This IBM® Redbooks® publication is based on the Presentations Guide of the course Essentials of Cloud Application Development on IBM Bluemix that was developed by the IBM Redbooks team in partnership with IBM Middle East and Africa (MEA) University Program.

This course is designed to teach university students the basic skills that are required to develop, deploy, and test cloud-based applications that use the IBM Bluemix® cloud services.

The primary target audience for this course is university students in undergraduate computer science and computer engineer programs with no previous experience working in cloud environments. However, anyone new to cloud computing can benefit from this course.

After completing this course, you should be able to accomplish these tasks:

The workshop materials were created in August 2016. Thus, all IBM Bluemix features discussed in this Presentations Guide and Bluemix user interfaces used in the examples are current as of August 2016.

This book was produced by a team of specialists from around the world working with the IBM International Technical Support Organization (ITSO), and IBM MEA University Programs.

Hala A Aziz is an IT Specialist in the Cairo Technology Development Center (CTDC) in IBM Egypt. She has more than 10 years of experience in IBM Application and Integration Middleware software such as IBM WebSphere® Application Server, IBM WebSphere Portal, IBM MobileFirst™, and IBM Endpoint Manager. Hala’s expertise also includes IBM Cloud and IBM Bluemix. She worked as a consultant on eGovernment, telecom, and banking solutions for clients in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Oman, and Switzerland. Hala has several technical professional certifications, including Certified Application Developer for IBM Web Content Manager and IBM Worklight. Hala has published several technical articles and IBM Redbooks. She has also delivered IBM internal education and client enablement training workshops around the world.

Ahmed Azraq is a Certified IT Specialist in IBM Egypt. Since he joined IBM in 2012, he has worked as a senior cloud developer, technical team leader, and architect in the MEA Client Innovation Center, which is part of IBM Global Business Services® (GBS). His areas of expertise include Cloud, IBM Business Process Manager, middleware integration, Java, and IBM Watson™. Ahmed has acquired several professional certifications, including Open Group IT Specialist, IBM Bluemix, Java EE, IBM Business Process Manager, Agile development process, and IBM Design Thinking. Ahmed has delivered trainings on IBM Bluemix, DevOps, Node.JS, and IBM WebSphere Liberty Profile to IBM clients, business partners, and university students and professors around the world. He is the recipient of several awards, including Eminence and Excellence Award in the IBM Watson worldwide competition known as Cognitive Build and the IBM Service Excellence Award for showing excellent client value behaviors and knowledge sharing.

Mohamed El-Khouly is a certified IT specialist in IBM Egypt. In his 12-year career with IBM, Mohamed held various jobs in product development and IBM IT services. Mohamed’s current focus is IBM Cloud services. Mohamed has delivered several IBM Bluemix training courses.

Ben Smith is a Solution Developer in the Emerging Technology Institute in the IBM laboratory in Research Triangle Park (RTP), Raleigh, North Carolina. Ben’s current focus is IBM Blockchain and open source hyperledger. He is a recipient of the IBM PhD Fellowship for 2010 and 2011. He defended his dissertation, “Empirically Developing a Software Security Test Pattern Catalog Using a Grounded Theory Approach,” and received his Doctorate in Computer Science in July of 2012, advised by Dr. Laurie Williams. Since joining IBM in August of 2012, Ben has integrated IBM WebSphere Liberty, the premiere web application platform from IBM, into Cloud Foundry. Ben was instrumental in standing up the original version of IBM Bluemix, the platform as a service (PaaS) IBM offering that is based on Cloud Foundry. Ben continues to help to integrate IBM WebSphere Liberty and other IBM products and solutions into this new Cloud platform. Further, Ben has worked with several IBM clients to stand up their own on-premises instances of IBM Bluemix, including IBM cloud services and the IBM WebSphere Liberty buildpack.

Sally Fikry is a Certified Expert IT Specialist in the IBM Egypt Cloud unit. Sally has over 11 years experience providing consulting services to IBM clients on middleware and hybrid cloud integration. Throughout her career, Sally participated in many consulting projects with IBM clients worldwide. She played different roles including supporting pre-sales activities, consulting, solution design, and development, and leading technical teams. She holds several technical certifications. Sally’s current focus is to help IBM clients to add value to their businesses through hybrid clouds and middleware offering on cloud, such as IBM API Connect, IBM Integration Bus, IBM MQ, and IBM Bluemix.

The project that produced this publication was managed by Marcela Adan and Vasfi Gucer, IBM Redbooks Project Leaders, ITSO.

Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this project:

Juan Pablo Napoli
MEA University Program Manager

Warren Fung
Client Technical Engagement, IBM Cloud

Keith Tilley
Client Technical Engagement, IBM Cloud

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