App Dev Cloud Stack - Beginners guide to containers at scale

Containers at scale must be addressed in your Cloud stack.

This series started with the statement, what do you mean by "Can't ignore the stack anymore?"

When your background is application development, you have spent many hours, days and years perfecting your craft. You have not only learned languages and concepts, you have made it a point to learn to make good architectural decisions when pulling together the applications you develop.

The problem is, we tend to ignore the stack we are working on as much as we can. Well it's time that we as application developers broadened our horizons a bit, expanding our understanding of the stack we work on with the introduction of Cloud, Platform As A Service (PaaS) and containers to our toolboxes.

Our tour of your Cloud stack continues from our previous article in this series where we laid the first foundational bricks, our reliable and container supporting operating system. The core machines on which our Cloud will rest, that support containers but obviously don't do much more than that.

These foundational bricks only scale in one direction, vertically.

What scaling containers vertically means, why it would not make a very good Cloud stack and what we really need for our Cloud stack will be the focus of this article.

Containers at scale

The idea that we can put together an OS that enables all the tooling we need for generating and hosting containers for our application is exciting.

Limits to vertical scaling of your containers.

Every application developer that is looking at moving their applications into the Cloud will start by putting together containers to run their applications as microservices. The problem is that when you start to host these containers, just like putting containers on a cargo ship, you have a limit as to the number you can pile onto your OS.

This is the vertical scaling limits based on the resources a single machine can host. Just like there are only so many containers you can stick up on a cargo ship before it either become just dangerous or an accident happens.

There are also some issues you will run into as you scale vertically with your containers. You have to determine how to manage these containers, monitor their usage, charge back to the original departments for use of the resources and more as you deal with the increased demands your excited application developers will be putting on the limited resources.

As an administrator of these new containers you will begin to feel the need for a solution that can provide containers at scale. This would be a solution that allows you to scale the containers out vertically. This would be the same as putting more cargo ships into the fleet and spreading the containers across these new ships as the need grows.

Cloud stacks can scale out horizontally to
provide containers at scale.

This is done with virtualization solutions to provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), but has it's limitations.

Scalable IaaS

This is fine if you can expect to have linear growth and constant usage of the underlying infrastructure, but what to do when you need to scale down, load balance for a specific container that is short term resource intensive or if you just need to manage the entire infrastructure as it scales out across more resources?

The next step is to provide abstraction from the individual resources and allow for the management of the entire set of resources for each specific container, application or microservice. This can be solved with Open Source solutions such as Red Hat Atomic Enterprise Platform that leverages projects like Docker, Kubernetes among others to provide containers at scale based on your current infrastructure, providing a powerful IaaS to the rest of the enterprise.

Containers at scale.

This is akin to having a shipping company that can now make use of a new cargo ship when the need arises due to a flood of extra containers needing to be shipped, say around the beginning of the new year as new car models are shipped globally to meet new consumer demands. This is like having instant access to an almost unlimited supply of cargo ships and loading facilities to process any amount of cargo containers we might be asked to ship on the high seas.

This layer is crucial to what an application developers does. By providing proper container hosting, proper container management and containers that scale out as needed, it keeps both application development and application deliver running smoothly across an enterprise infrastructure.

What is left for consideration?

How to manage all this IaaS so that we have some insights into who to charge for usage? How can we monitor for stress on our infrastructure resources? How can we determine when we need to take action, preventing any failures of our IaaS?

Red Hat Cloud Suite

These are all questions that will be covered in the following article from this series, where we talk about why scale matters and what some of the issues are that will arise for application developers as well as those responsible for maintaining this new Cloud stack.

App Dev Cloud Stack series

Missed a previous article or looking for a specific article in the series?

1. Can’t ignore the stack anymore
2. Foundations for a stable Cloud
3. Beginners guide to containers at scale
4. Why containers at scale matter
5. It’s all about the PaaS baby
6. Open interoperability critical to success
7. Securing containers at scale

Codemotion Amsterdam 2016 - Cloud, private PaaS, BPM sessions galore

This coming Spring there will be a CodeMotion conference in Amsterdam in May from 11th - 12th, 2016.

