Businesses are always looking for ways to improve the customer experience. They need to connect with existing and new customers in innovative ways and deliver experiences that never disappoint. They also require technology-strengthened business strategies with the flexibility to adapt to new opportunities quickly. To achieve this agile state, many are using cloud-based solutions to create personalized customer experiences and harness existing enterprise applications, data, and services for a competitive advantage. IBM® WebSphere® Application Server on cloud (WebSphere on cloud) helps businesses like yours take advantage of the cloud as a strategic environment to realize various benefits: Reduce costs by optimizing the entire application-related infrastructure. Create opportunities by rapidly creating and integrating cloud-based applications. Reap more value from existing applications by augmenting them with cloud services. Deliver compelling customer experiences across all channels. Speed time to market at a lower cost through rapid creation and deployment of APIs and microservices. Increase brand reach or drive new revenue by publishing APIs externally. Drive innovation by enhancing your Java applications with IBM Bluemix® services. Optimize existing workloads by lifting and shifting them unchanged to the cloud in just minutes, allowing you to take advantage of fast and flexible provisioning, and pay-as-you-go pricing. This IBM Redbooks® RedguideTM publication introduces the WebSphere on cloud capabilities and highlights key concepts that are associated with this IBM WebSphere offering. The guide discusses the business value offered by WebSphere on cloud, provides a high-level architectural view, and explains three common entry points (Create, Connect, and Optimize) to cloud. The guide also identifies the IBM products that play important roles in those entry points. It includes real-world examples of how customers are using WebSphere on cloud to resolve business challenges and enhance return on investment (ROI).

Systems of record (SORs) are engines that generates value for your business. Systems of engagement (SOE) are always evolving and generating new customer-centric experiences and new opportunities to capitalize on the value in the systems of record. The highest value is gained when systems of record and systems of engagement are brought together to deliver insight. Systems of insight (SOI) monitor and analyze what is going on with various behaviors in the systems of engagement and information being stored or transacted in the systems of record. SOIs seek new opportunities, risks, and operational behavior that needs to be reported or have action taken to optimize business outcomes. Systems of insight are at the core of the Digital Experience, which tries to derive insights from the enormous amount of data generated by automated processes and customer interactions. Systems of Insight can also provide the ability to apply analytics and rules to real-time data as it flows within, throughout, and beyond the enterprise (applications, databases, mobile, social, Internet of Things) to gain the wanted insight. Deriving this insight is a key step toward being able to make the best decisions and take the most appropriate actions. Examples of such actions are to improve the number of satisfied clients, identify clients at risk of leaving and incentivize them to stay loyal, identify patterns of risk or fraudulent behavior and take action to minimize it as early as possible, and detect patterns of behavior in operational systems and transportation that lead to failures, delays, and maintenance and take early action to minimize risks and costs. IBM® Operational Decision Manager is a decision management platform that provides capabilities that support both event-driven insight patterns, and business-rule-driven scenarios. It also can easily be used in combination with other IBM Analytics solutions, as the detailed examples will show. IBM Operational Decision Manager Advanced, along with complementary IBM software offerings that also provide capability for systems of insight, provides a way to deliver the greatest value to your customers and your business. IBM Operational Decision Manager Advanced brings together data from different sources to recognize meaningful trends and patterns. It empowers business users to define, manage, and automate repeatable operational decisions. As a result, organizations can create and shape customer-centric business moments. This IBM Redbooks® publication explains the key concepts of systems of insight and how to implement a system of insight solution with examples. It is intended for IT architects and professionals who are responsible for implementing a systems of insights solution requiring event-based context pattern detection and deterministic decision services to enhance other analytics solution components with IBM Operational Decision Manager Advanced.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication discusses the real world experience of an enterprise that developed and implemented IBM z/OS® cloud services. This book shares the experience of a team at Walmart Technology, Walmart Stores, Inc.® and some of the decisions they made to create business critical cloud services. These experiences and approaches relate to the z/OS platform, and might not apply to other hybrid cloud approaches. This book highlights the strengths and characteristics of z/OS that led the Walmart infrastructure and software engineers to use this platform as they transitioned from a traditional IT deployment to a cloud model. Embarking on a cloud strategy can be overwhelming. No shortage of approaches to cloud computing exists. This book focuses on a pragmatic approach for enterprises that are struggling to take advantage of their business assets in the cloud. This book introduces the basic cloud concepts as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Each chapter explains the importance of a particular NIST characteristic, the z/OS role in accomplishing the characteristic, and how it was implemented by the Walmart Technology team. This book is intended for IT professionals who are considering extending their IBM z SystemsTM environment to a hybrid cloud by unleashing the power of cloud services on z/OS. For information about creating cloud services that are hosted in IBM CICS®, see How Walmart Became a Cloud Services Provider with IBM CICS, SG24-8347.

This IBM® RedpaperTM publication introduces a new data virtualization capability that enables IBM z/OS® data to be combined with other enterprise data sources in real-time, which allows applications to access any live enterprise data anytime and use the power and efficiencies of the IBM Z® platform. Modern businesses need actionable and timely insight from current data. They cannot afford the time that is necessary to copy and transform data. They also cannot afford to secure and protect each copy of personally identifiable information and corporate intellectual property. Data virtualization enables direct connections to be established between multiple data sources and the applications that process the data. Transformations can be applied, in line, to enable real-time access to data, which opens up many new ways to gain business insight with less IT infrastructure necessary to achieve those goals. Data virtualization can become the backbone for advanced analytics and modern applications. The IBM Data Virtualization Manager for z/OS (DVM) can be used as a stand-alone product or as a utility that is used by other products. Its goal is to enable access to live mainframe transaction data and make it usable by any application. This enables customers to use the strengths of mainframe processing with new agile applications. Additionally, its modern development environment and code-generating capabilities enable any developer to update, access, and combine mainframe data easily by using modern APIs and languages. If data is the foundation for building new insights, IBM DVM is a key tool for providing easy, cost-efficient access to that foundation.

Today there are new and exciting possibilities available to you for creating a robust IT landscape. Such possibilities include those that can move current IT assets into the twenty-first century, while supporting state-of-the-art new applications. With advancements in software, hardware and networks, old and new applications can be integrated into a seamless IT landscape. Mobile devices are growing at exponential rates and will require access to data across the current and new application suites through new channels. Cloud computing is the new paradigm, featuring anything from SaaS to full server deployment. And although some environments are trying to virtualize and secure themselves, others such as IBM® zEnterprise® have been at the forefront even before cloud computing entered the scene. This IBM RedpaperTM publication discusses how transformation and extensibility can let you keep core business logic in IBM IMSTM and IBM CICS®, and extend BPM, Business Rules and Portal in IBM WebSphere® on IBM z/OS® or Linux on IBM System z® to meet new business requirements. The audience for this paper includes mainframe architects and consultants.

This IBM® RedpaperTM publication describes how IBM Application Discovery (AD) complements IBM z/OS® Connect Enterprise Edition and IBM Developer for z Systems® in making older mainframe applications available to the digital world. By using a sample scenario, this publication primarily focuses on how the functionality of AD can be used to discover application programming interface (API) candidates and how z/OS Connect can easily create an API out of the mainframe program. It also describes how IBM Developer for z Systems acts as the tool that links the entire transformation.

Build world-class collaborative solutions that integrate WebSphere and Lotus technologies with this comprehensive guide. Writing for experienced Web developers, leading IBM consultants show how to design and deploy WebSphere and Domino together in any environment. Pub 9/04.