Sima Solutions LLC (SIMA), a real-time software solutions company and leading Business Process Management (BPM) provider, announced today the strategic deployment of SimaCLOUD, an integrated IBM Cloud Hosting WebSphere Commerce platform.  SimaCLOUD Solutions provides clients managed transformation services to migrate legacy WebSphere Commerce application environments into the Cloud. Our new managed services and solutions for WebSphere Commerce hosting is designed to enable companies to bridge on-premises environments into private or public clouds and accelerate app development. The SimaCLOUD solutions for Cloud Hosting IBM’s WebSphere Commerce includes the open source Kubernetes-based container architecture and supports Docker containers. This facilitates integration and portability of workloads as they evolve to any cloud environment, including the public IBM Cloud, AWS, Azure, and others.

• Dev / Test Cloud Environments to add more application and agile development capacity fast and efficiently
• IBM Private Cloud migration to move existing application workloads into the latest version of WebSphere Commerce
• Advanced Cloud Management Automation: Streamlined management across cloud environments to help launch, monitor and manage services and help ensure consistent security protocols.
• Security & Data Encryption: Security Vulnerability Advisor to scan containers across the cloud to surface potentially serious issues and weaknesses; Ability to encrypt all data in flight and provide for strict access control by users within a cluster.
• Core Cloud Platform: Includes a container engine, Kubernetes orchestration, and essential management tools surrounding developer runtimes, which are fully integrated and automated.
• Infrastructure Choice: Compatible with systems from leading manufacturers including Cisco, Dell EMC, Intel, Lenovo and NetApp, as well as IBM Systems, including IBM Power Systems, IBM Z, and IBM Data and Application Support & DevOps Tools
• Infrastructure Choice – Compatible with systems from leading manufacturers including Cisco, Dell EMC, Intel, Lenovo and NetApp, as well as IBM Systems, including IBM Power Systems, IBM Z and IBM Data
• Application Support, Optimized management & DevOps Tools: Containerized versions of software and development frameworks, including IBM WebSphere Liberty, Open Liberty, MQ and Microservice Builder, as part of software bundles; and APM, Netcool and UrbanCode, which can be added for a separate fee.

Commerce Developer Environment Offering (ECOM-BLUESHIFT CDE ©)

We are happy to announce our public offering to the vibrant and growing IBM® Commerce Community. This offering combines the feature rich IBM® Cloud with IBM® WebSphere Commerce and best-of-breed Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment software from industry. This offering intends to “standardize” and “improve efficiency” of the Development phase of IBM® WebSphere Commerce based e-commerce solutions. This offering consolidates the combined rich consulting experience of over 50 years with industry-wide general best practices for application development.

What Problems Are We Addressing and Why?

IBM® WebSphere Commerce based e-commerce solutions typically have a long and continuous Development lifecycle. Did the word “long” development cycle raise an alarm for you? Well, “long” is a relative word!  And many of you can provide reasonable cases for why it is long today and maybe its ok for the lifecycle of development to be long! Of course!  This pattern drags down the momentum and ROI of the IBM® WebSphere Commerce based e-commerce solutions! We view it as problem and that is the specific objective our offering intends to address.

Let us take a scenario. A client decides to use IBM® WebSphere Commerce for their e-commerce solution. In order to use the IBM® WebSphere Commerce solution, they have to start on a journey to establish a working Commerce Development Server, Commerce Development environment, Source control repository, Branching Strategy to support multiple projects, Release strategy, Build and Deployment and so on! So, bottom line is every existing and new client has to go through setup, maintenance and upgrade of commerce developer environments and release management procedures periodically.

Above mentioned activities are NOT optional and are required to be done continuously to improve the development cycle efficiency. And, these activities become mandatory whenever there is a new commerce software version released by IBM. Every client does these activities independent of each other in the IBM® Commerce Community. This means – each client goes through discovery, standardization and continuous improvement of procedures for establishing a development environment independently (ably assisted by employees, IBM® business partners and IBM®). But, do you see any good collaboration?  You see a problem?  We do!

