George Cerbone's blog

How long is a piece of string?

MSDNArchive — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:33:00 GMT

A raging email thread on one of our internal aliases led me to an old blog entry about self-locking kangaroos.

We have the same kind of thing in architecture. I am often asked "What is the best way to..." or its logical corollary "Take a look at this architecture and make sure there is nothing wrong with it." These kinds of questions are what I used to call "How long is a piece of string" questions. Without extra context, it is really tough to answer them. It's like asking "Which is a better car for me... a mini-van, or a roadster?"

In architecture, we call this additional context functional and non-functional requirements. Tools like PBA can make it easier to identify thse requirements. As architects, we look at the context and try to make smart trade offs. But there is rarely a "best" answer to most of these problems.

Web 2.0 thoughts from the boss

MSDNArchive — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 21:13:04 GMT

Dan has written a great post on Web 2.0 and why young(er) folks seem to "get" it more easily.

I've learned two things:

1) I am old. Thanks, Dan. :)

2) I've often said that technology is much more a reflection of sociology then anything else. That's why so many problems in the enterprise are so hard, and so many "tech" projects fail. To paraphrase Jim Collins..."First figure out what you want people to do, then figure out how to make them do it."

Enterprise Authorization

MSDNArchive — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:31:17 GMT

My colleague Curt Devlin has written a great article on enterprise authorization. This is a really thorny problem that is going to get worse as enterprises become more and more virtual.

Sun to sell Windows

MSDNArchive — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:39:00 GMT

I never thought that I would see the day that Microsoft and Sun would have become so close, but Sun is going to sell servers pre-installed with Windows.

It's good to see...I've always thought Sun was a great company.

Will Microsoft Become Facebook for the Enterprise?

MSDNArchive — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:40:00 GMT

Great article from CIO on some really innovative social networking work that Wachovia is doing.

Death of the Datacenter

MSDNArchive — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:08:00 GMT

I've believed for a long time that the "Datacenter" as it exists today is a doomed entity, which needs to become a logical construct rather than a physical construct. Apparently, Forrester agrees. I agree with the first part of the conclusion, that pervasive networking will be a key driver going forward. I'm not so convinced that it immediately leads to desktop virtualization.

First MCA board

MSDNArchive — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:21:00 GMT

I recently got the opportunity to serve on my first MCA board in Atlanta, GA. Congratulations to all of the candidates that achieved the certification.

One thing that stood out for me....we need to find a way to better prepare candidates. We had several folks who were very close to the bar, and I think that with a little more prep, they would have been able to achieve the cert.

To that end, I am working with some other MCAs to put together a set of resources for prospective candidates. Look for some more info here soon. And if anyone who is pursuing the certification has ideas on what they would like to see, let me know that, too.

Edit: Corrected spelling. Thanks, Mom!

Green Datacenter Initiative

MSDNArchive — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:18:00 GMT

One thing that has been on my mind lately...how can folks reduce the amount of power that they are consuming in the datacenter. Very few architects look at power efficiency as a first-class system quality.

In my mind, this is something that is going to take a while to solve. It is roughly analogous to security as a system quality. Infrastructure architects can build firewalls, set up traffic monitors, but at the application layer architects have to consider security important and architect their solutions with that quality in mind. It's the precise same problem with power. We will see initial stabs from the infrastructure side of the house, but it will be a while before apps are power aware.

I think that green is the next big thing in the datacenter, and not just because of environmental concerns. Power is expensive and getting more so. Power cost quickly dwarfs acquisition cost. Architects need to consider these things when they design systems.

MSDN Financial Services Industry Center

MSDNArchive — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 21:47:00 GMT

Check out the MSDN Financial Services Industry Center, run by Mike Walker. Excellent content!

http://msdn.microsoft.com/FinServArch

Windows PowerShell...

MSDNArchive — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:41:37 GMT

...has relased to the web!

Download is available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/download.mspx

Financial Services Webcast series

MSDNArchive — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 18:30:00 GMT

The 3rd Unwrapped for Financial Services Webcast Series for Developers is coming up in September.

This series is presented live, and includes both technical and strategic session on Microsoft solutions for Capital Markets, Retail Banking and Insurance firms.

Check out http://www.financialdevelopers.com/ for more information, or register here.

