offering content that covers several industries, combined with patterns featuring deployable solutions, sample code, and more, all backed by the strength of the IBM developer community and Ecosystem.
Finally, today we’ve announced the next phase of our roadmap to bring Swift to the Cloud with a preview of a Swift runtime and a Swift Package Catalog to enable developers to create apps for the enterprise. Since its introduction in 2014, Swift has exploded as one of the fastest growing and used programming languages and we’re confident it’s going to keep growing. We’re the first cloud provider to enable app development in native Swift, leveraged by over 100,000 developers globally, and I’m thrilled to see Swift and the IBM Cloud grow with this exciting news!
Developers can start exploring the benefits of Swift right now on the IBM Cloud by experimenting in the Swift Sandbox or go right into building end-to-end apps on Bluemix. We’re also bringing the Swift Package Catalog to Bluemix, allowing devs to share Swift Resources with the global community. Read the press release here.
Just for developers - a Quickie Guide to Why these partnerships matter! Box, Docker, and Apple
I am here in London at the Cloud Forum! I had a great set of roundtables yesterday and got asked from many developers what do these announcements do for me!
So I took a stab at a high level view of the value!
Box
- Existing Bluemix developers can now leverage the world class Box cloud storage API and services for their mobile and web apps! (Box API will join the rest of 100+ Enterprise developer service tile on our Bluemix service specifically made for develoeprs)
- And existing Box developers can now enjoy the speed of creating new mobile and web apps integrating Box API on Bluemix developer cloud
- What’s more, IBM has built an extensive Enterprise Content Management capabilities
- content capture, extraction, analytics, case management and governance, that are complentary
- these solutions were already deployed in many large enterprises,
- now Box developers will be able to tap into these rich enterprise content
This is particularly interesting for developers want to get into a few specific high barrier-of-entry industries including healthcare and financial industry, because in the past, the data of these enterprises are held in a vault that is difficult to get.
For example, startups can create apps using IBM ECM API to extract contents data to feed into Watson, and then allow researchers to collaborate on Box platform using the insights generated from Watson.
Docker
By helping making Docker as the standard of "write code once, and take it anywhere", it removes the lock in that many developers had to spent lots of time when they start their development on the cloud. (for example, it usually takes a couple of days to redeploy an app from developer's own machine to AWS cloud)
Through this new partnership, IBM offers "IBM containers" for developers deploying their apps onto Bluemix (public cloud) and PureApp (private cloud) and the tools managing the containers,
For the large companies that are very picky on how/where apps get deployed, this new container eliminate the extra work developer need to spend to figure out how to deploy their apps into large enterprise's private cloud.
Apple
To the iOS developers who wish to create enterprise apps which require server side data integration - the new IBM MobileFirst for iOS solutions extends IBM’s strengths of providing services and middleware with back-end support.
For many iOS apps that requiring backend services, regardless it is nodejs, Ruby on Rails or Java, Bluemix on the other hand provides composable service side app creation and deployment capabilities in an open and common environment.
For Developers who live and work with Xcode (the standard iOS app development tool made by Apple), the Mobile first and Bluemix provides common services such as Enterprise Cloud storage (include Box), backend integration, and Analytics (Watson) right inside Xcode. (btw, this is how IBM created 100+ native iOS apps for IBM enterprise clients)!!
The key here is Bluemix bring enterprise level integrity to the apps created on open source platform such as Cloud Foundry and Docker.
Infographic The Millennial Experience! Why it is important!
The Millennial Experience
themillennialexperience.weebly.com/
IBM Cloud
ibm.com/cloud
IBM and Xamarin: Value for the Mobile Developer Ecosystem
I just love it when we can help developer with their Mobile Development!
What was announced!
Today, Xamarin is announcing a partnership with IBM that expands Xamarin's enterprise mobile developer ecosystem by simplifying the development of native mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows devices to easily connect to enterprise data and systems through the IBM MobileFirst Platform. More than 750,000 developers use Xamarin to accelerate native app development for multiple platforms; with IBM's backend capabilities now those developers will have enterprise grade scale, security and management at their fingertips.
This collaboration will expand IBM's reach to C# and .NET developer communities. This will help close the skills gap for software application developers by giving them the tools to quickly develop mobile apps. With this collaboration, 6 million+ C# and .NET developers will now have the tools at their fingertips to create both engaging user experiences and deliver secure mobile apps with speed and at enterprise scale.
The Facts:
According to Gartner, 70% of the mobile workforce will have a smartphone by 2016 and 90% of enterprises will have two or more device platforms to support. That's why it is so important for a mobile app solution to be able to scale!
Consider the challenge for today's developer; they have to meet the ever-increasing demand for secure, connected and sophisticated mobile apps. The relationship with Xamarin expands IBM's support for first class native development that allows millions of developers to focus more on innovation and driving business value through mobile!
This is GREAT for Developers!
Users in every category have an ever-expanding need to consume and contribute data via mobile devices. Enterprises must build and manage high-performance apps with a device-optimized user experience that securely integrates into the enterprise environment. The companies have created an enterprise mobile solution for C# developers that combines Xamarin’s fully native mobile development platform for iOS, Android and Windows Phone with the IBM Worklight platform for highly secure cloud-based data services.
The IBM MobileFirst Platform SDK and IBM MobileFirst Platform studio add-ons are available immediately at http://xamarin.com/ibm for the thousands of partners and millions of developers in the combined ecosystems of Xamarin and IBM.
Here's what Nat Friedman, CEO and co-founder of Xamarin, had to say:
"Together, Xamarin and IBM are creating an end-to-end foundation for developers to more effectively mobilize mission-critical enterprise data in their apps. The combined Xamarin and IBM solution gives millions of app developers a powerful enterprise mobile opportunity they have never had before."
I couldn't agree more! Xamarin and IBM developers will now have the tools to create engaging user experiences and deliver secure mobile apps with speed at enterprise scale!
To find out more about Xamarin, and to download the IBM MobileFirst Platform SDK and IBM MobileFirst Platform studio add-ons, go to http://xamarin.com/ibm