WSO2Con 2011 started in style today (Sep 13th), with the flavor and cultural touch of Sri Lanka. [13th, 14th, and 15th of Sep - WSO2Con Plus 12th and 16th Pre- and Post- Conference tutorials.]
The session was also live webcast through OxygenTank. The event was also actively tweeted by the audience and the event's official twitter page. There are a series of blog posts around the talks by the presenters and the audience. The presentation slides have already been shared by the speakers.
Cultural events and entertainment followed the technical sessions. WSO2Con proves that it is not a tech-only/geeky session. Rather it is a technology and networking event for the architects, intellectuals, technologists, researchers, entrepreneurs, and evangelists.
I summarize some of my favorite discussions from the WSO2Con 2011 below.
A Dynamic Telecommunications SOA platform - A WSO2 and 2° Co-creation
I summarize some of my favorite discussions from the WSO2Con 2011 below.
A Dynamic Telecommunications SOA platform - A WSO2 and 2° Co-creation
"A Dynamic Telecommunications SOA platform - A WSO2 and 2degrees Mobile Ltd Co-creation"
was presented by Neeraj Satija, Software Development Manager, Two
Degrees Mobile Limited, New Zealand, at WSO2Con 2011. It was one of the
most interesting case studies from the users of WSO2 products, IMO.
2Degrees mobile has done quite an intensive research and has implemented
lots of novel mobile services.
2degrees
Mobile has 25% of the market of New Zealand. Neeraj started his session
by presenting a brief history of wireless Telco Landscape in New
Zealand and the 2degrees - WSO2 Alliance. Neeraj explained the rigorous
evaluation and supplier selection approach of 2°. and how and why WSO2
was chosen among the other vendors including IBM, Oracle, and Mule,
using a Capability Matrix.
The decision was to adopt SOA and light, flexible, scalable, technology stack - Hence the solution was Web Services and ESB. "Small company, open source, relatively newer, and from Sri Lanka - still had what is needed," Neeraj says ,"For us, WSO2 was the best among the all. Satisfied with WSO2, my trust and faith in WSO2 is justified. WSO2 is proved to be Scalable, light weight, and reliable."
Building a MobilePOS Solution with WSO2 Carbon and Apple iPod Touch
Using WSO2 as a Mobile Services Platform
The decision was to adopt SOA and light, flexible, scalable, technology stack - Hence the solution was Web Services and ESB. "Small company, open source, relatively newer, and from Sri Lanka - still had what is needed," Neeraj says ,"For us, WSO2 was the best among the all. Satisfied with WSO2, my trust and faith in WSO2 is justified. WSO2 is proved to be Scalable, light weight, and reliable."
Building a MobilePOS Solution with WSO2 Carbon and Apple iPod Touch
"Building
a Mobile POS Solution with WSO2 Carbon and Apple iPod Touch" was
presented by Thilanka Kiriporuwa, Head of Human Resources and
Operations, Odel in the WSO2Con 2011,
day-2. Kasun Indrasiri, Associate Technical Lead, WSO2 joined Thilanka
in this session. This session speaks something about ODEL which is one
of the best shopping destinations in Sri Lanka and online. Hence it
naturally grabbed most of our interests (as Sri Lankans).
In
this session Thilanka explained how the MobilePOS application will be
used in ODEL outlets, specifically the one in Alexandra Place,
Colombo-07. WSO2 Mobile Application runs on Apple iPod touch and helps
credit card swiping. The next time we go to ODEL, we will see this in
action, providing improved user experience, eliminating those long
queues during the busy Sundays.
On
the other hand, Kasun was explaining the architecture of the Mobile POS
solution, the technology behind it, and how WSO2 helped to achieve
that. ODEL MobilePOS is exposed to the backend using JSON. The
MobilePOS application was developed using Objective C. It talks to
barcode scanner and credit card readers using APIs by LineaPro. Apple
iPod is only the front end providing a JSON interface, where teh JSON is
transformed into SOAP using WSO2 ESB. There is much more happening with
the mobile gateway with WSO2 products at ODEL. Bar code scanning and
credit card reading was supported by the iPod application 22 million
sales have been done over the WSO2 Mobile Services Gateway solution at
ODEL, so far.
"Even if you want to change the app to run on Android, nothing to change in code level for ODEL MobilePOS app, thanks to JSON," said Kasun, when answering one of the questions from the audience regarding why Apple iPhone was chosen over other mobile platforms such as Android. He also explained how the reporting component from WSO2 is used to generate various reports at ODEL. A white paper on this ODEL case study can be downloaded from the ODEL Case Study page in wso2.com.