It has been awhile since I last talked at CodeMotion Rome, more due to conflicting dates of their events with Red Hat Summit, JUDCon and now DevNation events.

This year I am able to time their Amsterdam event with other activities I am helping with in Europe, so I wanted to submit a few talks.

I now have a broader spectrum of technology to talk about and wanted to bring some of that to the event for you, so let's see how it plays out. The following talks have been submitted to the Call for Papers which is open until Feb 15, 2016.

Awaken the Force in your developers with a modern containerized Cloud

Application developers are constantly struggling to create enterprise solutions while deploying them across various environments and traversing new DevOps strategies.

How can we assist a smooth transition into the Cloud?

The answer can be found within a Cloud Suite solution. Attendees will be taken on a tour, one that provides them with the ability to enable and awaken the Force within their current developer team. Join us for an hour of power as we delve into OpenStack, OpenShift, containerized deployments as easy as jumps to light-speed.

Super charge your AppDev toolbox with OpenShift PaaS

There are very few things better for an application developer than a solid Platform as a Service (PaaS) infrastructure that takes away all of the underlying service pains and let's her focus on her application development. One of the best out there is OpenShift Online, which you can use freely online, but if you are interested in having a local installed private PaaS then we have the session for you!

Join us to install your very own OpenShift private PaaS in minutes, letting you focus on your application development and leaving heavy lifting to OpenShift. So easy even your Granny can do it!

7 steps to your first process with JBoss BPM Starter Kit

There is nothing quite like getting your developer game on with a new BPM technology or product, but are there enough resources at your disposal to kick-start your journey?
This session will answer that question, taking you on a journey through the ultimate JBoss BPM starter kit. You get a straight forward, easy to consume and ready to go set of hands-on resources that will have you producing BPM projects in a matter of hours. We will guide you through the 7 steps to your first process project with the JBoss BPM starter kit for attendees to take home with them.

What do you mean, "You can't ignore the stack anymore?"

When your background is application development, you have spent many years perfecting your craft, learned languages and concepts, made it a point to learn to make good architectural decisions when pulling together the applications you develop.

The problem is, we tend to ignore the stack we are working on as much as we can. Well it's time that we as application developers broadened our horizons a bit, expanding our understanding of the stack we work on with the introduction of Cloud, Platform As A Service (PaaS) and containers to our toolboxes.

Ready to stop ignoring your stack?


Hope to see you there!

How to install OpenShift as your private PaaS

Ready for your own local OpenShift private Paas?

There are very few things better for an application developer than a solid Platform as a Service (PaaS) infrastructure that takes away all of the underlying service pains and let's her focus on her application development.

One of the best out there is OpenShift Online, which you can use freely or scale up with a subscription for more instances with more services such as size, scalability and storage capabilities. This is a public PaaS, and by no stretch of the imagination is this option a bad choice, but you might be interested in putting together your very own private PaaS experience.

Private PaaS

After spending a lot of time using, demoing and presenting on how to master various application developer facing topics around OpenShift Online, it is time to setup our own local private PaaS.

Before we dive into that, take some time to examine the following session that shows you what Mastering xPaaS with OpenShift using a public PaaS can do for your application development:

Now we are ready to put the power of this public PaaS at your finger tips by installing OpenShift as a private PaaS on your laptop.

OpenShift private PaaS installation

While many others have walked you through all the tedious steps needed to prepare, configure and finally install OpenShift as a private PaaS, here I hope to make it so simple anyone can do it.

Not only that, you can do it in just three steps, I promise!

It is really that easy with the fully automated OpenShift Install Demo project put together to make the process both fool proof and repeatable. So what are the three steps you ask?

1. Install pre-requisites: Vagrant & Virtualbox
2. Download and unzip OpenShift install demo
3. Run the install script (init.sh)

You will need to have the pre-requisites installed, but if you don't and start the installation it will stop, warn you and provide the links to go and get what is missing. You will need to download and unzip the install project.

Finally you will need to run the installation, just one command (init.sh for Linux & OSX, Windows coming soon...) you type in and then sit back to enjoy a fully installed OpenShift Origin private PaaS.

