Posted
on Apr 22, 2011 in Case Studies, Industry Trends, Offerings, Technical Tips | 0 comments
I was recently asked [again] about what platform to choose for an open source web CMS. At the highest level, and to avoid considering too many variables that introduce confusion into a decision, my general feeling on this is to go with the technology that best balances the following (in order):
- Community (users, third parties, and developers): size, enthusiasm, and proselytization
- Technology: tech stack and solution architecture
- Leaders: commitment, flexibility, release schedule
I feel the community size and enthusiasm is so important that I decided to chart out the general trends. Although we implement will all of these CMS’s successfully, we have been choosing WordPress over the others for a number of years on most CMS implementations. My own experience is that the WP community has been growing rapidly and gaining enthusiastic momentum. The below results prove it.
Overall, trends show popularity in WordPress far surpassing Joomla and Drupal over the years:
For the past year, we see WordPress in its own league of popularity:
Trends for the three solutions with the word “CMS” attached shows a slightly closer picture overall. I feel this is mainly because WordPress was initially marketed as a blogging platform. Though I’ve been using it as a CMS for quite some time, only more in the past year or two have people really embraced it as a powerful CMS:
However, when you look at the past year, again WordPress far surpasses the others:
Using these products for years, I have many insights and considerations that have yet to be put down in writing, but I hope the above provides you a little idea of one of the main variables we consider when selecting a solution for our customers.
Posted
on Apr 8, 2011 in Industry Trends, Technical Tips | 0 comments
I had been using VMWare Server 2 for a few years now. It was free and provided extra features that were not present in VMWare Player. Unfortunately I found out that VMWare Server is no longer going to be supported as of June 2011. I needed to make a decision quickly so I could stand up a Linux CentOS VM to run a memory intensive software stack.
For me VMWare Server probably would not have worked anyway because of memory and processor restrictions. I decided to look to 3 different solutions to get me up and running quickly, VMWare Player, VMWare Workstation and Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox).
VMWare Player
VMWare Player was included early on because it now allows you to create VMs instead of only running them. It also has increased memory and processors/cores available to a VM. I did however quickly eliminate Player because it lacks essential features including multiple snapshots, cloning and replay.
Snapshots are a must have as I am always installing different operating systems, software and making configuration changes. Some of the changes involve technology I have not worked with before so being able to rollback to a snapshot if something goes wrong has been an invaluable tool. This also allows me to experiment more knowing I can recover to a previous state.
VMWare ESXi
VMWare suggests moving to one of their other products, mainly ESXi or Workstation. ESXi is free and looks to be an exciting product. It basically is your base operating system. It requires a dedicated server with no base OS installed. It also limits the types of hardware it works with, so no you can’t break out your old PC and have it automagicly work with ESXi. I did not have a dedicated box so I chose to look at VMWare Workstation.
VMWare Workstation
VMWare Workstation had all of the functionality I was looking for including snapshots, cloning and replay. It also had good memory (32g), processor (8) and core (8 per processor) support. I downloaded and installed Version 7. I created a Linux CentOS VM. The install was overly easy with “Easy Install” and the OS booted up in no time. The user interface for workstation is intuitive and provides easy configuration. I installed VMWare tools and changed my display resolution. Next up, I started my software stack taking snapshots along the way. The branching snapshot functionality was easy and worked well. All in all Workstation was quick and easy.
VirtualBox
Next I looked at VirtualBox 4. VirtualBox was started under Sun as an open source product. It is obviously now an Oracle product and still open source. VirtualBox has come a long way and provides many features that are present in VMWare Workstation. Installation of CentOS was only a bit more of a task then VMWare Easy Install. VirtualBox’s UI was fairly simple and I liked the layout with the popout VM windows. The initial install did not have have a CD/DVD ROM drive installed so installing VirtualBox Guest Additions (like VMWare Tools) did not work. Not a big deal, just add a CD drive.
The VirtualBox VM OS window played funny tricks with my mouse as I tried to move it in and out of the window. I am also not quite clear on how you increase the size of the virtual hard drive after creation. Say you need more hard drive space on a certain drive or partition how do you do that in VirtualBox? I see you can add another virtual hard drive but no way to increase the existing drives size. I have increased the drive size for a VMWare Workstation Linux VM drive and then used a repartition tool to allocate the extra space.
