Who We Are

The author team consists of five current and former DataPower practitioners from IBM Software Services for WebSphere. This department, also known as "Lab Services," has tight interaction with all facets of IBM product development and deployment. We have close ties to DataPower engineering, support, sales, QA, enablement, and product management, as well as to DataPower practitioners in other consulting organizations within and external to IBM. We have leveraged these resources and our years of knowledge to provide the closest look at SOA Appliances to date.

The team consists of, in no particular order:

• Bill Hines- A Consulting IT Specialist in ISSW, focused on both customer deployments and internal IBM education. An author of many articles and a book on the IBM WebSphere Application Server, Bill is a long-time IBMer with a proven track record. Bill's knowledge of IBM and experience in publishing is a fantastic asset; his Rolodex is a Who's Who of SOA, Security, and IT knowledge.
  
• John Rasmussen- A Senior IT Specialist in ISSW, and a legacy member of the DataPower team. John has worked with DataPower as both a developer and a consultant, and has years of incredibly useful insight into the products and their real world enterprise deployments. John's strength as a technical innovator is unparalleled when it comes to finding real-world solutions to difficult IT problems.
  
• Jaime Ryan- A Technical Sales Specialist in the U.S. West, and a former member of ISSW for DataPower. Jaime's experience with DataPower specifically and SOA in general goes back many years, and approaches these topics from many perspectives: sales, consulting, development, and documentation. Jaime's insights into customer interaction helped focus the book on straightforward writing and pragmatic solutions.
• Simon Kapadia- Security Lead for ISSW in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), and our sole contributor from across the pond. Simon has turned a love of computers into a life-long career, and he is intimately familiar with all aspects of networking, security, and real-world deployment architectures. Simon's detail-oriented approach to IT paradigms helped shine a light on DataPower's interaction with other systems within an enterprise.
• Jim Brennan- An IT Specialist with ISSW, and a true road warrior. Jim has a background in development across multiple platforms and languages that makes him an invaluable asset to DataPower customers and practitioners alike. Jim's experiences with DataPower deployment at critical customers helped shape the examples, scenarios, and suggestions we chose to include in this book.
  

Welcome to the blog!

Welcome to the author blog for the IBM DataPower SOA Appliance Handbook. We've spent the last nine months working on a guide for the owners and users of DataPower appliances to better understand and more efficiently use their devices in real world settings. The author team has worked with DataPower appliances at hundreds of customers across the country and around the world, and has focused the knowledge we've gained into this one-stop-shop for all the most useful tidbits. If you are thinking about investing in DataPower appliances for your enterprise, or if you already own the devices and just want to understand them a little better, this Handbook will provide architectural and technical discussions, useful examples, and helpful tips and tricks along the way.

This blog consists of our insight and analysis into the development of the book itself, the reasoning behind some of the topics and chapters covered within it, and some suggestions for making the most of this new resource. We hope you enjoy the book and the blog, and we welcome comments, suggestions, and other interactive feedback.