For more information around the Cloud stack that supports your OpenShift private PaaS experience, see the App Dev Cloud Stack series that takes you on a tour of the Red Hat Cloud Suite.

We will be back soon to dive deeper into using this private PaaS for application development tasks and showcasing how productive and painless a good PaaS can be.

App Dev Cloud Stack - Foundations for a stable Cloud

A good foundation is flexible and stands the test 
of time for a Cloud stack.

This series started with the statement, what do you mean by "Can't ignore the stack anymore?"

When your background is application development, you have spent many hours, days and years perfecting your craft. You have not only learned languages and concepts, you have made it a point to learn to make good architectural decisions when pulling together the applications you develop.

The problem is, we tend to ignore the stack we are working on as much as we can. Well it's time that we as application developers broadened our horizons a bit, expanding our understanding of the stack we work on with the introduction of Cloud, Platform As A Service (PaaS) and containers to our toolboxes.

Everything in this world we build needs a foundation. A solid basis that starts with a first brick being laid before moving forwards. It does not matter if you are building a physical construction or something existential like applications and Cloud stacks, it all starts the same with some first brick.

From our first article, where we put introduce the idea application developers can't ignore their Cloud stack anymore, we now have arrive at the point where we need to lay our first brick.

To examine this first brick, we find it at the bottom of our Cloud stack and need to understand that it is also the foundation to all our application development. When we sit on top of a Cloud stack we can easily get lost in sea of complexity offered to us to facilitate our containerized workflows and application development.

Before we end up with a Cloud stack where we have Platform As A Service (PaaS), containers at scale and the various tools in our development toolboxes, we start with the foundation of an operating system (OS) that supports containers.

Basic foundation

The basis of our Cloud stack will be the enterprise version of Linux known as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Cloud foundation starts with RHEL and RHEL Atomic.

The version we focus on is from RHEL 7 release, which contains fully integrated support for creating and hosting containers.

Along with RHEL as our OS we have the option to support containers in our foundation layer with RHEL Atomic. This is a light weight Linux based distribution designed with containers in mind. It contains just enough to run containers, so think of it as an appliance as you can not add any other software to it.

As an application developer you might love the flexibility of your personal development operating system, be that Windows or some flavor of Unix, but when wanting to deploy and host containers the consensus has been to use Docker tooling for containerized images.  It is enough to know that your Cloud environment can host these no matter where you develop them, no matter how you get them onto this foundation based on RHEL or RHEL Atomic.

What you will encounter when trying to manage your entire enterprise with just this foundation layer is that spinning up containers, managing them across the development, test and productions deployments can quickly become an intensive effort.

Outside of the operations tasks that go with managing your various enterprise infrastructure, there are also the issues that DevOps tackle that require managing modern containerized development workflows. These are the structured environments that support agile development methodologies needed for modern enterprises to keep pace with their customers ever changing needs.

This part of the containerized development environment must support continuous integration (CI), the ongoing testing of containerized microservices and continuous deployments (CD) that through automation are able to support the continuous change that is the modern agile enterprise developers daily life.

Red Hat Cloud Suite

Escalating scale?

Trying to maintain, update and manage a flexible DevOps infrastructure with just the foundation described is going to quickly become a large endeavor. You might even feel like you are swimming in a sea of containers that slowly seem to spread across the application development and deployment landscape.

Have no fear, the problem being faced is how to provide all these containers at scale. There is not only a need for scale, but also to manage all these containers across the multitude of hosts that are sure to be growing in your enterprise as you attempt to provide infrastructure and tooling to your application development teams.

Next up we will take you behind the scenes to explain how your Cloud stack can provide you with containers at scale horizontally across your foundation of hosts.

Stay tuned for the Beginners guide to horizontal scaling.

App Dev Cloud Stack series

Missed a previous article or looking for a specific article in the series?

