Mike Walker's Ramblings about Industry Architecture

I just moved my blog to www.MikeTheArchitect.com . The RSS should still be the same so if you have linked to my blog through the blogs.msdn.com/MikeWalker address you will need to update your links.

A teammate and I were chatting about search ranking and I was telling him about how I am battling it out (maybe battling out is a bit of an exaggeration) with other Mike Walker’s in the world especially the one from the National Enquirer.  I am happy...

There has been some really great announcements coming from Microsoft in terms of Green IT and Sustainability here in recent months. One big one is the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard . Watch Environmental Sustainability Dashboard Demo Top down...

All the time I get the questions about how to do current state architecture or “as-is” architecture at executive briefings (EBC), at events or through our customers. Recently I was asked about this in regards to an effort a large enterprise that is undergoing...

As you can see I am playing a bit of catch up as TED has been over for awhile. Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for "practical wisdom" as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us...

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine that resulted in some disagreements on root issues architects face. The topic of the Architect Nemesis came up. Where some of assertions were accurate it was still founded on a fundamental belief...

Last week Sohel Aziz’s Enterprise Architecture (EA) team at Infosys released there annual EA survey from their very large customer base. You can download the comprehensive report of the EA survey from their Enterprise Architecture Services portal . Also...

  There is more big news on the Open Group front these days with the just announced a merger with the Global Enterprise Architecture Organization (GEAO) that will affect the worldwide Enterprise Architecture (EA) professional community. The union...

As some of you may know I aided with the Application Architecture Guide 2.0 materials which will soon be a blue book this upcoming year. J.D. Meier who was the brains and the mass orchestrator of the guide has put together a great compile of his works...

Mike Kavis posted a high level cheat sheet for the Extended Enterprise Architecture Framework (E2AF) on his blog today. Here is the description from his post: I Basically took all of the topics from the E2AF matrix and built a document with bullets representing...

Ran across an interesting post from Johan den Haan in which he shares his thoughts on the Top Ten Misperceptions and Challenges of Model Driven Development (MDD).  This post was based on another article on InfoQ.com here: http://www.infoq.com/articles...

I just published a new article on the Microsoft Enterprise Architecture Center entitled, A Pragmatic Approach to Describing Solution Architectures . In this article, we will explore how architectures traditionally have been designed and described. By...

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of talking with Allen Brown , president of the Open Group regarding the latest TOGAF release . Thanks to Allen and his team for taking the time to chat about the new aspects of TOGAF 9 . All the details of this release...

The Canadian IT Architecture Connection blog posted about a one day EA course that may be interesting to folks in that area. See below for details: Phil Unger, from the Calgary Enterprise Architecture Forum , is organizing a one-day course focused on...

A interesting post from Michael Bullock talks about Google’s new patient approach to put data centers on ships. This was also covered in Time as one of the best inventions of 2008 . Like Michael, I think that this is somewhat problematic. We will have...

I ran across a good post by Ed Carroll called " Reducing the Cost of Engineering/IT " on the CIO forums. He outlines 4 Areas to Reduce Cost. Below are the 4 ways to reduce cost in IT: Simplify the operating structure of the department by focusing...

I am excited to announce a new Microsoft employee product, two new Walker's. On Thursday January 22nd the proud mom and dad (me) delivered two healthy baby boy twins.   As some of you may of noticed, my blogging has dropped significantly over the...

If you would like a free version of the report from Forrester Troux is giving away a limited number of copies. See the details below from their promotional mailer: We're delighted that Troux's market leadership in IT Planning and EA Tools has been recognized...

There is a lot of EA events happening in the next few weeks. The Open Group is having an event that looks to be the most significant in years. They are launching two other practitioner conferences in conjunction with the architecture practitioner conference...

Gabriel Morgan really hit the ball out of the park with his post on Enterprise Solution Architects and Leadership . He did a great job of decomposing and translating concepts from Emotional Intelligence (EI) into something that all architects will be...

I ran across an interesting post and interview on the MS Data Center Blog on the infrastructure architecture aspects of the new Microsoft datacenters. If you are in the infrastructure world, it is worth a read. The goal of Gen 4 is to modularize not only...

As followers of my blog know, I do many speaking engagements. Often times I get requests for those decks from the conference or event. Instead of sharing with a select few I thought I would share with everyone. You can find some of the major presentations...

Another EA framework player emerges in 2009, the Pragmatic Enterprise Architecture Framework (PeaF) . I did skim and let me stress that I didn’t do a detailed analysis of the framework. Below is the overview of the framework in their words: PeaF has been...

In this release both the Windows Azure Tools & the SDK was updated Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio Windows Azure SDK What's hot in the new refresh? The problem with VS hanging when you hit F5, this is a huge fix. Fix regarding the...

Facebook is the hot new platform to integrate to these days. Yes, I said platform… Facebook isn’t just a MySpace.com clone, but another player in the cloud services space. Everyone from Microsoft & Apple to even Visa wants to have a hooks into this...