Why we see this as an opportunity for improvement and what is the long term Goal

We intend to break away from the above mentioned pattern, which gives rise to the drag and ROI issues for IBM® WebSphere Commerce based e-commerce solutions. We would like to “standardize” and “improve efficiency” of each and every component of the development lifecycle of IBM® WebSphere Commerce based e-commerce solutions. Development environments and build and release management are fundamental for having a vibrant and operation development practice for IBM® WebSphere Commerce. So, we want to start with these two objectives- namely Standardized Development environments and Standardized build and release management. The mentioned offering shall help establish a foundation for a highly effective and faster development environment of IBM® WebSphere Commerce based e-commerce solution.

The long term goal for us is to share the development patterns across all clients of IBM® WebSphere Commerce Community. This shall reduce the development-effort and improve on ROI of solutions.

Highlights of the Commerce Developer Cloud Offering

Commerce Developer Cloud Offering highlights are illustrated and highlighted below.

The mentioned offering shall provide IBM® WebSphere Commerce Developer Integrated Development Environment in the IBM® Cloud with the following mentioned highlights

• IBM® Cloud Hosting ( Public and Private Cloud Support)
• IBM® WebSphere Commerce Developer v7.x (FEP-8), v8.x and v9.x supported.
• Infrastructure and Software management, provisioning done by a dedicated experience professional team.
• Best Practices Implemented for collaborative team development of IBM® WebSphere Commerce Code.
• Supports VPN option for using secured On-Premise end-point services from IBM® Commerce IDE.
• IBM® DB2 Development Database
  • Choice of Local and Remote Options Available.
• IBM® WebSphere Commerce Search Server (SOLR Search Engine)
  • Choice Local and Remote Options Available.
• IBM® HTTP Server integrated with Commerce Development IDE.
• Integrated Source Control System
  • Choice of GitHub® and Apache SVN® Available.
• Branching and Code-Merge Strategy to support multiple project initiatives
  • Managed Services provided.
• Continuous Code Quality
  • SonarQube Integration
• Continuous Integration for Build
  • Jenkins CI and TeamCity integration Available.
• IBM® Urban Code Deploy for Code/Application Deployment Services
  • Manage the schedule for deployment and historical view.
• Storefront Automated Test Engine
  • Operational Automated Test Engine
• Rest API Test Harness
  • Operational Rest Test Harness based on commerce auto-generated service layer (CASL) framework

How to use our Offering?
The beta version of our offering will be available to the public in the early part of Q2 2018 (Late April/May 2018). Please contact us to receive a free trial beta version.

“Regardless of what version of WebSphere Commerce you are starting with, SimaCLOUD Solutions for Cloud Hosting IBM’s WebSphere Commerce has the roadmap to accelerate transformation of your WebSphere Commerce application to cloud hosting,” states Jim Pollitt, President of Sima Solutions LLC. He continues: “The new Sima Managed Services and Solutions for Cloud Hosting IBM’s WebSphere Commerce provides Flexible Platforms with Support for Enterprise Developers to simplify management of WebSphere Commerce and accelerate app development.

A leading provider of software and services for IBM WebSphere, Commerce, Lotus and service-oriented architectures (SOA)

Led by experienced, top-tier lead architects, Sima Solutions’ consultants provide project-based or staff-augmentation services to design, build and deploy enterprise-class solutions from small to midsize organizations to global enterprises.

With over 20 years’ experience in the IT-consulting industry, SIMA Solutions is a leading provider of software and services for IBM WebSphere, Lotus and service-oriented architectures (SOA). Led by experienced, top-tier lead architects, SIMA Solutions’ consultants provide project-based or staff-augmentation services to design, build and deploy enterprise-class solutions for small to midsize organizations to global enterprises. Learn more . . .