1. Can’t ignore the stack anymore
2. Foundations for a stable Cloud
3. Beginners guide to containers at scale
4. Why containers at scale matter
5. It’s all about the PaaS baby
6. Open interoperability critical to success
7. Securing containers at scale

Devoxx UK 2016 - helping developers get a grip on their Cloud

There will be another Devoxx in the United Kingdom this summer, June 8 - 10 and I have teamed up with Markus Eisele to put together a few sessions.

The focus will be on helping developers getting to grips with their Cloud stack, the tools that will help and some of the interesting JBoss community work that is evolving to ease the work of application deployments.

Be sure to register and hope to see you there?

Super charging your IDE for container based development

While application developers are getting a handle on the concepts of containers, PaaS and containerized deployments with Docker, they are yet forced to use a disjunct set of tooling navigate code-to-deployment workflows.

What is available to help ease this transition from code, to Docker image and finally to containerized PaaS deployment?

Let us show you how easy it is to super charge your Eclipse IDE with the Container Development Kit (CDK). Nothing will be the same as you leverage a single toolchain in your IDE to integrate, manage, deploy and ease the application development lifecycle from code to deployed containerized images.

Awaken the force in your developers with OpenShift & Wildfly Swarm

Application developers are constantly struggling to create enterprise solutions while deploying them across various environments to production, meet budgets, heed requirements and keep operations happy as they traverse new DevOps strategies.

How can we assist them, remove infrastructure roadblocks, ease the deployment of containerized microservice-based applications and continue to monitor across enterprise infrastructures? The answer can be found in the Clouds with a containerized PaaS integrated with Wildly Swarm. The attendees will be taken on a tour, one that provides them with the ability to enable and awaken the Force within their current developer teams.

Join us for an hour of power as we delve into OpenShift, containerized PaaS, Modularized Java EE with Wildly Swarm and the tooling that will enable your developers to go from source to images and containerized deployments as easy as jumps to light-speed.

App Dev Cloud Stack - Can’t ignore the stack anymore

Application developers can't ignore
their Cloud stack anymore...

This story may seem a bit odd at first glance.

What do you mean by "Can't ignore the stack anymore?"

When your background is application development, you have spent many hours, days and years perfecting your craft. You have not only learned languages and concepts, you have made it a point to learn to make good architectural decisions when pulling together the applications you develop.

Up to now the abstraction layer you focused on was generally in the space of frameworks and not so much on the stack you were working on. Just recently Mark Little, Red Hat JBoss CTO, notes that application developers whom are"...the users of frameworks are excused from knowing too much about what is happening under the covers."

To some extent this has been a legacy standpoint, after all if the stack we use is done right we only need to leverage the frameworks and language features that shield us from the gory details.

Sounds like something you have heard before?

Well it's time that we as application developers broadened our horizons a bit, expanding our understanding of the stack we work on with the introduction of Cloud, Platform As A Service (PaaS) and containers to our toolboxes.

Can't ignore

The ideal world was one in which you worked on your application development, using languages that you either liked or your employer required and leveraged various frameworks that hopefully made your life easier.

This is a thing of the past for enterprise application developers that are heading into the Cloud. This Cloud stack offers an array of tools and features that ease both development, testing and deployments as well as the operations tasks to maintain, manage and monitor.

We will take you on a tour of the various layers and components that make up your underlying Cloud stack, but at a depth that gives an understanding to application developers without delving into the infrastructure components in great detail.

Red Hat Cloud Suite

From the basic hardware ecosystem, to the operating systems that provide you with your containers, to how these containers are can be setup to overcome the challenges faced when we want to scale, to a full service PaaS that supports your efforts and finally we will tie it all together in a suite that gives your enterprise the flexibility to develop, deploy, manage and monitor your containerized microserivce-based applications.

What's next?

It is not too late to take a closer look at the modern Cloud based PaaS stack. You can become a better application developer by gaining a bit of understanding of the stack you are working on in the Cloud. As Mark Little concluded, "...ultimately we need to take the time to investigate the entire solution not just the framework because one really can't succeed without the other."

This is where this series comes in, because as a true enterprise application developer we cannot and must not ignore our Cloud stack anymore.

Stay tuned for the next in the series, Foundations for a stable Cloud.

App Dev Cloud Stack series

Missed a previous article or looking for a specific article in the series?