My final decision was to go with VMWare Workstation. This was a result of Workstation’s features, support and maturity of the product. I also chose it because it has a broad base of use, it’s ease of sharing VMs. It has ACE, better snapshot functionality, replay, integration with Eclipse, encryption and 3D video. Workstation 7.1 does retail for $189 right now, although I did receive a discount on it. I have started to Google “coupon” for everything I buy now to see if there are any discounts out there on the web. I did this for Workstation and received 30% off. I did really like Virtual Box’s speed and ease of use. I will be spending more time with this free product soon.
I have gone back and forth with free and commercial software, they both have their place in my opinion. I have used Eclipse for years and love it. However, I believe that nothing is really ever free. You have to sacrifice some functionality, support and reliability for products that are free. Even with Eclipse, I ended up moving to the new-at-the-time MyEclipse commercial product because I liked some of the extra functionality and tooling it provided. This was a commercial product with a free product as its base! Everything has its place and obviously if you don’t have the cash then free is the way to go. It gives an entire population of our community access to tools. I don’t know where I would be with out these free products.
This is just a quick look at a few of the Virtual Machine technologies out there today. In the future I am interested in looking at Oracle VM and Linux Xen. What are your opinions of Virtual Machines?
Posted
on Mar 3, 2011 in Industry Trends, Technical Tips | 0 comments
I had OIM installed in a sandbox VM a few months ago and decided to spin it back up in our private cloud environment. The novelty of being able to so very simply allocate, deallocate, and reallocate resources when needed to various environments still hasn’t worn off for me.
I’m sure one day in the somewhat near future, this luxury will be commonplace even for lesser-sophisticated IT shops…and we will be telling stories to new team members of “the [not as good] old days” when we had to actually purchase physical hardware for each new project, how sizing hardware was a carefully meticulous process for every single server instance, how cloning environments required a [sometimes complicated] plan to be executed, and how sometimes the fastest way to get back up and running from a hardware failure was to actually fix the hardware.
Click for digressions
I can envision witnessing the conversation: “Hey Jimmy. Back in 20XX, can you imagine places existed where it would be acceptable to take the necessary downtime on their applications and actually wait for the Dell rep to come in to replace their faulty RAM!? Yes, applications ran directly on OS’s that were installed directly on physical hardware. What’s Dell you ask? Why, that was a company that made server hardware. My goodness, have you ever seen a physical server before, Jimmy?” Okay, I might have gotten a little carried away there — but then again, maybe not. (I tend to believe that promising, compelling technology will advance much faster than we expect. I know the people who devised IPv4 never dreamed they would ever run out of IP addresses, yet here we are just 30 some years later and we allocated the last available block last month.)
Food for thought: Why do we refer to spinning up or spinning down VMs? I tend to hear it more for VMs as opposed to physical hardware, which seems kind of funny does it not? Further, as we make a move to solid state hard drives, the analogy of “spinning” for computers, hard drives, etc. — let alone logical entities like VMs — seems it will soon become a complete misnomer.
On a slightly less nostalgic note, as I look at this OIM environment, I have to mention that I do like the latest look-and-feel that is part of the Oracle Middleware 11g stack. In addition to the niceties of a richer experience with ADF, Oracle has even taken the time to design icons and, in some cases like OIM, a nice-looking diagram on the login page.
Posted
on Feb 22, 2011 in Industry Trends, Technical Tips | 0 comments
I was slightly excited about WebCenter 11g PS3′s ability to run on IBM WebSphere — not because I run WebSphere, but because it could open the doors for WebCenter at places that run an IBM infrastructure. I was disappointed to find that I couldn’t even download the WebSphere trial from IBM’s site (see the accompanying video). Ironically, the [WebSphere] server that is serving the download produces an Internet Server 500 error. Yes, I verified that others also received the error. I’ll stick with WebLogic for now.
