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In today’s modern IT world it’s rare to see specific vendors supplying all the software required to run a business. So there’s even more pressure on IT Managers to choose platforms that can support all those vendors and their different software.
IBM’s PureApplication System is seen as the revolutionary solution for this. It brings with it a number of great technologies (simplified push button deployments, on demand scalability etc) that myself and my colleagues have covered in other blogs. However, one feature that often gets overlooked is how it can also extend this expertise to any vendor’s software platform.
PUTTING IT TO THE TEST
We decided to test the PureApplication platform to see for ourselves just how far this openness extends. We set ourselves the challenge of not only developing a pattern for Software AG’s webMethods software, but to also try and prove that you would gain the same business benefits as you do when using PureApplication with other bundled IBM products.
To do this we developed a PureApplication Virtual Systems pattern to use with Software AG’s webMethods. This pattern brings together webMethods Integration Server, webMethods Broker with some performance testing code to drive the software to help demonstrate the scalability benefits of Pure. You can read more on what was involved in this pattern here.
THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING
Once produced, the pattern meant that we could deliver a full webMethods performance test environment on PureApplication with just a swift click of the deploy button. And because the pattern locks in this knowledge, it meant that it could be fully repeatable – it can be reused over and over again without having to rely on manual processes.
This proved that new testing environments can, literally, be brought up in minutes. Not only that, but because it’s repeatable, each testing environment is identical and doesn’t contain any unknown configuration changes.
How many IT Managers can honestly say that about their current test/performance environments?
We also found that our test pattern could automatically scale into a full performance test or production environment, without the need to set up a separate pattern specifically for these purposes. All we needed is that additional scaling policy.
What we managed to prove with this pattern is that all of the great things we love about PureApplication System, e.g. adjusting to application usage spikes in near real-time, speeding up deployment of solutions, reducing maintenance time and costs etc… can all be brought into any other vendor’s software.
PureApplication is not just technology for customers heavily invested in IBM software – everyone can benefit from PureApplication Systems today.
Read more about what was involved in our test here.