1. Can’t ignore the stack anymore
2. Foundations for a stable Cloud
3. Beginners guide to containers at scale
4. Why containers at scale matter
5. It’s all about the PaaS baby
6. Open interoperability critical to success
7. Securing containers at scale

DevNation 2016 - session submission on Cloud and JBoss xPaaS story

This years Red Hat Summit in San Francisco from June 27-29th is going to be a lot of fun.

I have submitted my sessions previously to that conference and now time to get your planning sorted out for DevNation, which will be co-hosted that same week.

This is the prime event for all your Java, JBoss and other related developer interests that always attracts the best speakers from all your favorite projects.

Be sure to get your talks submitted by the Feb 8, 2016 deadline.

Awaken the Force in your developers with containerized Cloud & JBoss xPaaS

Application developers are constantly struggling to create enterprise solutions while deploying them across various environments to production, meet budgets, heed requirements and keep operations happy as they traverse new DevOps strategies.

How can we assist them, remove deployment roadblocks, ease the release of containerized microservice applications and continue to monitor across enterprise Cloud architectures?

The answer can be found in the Clouds with a containerized OpenShift architecture leveraging JBoss xPaaS. The attendees will be taken on a tour, one that provides them with the ability to enable and awaken the Force within their current developer teams.

Join us for an hour of power as we delve into OpenStack, OpenShift, containerized xPaaS and the JBoss tooling that will enable your developers to go from source to containerized deployments as easy as jumps to light-speed.

Hope to see you there!

OpenStack Summit - Awaken the Force in your application developers with OpenStack

Recently I started in my new role, where I have the chance to expand my storytelling into the Cloud space again, bringing my application development background together with some pretty exciting Red Hat technology solutions.

Another benefit is that my coverage expands to include some very interesting conference in the Cloud and integrated solutions arena.

For example, one that was outside my reach until now was OpenStack Summit. OpenStack Summit in 2016 will be back in Austin, Texas from 25-29 April.

I have submitted the following session that will bring together OpenStack Cloud based application development with Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure (RHCI) & JBoss xPaaS.

This has never been attempted at the OpenStack Summit, so fingers crossed from some real integrated solution storytelling.

Awaken the Force in your application developers with OpenStack 

Application developers are constantly struggling to create enterprise solutions while deploying them across various environments to production, meet budgets, heed requirements and keep operations happy as they traverse new DevOps strategies.

How can we assist them, remove infrastructure roadblocks, ease the deployment of containerized microservice applications and continue to monitor across enterprise infrastructures?

The answer can be found in the Clouds with a containerized PaaS integrated with enterprise Open Source middleware. The attendees will be taken on a tour, one that provides their enterprise with the ability to enable and awaken the Force within their current developer teams. Join us for an hour of power as we delve into OpenStack, OpenShift, containerized PaaS and the tooling that will enable your developers to go from source to containerized deployments as easy as jumps to light-speed.

Hope to see you there!

Red Hat Summit 2016 - don't miss these sessions & workshops

The call for paper went out for Red Hat Summit 2016 and DevNation, before you know it you will be in San Francisco, CA from June 28 - July 1.

You can submit to either Red Has Summit or DevNation or both, up to you.

Below are the talks and labs I have submitted or co-submitted with colleagues:

Pinky and the Brain Processing! Taking over the world, one Red Hat new hire at a time

Starting a new job can be a frustrating experience as you wait to get your new computer, telephone, or the access you need. Outdated scripts and error prone manual processes can hinder even the best employees in doing an effective job. These are common growing pains as enterprises evolve over time, growing to meet ever increasing demands. How does Red Hat process its growth? How does anyone process over 100 new hires a month?

Join us to learn how Red Hat IT is leveraging the power of JBoss BPM Suite to ease Red Hat into the future as it strives to meet hiring goal and introduces productive new hires into the company. This session will explore a real life case study where Red Hat leverages JBoss BPM Suite to streamline 10 years worth of legacy ad-hoc human resource systems with a flexible and extendable framework. Attendees will be treated to lessons learned along the way, offered insights into best practices when leveraging BPM in their enterprise and get a peek at the historical metrics gathered by Red Hat IT new hire processes.