"Even if you want to change the app to run on Android, nothing to change in code level for ODEL MobilePOS app, thanks to JSON," said Kasun, when answering one of the questions from the audience regarding why Apple iPhone was chosen over other mobile platforms such as Android. He also explained how the reporting component from WSO2 is used to generate various reports at ODEL. A white paper on this ODEL case study can be downloaded from the ODEL Case Study page in wso2.com.
Using WSO2 as a Mobile Services Platform
"Using
WSO2 as a Mobile Services Platform" was a session presented by Simon
Bilton, Head of Professional Services, Gödel Technologies Europe at
WSO2Con 2011, which was yet another interesting user story of WSO2. In
this session, Simon discussed how 'Transport for London' uses WSO2 ESB
as the main platform for mobile services.
"Schematic
of ESB solution with WSO2 ESB and WSO2 BAM as the core components..",
Simon explained the architecture. Simon also showed a mini-version of
the deployment diagram with WSO2 Components drawn on a paper, to the
audience. He mentioned, "It is really huge to include all of them."
Simon also foresees that WSO2 BAM2 will eliminate the remaining issues
that the current system has.
"Open
Source to the Rescue!", Simon points to the pure open source nature
nature of WSO2, and how it was extended to meet the specific needs of
their enterprise. "Why think outside the box, if the box can think
itself?" asked Simon.
Quality - The key to successful SOA
Quality - The key to successful SOA
Charitha
Kankanamge, Senior Technical Lead and Manager, WSO2 did a session on
"Quality - The key to successful SOA" at WSO2Con 2011. The session
mainly discussed about the differences between the traditional QA and QA
for SOA, and the challenges faced. The talk was followed by an
interactive Q/A, where the audience shared their opinions regarding the
talk, and discussed them with Charitha. Charitha didn't fail to point
out that unlike the traditional testing, SOA testing requires serious
research itself. Azeez pointed out that this enables the QA engineers in
SOA to switch to development easily, and vice versa.
"When
defining a testing methodology for your SOA, you should have a good
understanding of services, mediation, and composition." pointed out
Charitha. He mentioned that the complexity of SOA should not let the
quality to be compromised. "Your QA team and Dev team should work
together for your SOA testing. Everyone is responsible for the quality".
You need a proper unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests,
where some of them are automated, and SOA testing. Charitha also pointed
out that there is no "automated manual tests". SOA testing over the
cloud produces additional set of complexity.
"Discussing
Testing is atleast a 10 hours task," Charitha announced after running
out of time badly at his session, which everyone was actively involved.
Engineering to take over the world
Engineering to take over the world
"Engineering
to take over the world" by Samisa Abeysinghe, Vice President,
Engineering, WSO2 was surely the best among the WSO2Con sessions, I
would say. Samisa started his talk with a caution "This is just from my
head and only from my head, and the definitions are not from Wikipedia
or elsewhere." The talk was mostly the words of wisdom from his
experience at WSO2.
Engineers
are known for their analytical skills too, apart from the technical
skills. I recall, during my level2, someone from the industry (sorry, I
can't recall his name exactly) recommended engineers to follow an M.A in
Economics degree. He suggested that only engineers can be good
economists.
We
learn a lot of pure science in school and university. The applications
of the science starts when we are at work. It is not just for
engineering, I feel. It can be even marketing, sales, .
You can learn 'Marketing Strategy' in school. But the 'Applied
Marketing Strategy' starts when you apply the concepts and the theory in
practice to the industry.
Samisa
explained the support model of WSO2. As a pure open source company,
WSO2 gains the revenue from the paid customers, who pay for the support.
""Feel their pain - Go to them; Listen to them; See what they do; Deal
with what they deal," Samisa explained the secret of delivering the best
support." "We
do not just do what users want. Rather we invent solutions for their
real problems." Users are not always correct. This was also mentioned in
the key note of Sanjiva.
"One
product - One build command - One team." We have the Carbon platform,
and many products built on top of that. Also the products as services
over the cloud, where Stratos becomes the cloud middleware platform.
"One" is important. "It is one team with many sub teams. But the whole
is greater than the sum" Samisa explained the synergy of the WSO2 team.
We have the Team - "WSO2 Team", and we just have sub teams, and no
departments. "At WSO2 we don't refer to the people as #resources. People
are people."
"Our
way is Apache way - Open - Passion & Commitment, Community,
Respect, and Meritocracy." "In engineering, everyone can design, code,
and test" Our inspiration comes from 'the team' itself. Existing and potential clients, academia, and competitors too inspire us. Samisa's
talk was really interesting, with loads of photos taken from WSO2 and
the team, giving a snapshot of the life of WSO2ers' life to the
audience.
No comments:
Post a Comment
You are welcome to provide your opinions in the comments. Spam comments and comments with random links will be deleted.