Perspective Based Architecture

MSDNArchive — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 23:27:08 GMT

My colleagues, Lewis Curtis, Ryan Plantm and I have been working on an architecture methodology called "Perspective Based Architecture" or the PBA method. The idea is to move to a question based framework that can be employed within any other methodology that may already employed.

Check out the website here.

First post from Live Writer!

MSDNArchive — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 17:38:21 GMT

Now that we have released the Live Witer beta, I'm planning on being much better about keeping my blog up to date.

George awarded MCA

MSDNArchive — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:42:00 GMT

I have just been notified that I have sucessfuly passed the architecture board, and I am officially a Microsoft Certified Architect. I have to give many, many thanks to my mentors Lewis Curtis, and Allen Stewart, without whom I would not have made it.

I will blog on my MCA experience soon....

Rights management tension

MSDNArchive — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 03:10:00 GMT

A comment to a recent post to my blog regarding rights management:

"Sounds like an innovation your customers don't really want/need. Stronger integrated rights management mainly benefits content owners, and allows the imposition of unreasonable limitations on content use. I am in particular talking about, for example, buying a song, and having it only be listenable from my one PC, and not be portable to my laptop, or my iPod, or some other device. So, this is why, I for one, am not enthused about these "innovations."

First, thanks for reading, and thanks for your comment! Although I was using the RM example as, well, an example, I think you bring up some interesting points.

I understand the tension between the desire of content owners to protect their content, and the desire of consumers of content not to be restricted. There have been RM schemes that have been very restricitve, and the kind of symptoms that you describe have been painful for folks. And I think that is precisely why we need to have a common, flexible, transparant rights management platform that makes it easy to migrate content from one device to another. Stronger rights management benefits content owners. More transparent rights management benfits both owners and consumers. And enterprises, too, are very interested in being able to apply rights management to business documents. We use this internally at Microsoft. Powerpoint presentations that are for internal use only get rights managed. Even if someone copies them off of a file share onto the internet, the content stays protected.

I also think content consumers benefit from rights management as a technology. Content owners are more comfortable making content available electronically, if they enforce their licensing policies. Content comsumers get broader range of available content.

Warfighting and Architecture

MSDNArchive — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 17:48:00 GMT

In his book Blink, Malcom Galdwell discusses the experience of Paul Van Riper in creating structures for spontaneity. In 2000, Van Riper was given the task of leading the opposition force for a wargame called Millennium Challenge '02. Van Riper’s approach contains some key leanings for infrastructure architects.

Under the Millennium Challenge scenario, a rogue military commander in the Persian Gulf has broken away from his government, and is threatening to bring war to the entire region. Paul Van Riper was given the role of the rogue commander. The entire exercise took over two years to plan, two weeks to execute, and cost over 250 million dollars. The goal of the exercise was to test the military's theories on how to organize command and control in a large scale conflict.

The Unites States (or Blue Team) bet heavily on technology in the exercise. Realizing that warfighting was as much about ideas and cultures as it was about weapons and armies, the Pentagon developed a series of formal tools that allowed them to measure each of these axes: military, economic, social and political. The military commanders were given access to real-time maps of the combat situation, intelligence about the social and cultural situations. They were given an unprecedented amount of data, and a rigorous methodology on how to use that data. The Blue Team spent an incredible amount of time and effort on trying to lift what military folks call the "fog of war", that level of uncertainty of exactly what is happening on the battlefield.

Paul Van Riper’s Red Team, in contrast, had little in the way of technology. Van Riper didn’t believe that you could life the fog of war. Therefore, his strategy was to provide overall guidance to his team about his intent, but to leave the actual implementation of how to prosecute the war up to his end commanders. For example, he would tell his folks "I want to disrupt their command and control" or "I want to sink these ships." The actual methodology was left up to the end commanders.

Who won Millennium Challenge? The Red Team kicked the Blue Team’s ass for a week. Eventually, the Pentagon began applying restrictions to Van Riper's team to make sure that the "correct" results occurred. Like, you can't fight back, for example. I think that there are some powerful lessons for infrastructure architects. You cannot lift the fog of war. Architecture must stay agile to be relevant. You have to give your own warfighters enough freedom to make good decisions that are relevant for their own business goals.

Secret Code, Part 2

MSDNArchive — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:57:00 GMT

The second pillar that Microsoft believes in is the idea of integrated innovation. Integrated innovation means that developments on one part of the platform are leveraged across the rest of the platform. Microsoft spends close to $7 billion on research and development each year. Integrated innovation allows us to capitalize on this spend across all aspects of the platform.