State of the Union - understanding integrated and open Cloud solutions

"Are you having trouble positioning Red Hat middleware Cloud solutions? It's not your fault... it is complicated by the fact nearly every middleware vendor Red Hat competes with has some sort of cloud offering that they pitch.

This session delivers the State of the Union on Red Hat's vertically integrated stack of products and "open" philosophy. It will show how it offers customers benefits for cloud computing unmatched by competitors like Oracle, IBM, TIBCO, MuleSoft, and more. Listen as you are walked through how a container shipping company identifies, leverages and excels in their market using Red Hat middleware Cloud solutions effectively.

Join is for an hour of power to learn how to describe and discuss why Red Hat middleware cloud stack is unique and why it matters to enterprise solutions everywhere."

How to enhance customer experience through integration and automation of business events in the Cloud

With Cloud providing a more elastic and flexible architecture to handle a multitude of business events from many different devices, we are faced with many challenges to process, analyze and react correctly to the ever changing business world around us. 

With JBoss A-MQ we are provided with many common protocols to connect our business events with our devices, but business information without the ability to filter for effective customer responses, detecting meaningful behavior and being able to react in a timely manner will cripple our customer relationships. With JBoss BRMS together with JBoss Fuse we are able to bridge the gap between just connecting and collecting business events, to leveraging business rules to determine which events have meaning that require actions to support our customer experiences. 

In this workshop the attendee will have the chance to get hands on with the following:

• create asynchronous event driven integration between service using JBoss A-MQ
• create rules to to analyze business events with JBoss BRMS
• integrate rules, message event with Enterprise Integration Patters (EIP) using JBoss Fuse
• deploy a multi-container microservices application on OpenShift

Join us for this power workshop as you learn to optimize your customers business experience with JBoss Integration products.

Partners in crime from design to execution with Signavio and JBoss BPM

One of the great strengths of Red Hat and Open Source is that we work closely with partners. Together we can do more is one of the core concepts at Red Hat.

Within the world of BPM process design, Signavio's Process Editor is innovative technology that you can use to start modeling and engaging your organization in improving operational efficiency through the development of optimal models, right away. From browser to iPad it's easy for any process participant to capture, document and share professional models. The next step is testing and execution your processes, this is where JBoss BPM Suite comes in with all the tools you need to flush out, deploy and execute processes that are delivered by the Signavio Process Editor. 

Are you ready to be amazed at the ease of use and availability of extensive tooling to support a transition from design to execution of your business processes? Join us for this hour of power as we demonstrate the strengths of collaboration and execution of Signavio designed processes with JBoss BPM Suite. 


Hope to see you at the Red Hat Summit and DevNation in San Francisco!

Launching Digital Sign for Ultimate Collection of JBoss BRMS Demos

Just in case you missed it, we recently showed you the ultimate collection of JBoss BRMS demo projects but we don't want to stop there.

The next time you are in a Red Hat office somewhere in the world, keep your eyes peeled for the digital signage that is displaying all manner of news.

These signs are somewhere on the walls at our offices all over the world, from Amsterdam to Singapore, from Raleigh to Tokyo.

Keep your eyes peeled as we have hijacked the sequence and inserted our very own Ultimate Collection of JBoss BRMS demos announcement.

Looking to Automate your business?

Feel free to use the slide in your presentations and if you happen to see one of these live, snap a picture, push it out on twitter to @ericschabell.

JBoss BRMS Cool Store UI gets Vaadin facelift

JBoss BRMS Cool Store online web
UI gets a new look with Vaadin 7.

The JBoss BRMS staple demo has been the JBoss BRMS Cool Store for a long time, going through updates as the product released new versions.

The web application was put together using one of the original Vaadin releases and never updated since.

Add item to new shopping cart.

A few weeks ago I was approached in the typical open source fashion by a product manager from Vaadin offering the help of one of their developers to bring this application up to date.

We met online, and AMahdy AbdElAziz forked the project to bring it up to the current version of Vaadin 7.

