First of all I wish all the readers of my blog a happy new year 2009, good luck and especially healthiness (I think that's much more important than success;))...

As a stressful week (several customer briefings - one with a longer trip at the beginning of the week, a presentation at university on agile development and presentations on identity) are in front of me I started thinking a little bit about all these different things. I really realized during the Christmas days that I need to focus a little more on a few topics and stay with others in a broader (architectural-only;)) sense... And finally my thoughts for the core-topics I would like to stick with this year are the following as I strongly believe these are things that will move the market within the next couple of years more or less dramatically - and together with my peers, partners and friends I would like to be a part of these big changes within and without Microsoft (that doesn't finally matter:))

• Identity meta System, identity federation, claims-based security
  I strongly believe in the holistic overall story behind the concepts of the identity metasystem as outlined by Kim Cameron (http://identityblog.com). Although my experience is that getting this topic to the market is pretty hard todo as most people stick with classic, old, inflexible role/user-based security systems (which are a subset of the metasystem's concepts) for me that furthermore is a strong indicator that this is going to change the IT-industry within the next years more or less dramatically... Also there are some Austrian, local initiatives going on that I would like to support and be part of which definitely fit into the same area - Portal-Interconnection (Portalverbund), Citizen-Card etc. A perfect dream would be bringing those together... Technology-wise for me that means a focus on WCF, Cardspace and Geneva on the Microsoft-side and Eclipse Higgins, Sun Metro, Novell DigitalMe and some others on other platforms (whereas as Microsoftie my stronger focus will remain on the MS-part;)).
• Modeling-strategies, Software Factories and DSLs
  This is another topic of interest for me... During the presentation at the university in December I again saw that DSLs and factories are a powerful, very powerful instrument. I also believe that the strategy Microsoft is following now in this area by supporting DSLs and factories AND UML as general-purpose modeling toolset empowers a great combination of tools and paradigms for architects. Finally technology-wise that means a focus on DSL-toolkits, Microsoft Blueprints and Oslo as soon as it gets more concrete;) In this area I will stick at a theoretic and pratcial area within the Microsoft-world (as long as I am working for MS I will have to;)) and at the theoretic level in the Non-Microsoft world.
• Architectural Patterns and Paradigms and Strategic Thoughts in a Services World
  Well, as a solutions architect I will have to stick with this world in a broad fashion, right? More exactly I will try to combine these efforts here with the previous ones in connection with S+S, SOA and Composite Apps in general. This will involve some technology focus on Azure, Composite WPF, Composite Web, WCF and a little BizTalk (but not too much), but in general I will stick at the level of patterns, approaches, practices in this area.
• Driving the Microsoft Innovation Center Interoperability Initiative in Austria
  The last thing with which I will try to help the market is something I will setup very early this calendar year in Vienna... I have designed a complete concept for an initiative to help the Austrian market dealing with interoperability-challenges between Microsoft-technologies and other platforms. This is kind of an organizational work as by far I do not know anything from a technical side in this area - so content-wise I WILL need help to get this running... more details will follow;) My concept on the program nevertheless includes a council as a steering committee for the program, training and lab initiatives, university initiatives and good-old, well-known one-day events... Anyway - what's definitely true is that neither I nor Microsoft can deliver these workshops alone because "interoperability" is always a matter of building bridges... anyway... that's coming soon and you can keep an eye on my blog and our team-blog on getting news on this initiative... and of course feedback on anything I / we propose / do etc. so that we can adopt the initiative to the needs of our market...

For me that's a clear focus on some technologies more related to my core topics... I would be more than happy getting in touch with people with similar or same interests locally and internationally. So it would be great reaching out to me either through channels such as xing or facebook or directly through the blog for the sake of sharing experience, feedback and recommendations on all these initatives... at least locally I will give my best to incorporate all the possible;)

Cheers
Mario