Real Life Client Benefits of Cloud Computing and SOA

A summary of the technology achievements and benefits I was responsible for at my previous client:

Load Balanced Private Cloud:

• Ability to “scale out” and “scale up” all web applications as well as searchable databases
• On-demand ramp up of resources to accommodate infinite additional traffic
• Instant cloning capability through virtualization – no additional resource configurations required
• Content Delivery Network (CDN) – all media (images, videos, etc.) distributed through Akamai’s CDN, with infinite horizontal scalability

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

• Services available for all business processes – search, listing process, tracking, reporting
• Achieves perfect alignment of business needs and IT infrastructure
• Lower development costs, faster integration, rapid assembly, shortens deployment time and reduces risk of failure
• Results in more agility and business profitability

Automated Location and Property SEO

• Geo-spatial database integration with infinite SEO scalability for locations
• Incorporates all locations types: country, state, metro area, city, postal code and neighborhoods enhancing the user’s search experience
• Active listings decoupled from inactive listings at the data layer to remove search/listing display load while maintaining SEO page cache

Technology Marketing Tools

• Daily saved searches/property alerts automatically pushed to the user’s Inbox
• OpenEMM setup for weekly newsletter

LeadViewer.com

• Custom built high performance business-rules engine
• Scalable to accommodate lead routing from an infinite number of clients (web applications, mobile applications, etc.)
• Location based routing capabilities, with price ranges and subscriber capacity handling
• No incremental subscriber cost

No preaching, no "just theory" lessons - this works and can definitely be achieved.

TrendMicro - wake up IT, c'mon now!

So we just found out Houses.com that TrendMicro was categorizing Houses.com as UNSAFE. Really? I understand if it was myhousesreviews.com, allcoolhouses.com, etc. BUT A TOP LEVEL DOMAIN name like houses.com?

Mr. CTO/CIO what are you doing here? You're trying to compete with heavyweights McAfee and Norton, little things like this matter Sir/Ma'am! Fix your algorithm please. Now http://www.houses.com is finally SAFE, but categorized as Auctions??? Why, because we list Home Auctions on the website?

Yes, I am critical because I do all I can in my space to be the best at what we do. TrendMicro, so should you...

Drafted First Fantasy Football Team

I wanted to get an idea of how players are ranked, what others are drafting, where Ron Mexico is being drafted, etc.  So 2 days ago I drafted my first fantasy football team.  For those who know me, I do about 10 team a year, so getting a head start is not a bad team.  Yes, they are all money teams - not a serious gambler, but people in money leagues are more serious, attend the draft, participate each week, etc.

Ended up drafting 11th (snake draft).  I prefer PPR leagues.  Each week I need:
1 QB, 2 RBs, 2 WRs, 1 Flex (RB/WR), 1 TE, 1 K, 1 DST

Not too bad a draft... Worried about my RB2 a little, but should have plenty of WRs as trade bait later on:

• Round 1 (11): Megatron (WR) - AJ and Roddy White already gone
• Round 2 (2): Mendenhall (RB) - who else runs the ball in Steeler town
• Round 3: Gates (TE) - he puts up mad PPR numbers, worth a high pick if he can replicate last year
• Round 4: DeSean Jackson (WR) - not bad for a WR2
• Round 5: Addai (RB) - maybe should have taken Felix Jones, but Addai is a monster PPR RB unless he gets hurt
• Round 6: Percy Harvin (WR) - can't go wrong with this Flex
• Round 7: Ryan Torrain (RB) - Reggie Bush got drafted 1 pick before
• Round 8: Mike Thomas (WR) - not bad last year, only good WR in Jac
• Round 9: Jay Cutler (QB) - say what you want, but the boy can throw
• Round 10: Mike Sims-Walker (WR) - Bradford needs someone to thrown to in St. Louis
• Round 11: Thomas Jones (RB) - the only RB left in the draft that did something last year
• Round 12: Mike Williams (Sea) - let's see some of last year's stats and we have some trade bait
• Round 13: Kyle Orton (QB) - poor guy, gets no love, LOVE HIM! Broncos will keep him, last year he was great, could be good trade bait or end up being a QB1
• Round 14: Atlanta Falcons (DST) - not just another Defense, one that will be better than last year
• Round 15: Mason Crosby (K) - kicker, who cares
• Round 16: Visante Shiancoe (TE) - just in case Gates gets hurt, it's not like McDabb has someone other than Percy Harvin to throw to.

And that's that!  Drafting another tonight, will do 1 every 2-3 days.

Domain for sale - 'soaportal.com'

Back in January 2006, I purchased both soahub.com and soaportal.com.  I wanted to create an information portal dedicated to nothing but Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and didn't know which domain would work best.  I launched SOAHub.com and never did anything with soaportal.com.

Since then, SOAHub.com has become what I expected it to - search on Google for anything from 'SOA Consulting', 'SOA Solutions', 'SOA Services', 'SOA Jobs', 'SOA News' and 'SOA Forum' and we should be in the top 10.

