Extreme Availability Where It Really Matters: The Financial Power of Integration

Extreme availability may become a competitive differentiator. Extreme availability must ensure applications can respond in under a second, whether it's supporting a wireless trade on an exchange floor, transferring multi-billion dollar transactions across global infrastructures, or protecting the integrity of integrated applications through a secure infrastructure that extends to third parties.

The financial industry requirements for availability, reliability, scalability, and performance are well beyond what most Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) software provides. Because of this, many financial institutions have developed applications in-house. However, when considering the scale, scope, and cost of changes needed to select, support, and integrate several applications, organizations have discovered the value of leveraging outside middleware to speed future development and decrease development and maintenance costs. With the development of extreme availability using commercially available middleware, organizations no longer must choose between their availability requirements or the development and maintenance benefits of standard middleware; they can reap the benefits of both.

Extreme availability is the ultimate form of high availability, when the desired goal is no outages at all because the perceived harm to the business is immeasurably large. How does this differ from high availability? While it might seem initially that the difference is relatively small, achieving extreme availability requires changes throughout the organization. Indeed, the scope of the changes is sufficiently large that it makes sense to think of the needed changes as a culture change. One way to think of extreme availability is to think of it as an "availability culture" added to a standard high-availability operation.

Business in Myanmar: Important Tips and Information

Myanmar is an economic gateway to a potential vast market of over 2 billion consumers. Unlike in the past, this Southeast Asian nation is now gradually opening to trade and foreign investment. The next century will probably see a far different Myanmar than we've witnessed over the last few years. As it has been the case in the past, investment opportunities in Asia are usually dished out on a first come, first served basis. It goes without saying that if you want to get a share of this golden opportunity, you have to start thinking about investing here today. In this brief article we shall provide you with some important advice for doing business in Myanmar.

~Investment Areas

Agriculture

Agriculture is the backbone of Myanmar's economy. The government gives top priority for the development of this sector. Major export items here include: maize, pulses, raw rubber, rice products, marine products and timber. This country also has abundant natural and mineral resources, adequate infrastructure and a talented workforce.

The Global Plastics Industry

"Plastics." In the classic film The Graduate, young Benjamin is advised to consider plastics in his career plans because the industry is decidedly primed to play a large role in the future. One can argue that the film correctly predicted the importance of this material, as one finds it in nearly everything we use daily. The food industry, computers and technology, healthcare, and the automotive sector... every corner of global business relies upon some type of plastic to function.

Quick Facts About the Plastics Industry

• According to the Plastics Industry Trade Association, growth in the United States alone has risen steadily by more than two percent annually over the last twenty years.
• According to Plastics Europe, the last three years saw production of plastics increase by six percent.
• The most widely produced plastic products include polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
• In the United States, approximately 2.4 billion pounds of plastic bottles are recycled. (Source: Earth911.com)
• Globally, plastic accounts for twelve percent of total recycled materials.

Top Producers and Exporters of Plastic

The Middle East has, in recent years, become a leader in the manufacture and export of plastics and plastic materials. According to Yalla Finance, it is estimated that overall production in the region will exceed one hundred million tons by the end of 2012. Among the top producing nations: