Mashup Camp, MIT

I enjoyed attending a few sessions at Mashup Camp. Overall, there is significant innovation and electricity around what the Mashup community is putting together. I enjoyed Jinesh Varia's (Amazon) presentation on building your own YouTube (iTube!). The use case involved uploading-> storing(S3)-> queuing(SQS)-> processing(EC2)-> hosting(ECS)-> Filtering(MTurk)-> Searching(perhaps Hadoop on EC2) video/images. The use case was intriguing since it logically and convincingly utilized parts of the Amazon Infrastructure. This highlights the point in my earlier blog that the cost of innovation is dramatically lower and even when scalability is required, the cost will align with specific computation & storage needs.

I also enjoyed looking at Mashups developed by LignUp, VOIP-SOA company. LignUp provides a comprehensive platform for controlling and integrating VOIP traffic within an enterprise network. The use case that I found most intriguing is having voice tied into CRM systems. This would give a fuller picture on communication between a company and its customers beyond just email archives.

I bumped into Julio Burgo from Carmun, a web portal for students to share and store academic research papers. I love their tag line: "Students of the world Unite!"

For a list of all the attendees, see Mashup Attendees.

Amazon EC2 and Oracle SOA Suite a Strong Combo

With Mashup Camp (Boston) right around the corner, I was happy to see Dr. Dobbs Journal publish an article that I have collaborated on with David Shaffer, Sr. Director Product Mgmt, Oracle Integration and Rizwan Mallal, from Crosscheck Networks, R&D. The article is written to drive home an important set of shifts that are a result of Amazon's Utility Compute Platforms, EC2, S3, SDS, etc. and it's intersection with web services products such as Oracle SOA Suite 10g.

In this article, we focused on how the Oracle SOA Suite can be used beyond its conventional business process role and more as a core SOA infrastructure traffic management platform for content-based routing, load balancing and fail over type functions for Amazon EC2 Linux instances.

http://www.ddj.com/dept/webservices/196900803

Prediction: In the next 2-3 years, perhaps sooner, Amazon EC2 in combination with SOA Suites will cause a fundamental shift in corporate computing. Also, EC2 & SOA will unleash unprecedented low cost innovation where startups will get off the ground with far lower capital than that required in the pre-Amazon and pre-web services era.

Web Services Testing SugarCRM

SugarCRM is cost-effective, powerful and flexible open source CRM system built on PHP and MySQL Database. Its a great CRM system for cost-conscious companies that need a solid CRM platform. At $40/user/month for a hosted On-Demand offering, its priced for the frugal.

Besides its great CRM functionality and reasonable pricing, what I really like about SugarCRM is its extensive web services API. This enables the SugarCRM platform to be easily integrated with the IT ecosystem that is increasingly becoming web services aware.

If you a have a web site portal that captures customer registration information, and you'd like to integrate that with a Leads Capture Mechanism, I highly recommend that you consider SugarCRM. Its SOAP API makes the integration process between your web portal and the SugarCRM Leads Module simple. The fields in the Leads Module are highly customizable and all your customized fields are available via the SOAP API as well.

For a Quick Start on SugarCRM Web Services Functionality, see the following article:

Getting Started with SugarCRM Web Services using SOAPSonar

RadView's PdM & Dev blog: SOA closing the gap between functional and performance testing

The following blog by the Radview Product Management team shows how quickly companies are adapting to SOA requirements. I think they have clearly identified customer needs both from a testing and traffic management perspective. With their products becoming web services aware, Radview will meet customer needs for web services testing.

RadView's PdM & Dev blog: SOA closing the gap between functional and performance testing