A good example of this is Microsoft’s rights management platform. Microsoft has invested heavily in rights management. We have built assets into Windows Server, in the form of Rights Management Server. This provides the core rights management server functionality, the ability to encrypt, license, and deliver content, and to generate rights management licenses for clients. But we have also built assets into the client side of Windows, in the form of a trusted rights management lockbox that ensures that rights managed content is protected, regardless of the source of that content. We have also built tools into Office, to make it easy to generate and consume content, and into Media Player, to consume rights managed media.

Our rights management platform includes all of these assets. Innovations to one are leveraged by the others, and customers benefit from innovations in all areas.

Microsoft's secret code revealed!

MSDNArchive — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 18:33:00 GMT

I am often asked by architects to explain “Microsoft’s strategy” on some piece of software. "What is Microsoft’s strategy on Mainframe computing?" "Are you going to move exclusively to Terminal Server?” "Are you going to port Active Directory to Linux?” In order to answer these questions, you need to understand Microsoft’s business strategy. I am going to let you in on the secret, so that you can start to answer these questions yourself.

Microsoft is different from its other enterprise competitors in three important ways. These principles underlie everything else that we do in the enterprise. If you understand these pillars, you can start to make predictions on what Microsoft is going to do as a company.

First, Microsoft believes in the broad platform. We want to build products that span the entire enterprise application lifecycle. We identify three core participants in this cycle: The software developer designs and builds products to support the enterprise. The IT pro takes applications from the software developer, and deploys and operates solutions to support the business. The third constituency, the business knowledge worker, analyzes information and acts on it. We want to have software assets in each of these areas, and provide capability to tie these three folks together in a rich way.

These buckets are somewhat synthetic, of course. Which bucket does my role, that of an infrastructure architect, fit in? Am I a developer, designing systems, or an IT pro, operating systems? My blog is here on the MSDN side, my colleague Lewis Curtis’ is on the TechNet side. Microsoft wants to make sure that we have assets in all three areas, that the offerings are rich, and that they tie the communities together. DSI is a great example of this. A direct offering to tie together all three communities, and provide rich communication among them.

I’ll let you in to rest of the code in later posts.

What is infrastructure architecture?

MSDNArchive — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:56:00 GMT

architecture

The fundamental organization of a system embodied in its components, their relationships to each other, and to the environment, and the principles guiding its design and evolution.

architect:

The person, team, or organization responsible for systems architecture.

IEEE Standard 1421-2000 “IEEE Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems”

When talking with customers, a question that I am often asked is “What do you mean by infrastructure architecture?” The title “Architect” seems to be a popular one these days…even our own Bill Gates goes by the title. It seems that every company has a different definition for what an infrastructure architect is and what they do.

Architecture is the philosophy that underlies any system. It defines the purpose, intent, and structure of any system. Architecture is the discipline of addressing business needs with people, process, and technology. There are various perspectives or kinds of architecture, including business architecture, enterprise architecture, data architecture, application architecture, and infrastructure or technical architecture. Each of these disciplines has certain unique characteristics, but at their most basic level, they are focused on mapping solutions to business value.

Microsoft identifies three communities of architects: Enterprise, Solution, and Infrastructure architects. Enterprise Architects view the business as a whole and provides specifications to solution architects. Solution architects are generally focused on developing software based solutions to problems, within the scope provided by the enterprise architect.

Which brings us to infrastructure architects. Infrastructure architects take the requirements and constraints defined by the enterprise architect, collaborate with the solutions architect, and design the supporting environment for the solution defined by the solutions architect. They do this by specifying a top level design for a given solution, while adhering to a given set of constraints specified by the enterprise architect and the solution architect.

It’s important to note here that architecture is not engineering! Engineering specifies the HOW of the solution. For example, an engineer will be very concerned about how to create and manage a stripe set for a SQL server. An architect will be concerned with the need for that data to be highly available, and how the availability of that server ties into the larger data plan.

Architecture is also not product planning. Architecture is defined by its capabilities and services, not its implementation. If your architecture is defined by particular releases of a particular vendor’s software, then it is probably not architecture.

A great overview of this topic is the "Microsoft Architecture Overview" whitepaper, located here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnea/html/eaarchover.asp

DSI Core Principles

MSDNArchive — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 22:39:00 GMT

Check out the DSI core principles at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/dsi/dsicore.mspx