Posted
on Feb 21, 2011 in Business Strategy, Industry Trends, Offerings, Technical Tips | 0 comments
You are not alone. Many organizations are going through the same analysis and process. There are many possible options/variables to consider, but “should I roll-my-own custom site vs. leverage [open-source] products?” is one of the most common questions to answer today when considering a new web project. Following is a quick list of reasons you might want to consider choosing one over the other.
Custom-Built Solution
- Complete Flexibility: Build a relevant solution without any, or many, compromises — whatever compromises you do make will likely be based on time and money as opposed to wrestling the wisdom of someone else’s architectural choices
- Smaller Footprint: Along the same lines, only write code and maintain what is vital to your specific needs
Liferay
- Why build that?: Liferay handles aspects of the implementation that you simply do not want to have to build and maintain on your own unless you have a compelling reason to do so
- authentication options – pre-built integration with LDAP and other technologies like CAS
- security – roles-based permissions model
- technology architecture (db abstraction, UI design, templating, page structure, etc.) – Liferay has already thought through flexible approach
- Learning curve: though there is a learning curve to Liferay (or any other product), it you can actually find external resources who understand Liferay, but anyone outside the organization will need time to pick up on all the nuances of your custom code/architecture
- Still Custom: We have built enterprise web applications in portal environment where one would have to dig a bit to determine a portal framework was used. You can still build custom features and drop in standards-based portlets where you need in a solution like Liferay’s. Also, remember, you have access to the source code, unlike other products on the market.
Click here to learn more
There are certain use cases where I generally lean to one side more than the other. In cases where Liferay’s features related to page structure, templating, collaboration, and security are useful, I tend to go in that direction. For scenarios where I know my user community and stakeholders have very specific workflow and UI needs for a web-based application where requirements are clear, I consider custom code more carefully.
Posted
on Feb 17, 2011 in Industry Trends, Offerings, Technical Tips | 0 comments
In case you are having trouble finding the Kerberos Module for Apache like some of our customers have, we have decided to host it on our website as well. With more organizations interested in securing their applications with native Windows authentication, this is becoming more and more popular.
We have been devising integrated Windows authentication identity management solutions with Apache for years, so we’re quite comfortable with the best ways to implement with this. Many large software vendors actually leverage this same approach in their enterprise identity management solutions. Feel free to download mod_auth_kerb using the below form.
Free Download
Please complete the following for access to the free download.
Click here to learn more
Following are prerequisites in case the main Kerberos Module for Apache site is not accessible, which we have noticed from time to time:
Prerequisites
- Development enviroment (i.e. libraries and header files) for Kerberos5 and/or Kerberos4.
- Apache server installed – Both 1.x and 2.x series of Apache are supported (make sure the apache installation contains the apxs command)
Posted
on Feb 1, 2011 in Industry Trends, News and Updates | 0 comments
IBM has published a page on their commercial website that questions why a customer would pay more for less, taking direct aim at Oracle and specifically Oracle Middleware offerings surrounding SOA and WebLogic.
Like other competitive material published by software vendors, highlighted areas will tend to focus on one-sided statistics. Consumers today expect valid information that is easily accessible/verifiable, so — not surprisingly — this page has a references section at the bottom as well. The thing that does surprise me with these claims is the important information that is left out.
When we pick solutions for a customer, we are generally considering variables that are *far* more important than software costs. For example, the existing technology infrastructure and internal resource skills-sets generally weigh heavily into software decisions. Cost is usually the last component of the selection that is considered. I can appreciate the competition, and I believe it will be healthy for consumers in the end, but want people to take a step back when they see generic claims like “why pay more for less?” as a suggestive summary for some very specific statistics collected by any vendor, weather it be IBM, Oracle, or anyone else.
More subjectively, I found the page to be unique in its directness as well as the fact that it was published on the internet, giving me the sense that IBM is concerned about Oracle prominence and growth in Middleware market share.
Posted
on Jan 25, 2011 in Industry Trends, News and Updates, Technical Tips | 0 comments
Oracle has now officially released WebCenter 11g PS3 (11.1.1.4). You can download it online as of today (Jan 25, 2011). This marks a major leap in WebCenter’s capabilities and maturity as an Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration Portal. Look for more information on the M&S blog to come.
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