If anyone is interested in 'soaportal.com', please contact us.  You can use the contact us form on SOAHub.com, or the contact us form on XWebServices.com.

Property.com Domain Names Acquired by Leading Online Real Estate Group to Capture Share of $11 Trillion Commercial Property Market

Condo.com and Houses.com, two leading online residential real estate portals, today announced the acquisition of the category domain names Property.com and Properties.com. Property.com is well-positioned to succeed as the Company’s third real estate portal, differentiated by the additional property types offered within the massive commercial real estate market. The site will showcase office space, retail properties, multi-family buildings, industrial and warehouse space, land, and residential properties from all over the world.
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Condo.com and Houses.com, two leading online residential real estate portals, today announced the acquisition of the category domain names: Property.com and Properties.com. Property.com is well-positioned to succeed as the Company’s third real estate portal, differentiated by the additional property types offered within the massive commercial real estate market. In addition to a comprehensive database of residential inventory, the site will showcase office space, retail properties, multi-family buildings, warehouses, industrial space and land from all over the world.

Richard Swerdlow, CEO of Condo.com, Houses.com and now Property.com stated "the acquisition made perfect sense for us. We are now able to leverage our online real estate platform, licensing and team to expand into the broader global commercial property market - including office, retail, industrial and land. It is exciting to have the opportunity to create leading online real estate portals across all property types, satisfying a growing global demand from property owners, buyers and sellers that are increasingly using the web for property searches.” The commercial real estate market is one of the largest asset classes in the United States with over $11 trillion in value and the potential size of the marketing and data services industry for commercial real estate professionals is approximately $30 billion. “We hope to secure market share through the use of our platform and category domain expertise,” he added. The combination doubles the Company’s potential market size.

The domains were acquired from Rick Schwartz, an entrepreneur known as the “Domain King” who previously sold Candy.com, iReport.com and other high-trafficked domains, and who also puts on a leading domain name industry trade show. Owning the category domain name provides traffic, enhanced name recall and brand credibility that would otherwise take years to build. Schwartz stated "it was only a matter of time before these domains ended up in the right hands. I am very happy to be partners with the Condo.com and Houses.com team and know that with the proper execution of their plan for the domains, we will have an extremely valuable web asset.” Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition is well-timed with the momentum in the online real estate market, including Zillow’s (Nasdaq: Z) successful IPO today.

Property.com (http://www.property.com) will be launched in Q4 2011.

About Houses.com and Condo.com

Houses.com and Condo.com are the world’s largest marketplaces for houses and condominiums. The sites showcase over 4 million properties for sale, rent and vacation in the United States and 70+ countries around the world. The sites receive 1.5 million+ visitors per month and cost-effectively deliver exposure and qualified leads to builders, real estate professionals and homeowners. In addition to property for sale and rent, site visitors have access to a wide variety of real estate-related products and services including mortgages, credit repair, home improvement, moving and more. The Company is privately held and headquartered in Miami, Florida. For more information, please visit Houses.com (http://www.houses.com) and Condo.com (http://www.condo.com).

You can read the entire article on Yahoo News as well.  Yes, the 2 websites already running are built on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and so will Property.com. And Yes, we are leveraging the cloud.

Here comes your Houses, Property and Condo CIO

And... It's done. I am now the CIO for:

Condos.com: For Sale, Condo Sales, Buy Apartments, Condominiums
Houses.com: Homes For Sale, Buy Real Estate, Housing Sales
Property.com: Property For Sale – Find Properties – Property Search (coming very, very soon, service oriented of course)

Of course, we also have:

Properties.com: Properties For Sale – Find Properties – Properties Search

SOA and Cloud - I was right before, and will continue to be right

Let's see...

Back in 2002, I took this small company's (if you check my LinkedIn profile, you'll get it) Web Architecture and made happen MyMerchantOffice.com and MyAgentOffice.com. At the time I fought hard to get "web" into their "business model", which was mostly paper based and relied on FoxPro for anything and everything. Just checked a couple of LinkedIn profiles for the people I fought with, and sure enough, FoxPro is nowhere to be found, and now they are all .NET Senior Developers - righhhhhhhttttttt...

DCOM and then SOA??? I was considered an "outcast", I was "complicating" things, but I stuck to my guns and all my apps even back then were service oriented, loosely coupled, etc. Hey, I saw it coming!

Then in 2005 I created my own Web Services, SOA Solution and SOA Services company and immediately launched SOAHub - Service Oriented Architecture Portal.

Getting lots of Google love for SOAHub.com. "SOA News", "SOA Jobs", "SOA Forum" are nothing compared to the money makers - "SOA Consulting", "SOA Implementation", "SOA Solutions", "SOA Services". Beating the big dogs, IBM, Oracle, you name it.

So what's next? Of course Cloud and SOA. I let all the "cloud pundits" beat their drums, and we are we are today. But I see it coming, so this Marine is present and accounted for:

Cloud SOA Hub - Everything Cloud Computing and Service Oriented Architecture related

And not to get scammed:

SOA Cloud Hub - Everything Service Oriented Architecture and Cloud Computing related