WebSphere Application Server v7

One of the things I always find odd when talking to customer is that I introdue myself with some varient of:

Hello my name is Alasdair Nottingham and I am a developer for WebSphere Application Server, I am responsible for ...

The customer then can assume that either IBM is paying me for doing nothing but sit around twiddling my thumbs, and occasionally talking to customers, or that I am working on the next release of WebSphere Application Server. Of course I cannot comment, or talk about whether their will be a next version, or what will be in it. Everyone knows that there will be, so it is rather odd.

Well finally I can start to talk about what I and several hundred people spread across three contents, five countries, and nine labs have been working on for the last two years. WebSphere Application Server v7 is here. Woo Hoo!

You can get a trial version here, and Tom Alcott has a developer works article covering the major new features. As usual my area of interest, messaging, is bairly touched on (we did a lot more than the four highlights in the article), but I am sure that the new WebSphere and Messaging blog, and this one will rectify that.

Oh, and as observed by David Currie people are being encouraged to blog about v7 and what has come, so expect a lot of posts on the WebSphere Community Blog in the coming few months.

Alasdair