This includes a few new UI features that we did not spend time on and a newer look and feel to the web application.

Below some of the screenshots are highlighting what you can do with the UI and JBoss BRM Cool Store project was released with a new version 3.2.

Added item highlights checkout button.

For those needing a bit of a review on it's usage, this web application demonstrates the interaction between a web front end, features a decision table and a rules package.

This allows the business logic to become externalized from your deployed application and can then be modified as needed at runtime.

This application leverages the rules to calculate the shipping costs based on your rules in the table below.

Clear the shopping cart pop-up.

It is pretty simple really, you can adjust how much the ranges are and what the shipping for the shopping cart total order will be by tweaking this table, for example:

• the price from Tier 2 based on value totaling between $26 - $50 is $4.99
• you can fill your cart with over $25 of materials to validate
• edit decision table and adjust it to $6.99 
• save changes
• build & deploy your cool store project
• clear the shopping cart application
• re-order the same materials and validate the charge to shipping is now $6.99

New checkout displays an order receipt.

The project is in the same template you are used to getting from JBoss Technology Evangelists, providing you with the 3-step setup you expect from us:

1. clone the project.
2. download the products (JBoss EAP + BRMS)
3. run the init script for automated setup.

The updates are not finished as AMahdy has a few more in store for you, stay tuned!

Quick tour #7 - What's in JBoss BRMS Business Central (video)

With the announcement that we have updated the JBoss BRMS Starter Kit you might have noticed that a few quick tour videos were promised.

On that promise we are starting to deliver with a series of short and simple video stories.

Today another in the series, in just over three minutes we take a tour through JBoss BRMS Business Central as part of the JBoss BRMS Starter Kit.

We hope you enjoy this story and stay tuned for more...

Did you miss the other quick tour videos?

1. Quick Tour #1: JBoss BRMS the Basic Install Project 
2. Quick Tour #2: Where to get JBoss BRMS product
3. Quick Tour #3: How to install JBoss BRMS
4. Quick Tour #4: Start your first JBoss BRMS project
5. Quick Tour #5: How to import a project into JBoss BRMS
6. Quick Tour #6: Build & run a JBoss BRMS project
7. Quick Tour #7: What's in Business Central



Looking to Automate your business?

New path to take...

The year starts with an article I was not expecting to write.

I have spent just short of four years as a JBoss Technology Evangelist (Integration & BPM) for Red Hat's Middleware Business Unit.

I have told countless stories about products like JBoss Portal, JBoss SOA Platform, JBoss EAP, JBoss messaging (several products), JBoss FSW, JBoss DataVirt, JBoss Fuse, JBoss Developer Studio, JBoss BRMS and JBoss BPM Suite.

I have helped to support multiple product launches across the JBoss middleware portfolio, created the jbpmmigration project and watching it fold into a product. I worked through technology acquisitions like Makara, Polymita, FuseSource, FeedHenry and more as they were folded into the JBoss product portfolio. I have showcased our technologies around the world at a multitude of conferences and events.

New year, new challenges!

I had a lot of fun helping to grow and mentor the JBoss Technology Evangelist team as it grew to four members covering the JBoss middleware products. There will be two remaining, Christina Lin and Thomas Qvarnstrom, both very smart and knowledgeable resources you should be following closely.

I was lucky to be able to spend the last few years working with amazing people in and around Red Hat.

But now the time has come.

 I am leaving... well, to be honest, I am moving onwards in my Red Hat journey.

Last month I was offered and accepted a role within the Integrated Solutions Business Unit, as a Technical Product Marketing Manager.

The role is similar in nature to a JBoss Technology Evangelist, but now look for my focus to move from strictly middleware to application development leveraging integrated solutions involving the full Red Hat portfolio. Think of the tying infrastructure, storage, cloud, OpenShift, mobile and middleware products as full solutions as we move forward into 2016 and beyond.

I am excited to have a new challenge before me and at the same time a bit sad to move on from my love of middleware products (especially rules, events, planning and processes). The future is now, the technology is amazing and you can expect to hear all about it from me soon enough.

Stay tuned, there are more stories to tell...