Greetings all... So after nearly 5 years of focusing on the finance sector and really enjoying every minute of it...the time has come to expand my horizons and take the next step in delivering great products for Microsoft. So as of very soon (date...

Here at Microsoft, we are approaching the end of the fiscal year. This means that everyone seems to be running around (like proverbial headless chickens) wrapping up some activities and planning for the fun things they will do next year. For those that...

Yon were the days when the term “architect” was a much proscribed and well defined career. Gaunt, squinty individuals hunched over drafting tables with t-squares and compasses crafted the great works of art found in today’s building infrastructure. Today...

I’ll apologize in advance for not posting sooner, but things have been crazy here at the beginning of the year. Crazy in a good way and there are some fantastic projects in the work that will begin to be visible to the outside world very soon. At risk...

Well, my first blog of the new year. I'll tell you something, the holiday season brings with it so much family time and other frenzied activity that I have been remiss in posting. But that will change as the new year brings some exciting developments...

Anyone watching this blog knows that I do enjoy a good video game. And over the last two years I've been pleasantly surprised at the great environment and social landscape that has been manifested in the XBox Live experience. But this last few weeks,...

I'm finally done with the seasons of standards meetings. I just wrapped up the ACORD Subcommittee meeting in Ft. Lauderdale. I have to say that I'm glad that I'm done with all that. One thing that strikes me about standards and application design is how...

There is nothing more mind numbing than sitting in a bland hotel conference room listening to people argue about the naming of an XML tag, or whether some complex type should have a status code (and what are the codes, oh that’s another half an hour)...

As many are probably already aware, the US Insurance industry suffered a major blow (not to mention TONS of market cap gone) this week in the filing of charges against a raft of executives for allegations of price fixing and other sundry schemes. For...

As per a sort of unspoken understanding with my eldest son, his good behavior whilst running errands on Saturday earned him a new Bionicle from Target. And of course when he got home he quickly put it together, again amazing me with his skill in following...

Been a rough couple of weeks...kids, illness and events. I have been remiss in posting. We just finished the SAF here in Redmond this week and I will be posting some information and feedback in general here very shortly. The season of standards will soon...

I just wanted to really quickly cover this topic as a new thread. I've received several mails asking about the relationship between the Insurance Forms Reference Implementation (IFRI - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E4DB6C80...

I really hope that I am not alone in this line of thought, but I really hate the Presidential Debates. I did debate back in secondary school and college, and to call these things "debates" is an insult to pillow and tickle fights everywhere. I don't know...

The Insurance Forms Reference Implementation for Microsoft Office 2003 is NOW AVAILABLE!!! You can download the code and files at the following location: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E4DB6C80-4B5B-454B-8962-0441B61B521E&displaylang...

In this final part of the Financial Value Chain series, I'd like to address, what I think can be the most exciting parts of the Financial Value Chain. Up to this point, it would be fairly easy to call parts 1 through 4 a common infrastructure that can...

Somehow I knew that this was going to be a great weekend. There's something about spending a wonderful afternoon out on Elliott Bay with the rest of the team that sets the stage for a great weekend. Thanks Pat ( http://www.pathelland.com ) for a great...

There's something about Peter Sellers that totally cracks me up. I just finished watching "Dr. Strangelove" on TCM in my office here at home (as I also read a paper on Software Factories, a nice blend). After this last week, and as I watched the movie...

This week has been just crazy. And today proves to be even busier, but I wanted to make sure that I moved this forward and talked about the supporting PLATFORM tools supporting the Financial Value Chain. With so many companies espousing web services and...

I went out and bought Fable ( http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/rpg/fable/index.html?tag=mp_num1 ) last night. I just couldn't wait for the Microsoft Company Store to get it in stock. So I stayed up past 2 a.m. playing last night. Let me tell you, this game...

I'm working up a new "SOA friendly" term for Financial Value Chain (FVC) since that term just sounds a bit overused or ambiguous. But we'll stick with it for now until I am done. In this episode I want to talk about two of the layers of the FVC. Namely...

I just had to post this pointer to a GREAT article written on the web services architecture and a great educational read found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnwebsrv/html/introwsa.asp One thing that this...

OK, so after looking at what I was going to write and hearing some offline feedback I'm going to break this into several parts, so this might be like a five part series (some others interspersed) so just stay tuned. Also, the limitation of these integration...

So a number of people have sent me mail asking about the "Insurance Value Chain". So I thought I'd give a little background (Part 1) and future (Part 2) for what the Insurance Value Chain was and what it will become. Anyone who has watched Microsoft in...

Is it sick and wrong of me to say that I'm in LOVE with the work that is coming out of the http://www.ws-i.org (WS-I)? Or perhaps "lust" is a better term. Anyway you put it, this stuff is just fantastic. And last night as I tried to get one of my kids...

So here I am sitting in my office after a long weekend...and I mean LONG weekend. I decided to head out with my brother-in-law (a Software Dev Engineer on the Outlook team) to a wedding in Utah. And I thought a road trip would be fun. 27 hours of interstate...