Architecture + Strategy : Architecture

Architect Council | 2010: A Cloud Odyssey

dachou — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:39:00 GMT

The forecast for 2010 is looking very cloudy, with every technology company delivering some type of cloud offering, and analysts estimating that almost everyone will try some form of cloud computing. But from a practical stand point, how should organizations leverage cloud computing effectively? Is it to simply host existing and legacy assets somewhere else, or to create next-generation applications that enable differentiated capabilities? In addition, what role does SOA play in the age of cloud computing? And does this impact the way we manage and interact with data?

Facilitated by Microsoft, the premise of this half-day event is to provide an open forum where architects can meet to discuss technologies and insights with peers. This forum will provide first-hand experiences and best practices intended to help the community to collectively discover and generate knowledge. Please join us for this opportunity to learn, share and network with your peers and other thought leaders.

Event Summary

Provide a clear and profound understanding of Microsoft’s cloud strategy and roadmap, and latest updates on the Windows Azure Platform
Discuss the state of SOA, and its relevance in the age of cloud computing
Review case studies and models of cloud usage, and examine approaches to build next-generation capabilities leveraging the cloud
Explore trade-offs, best practices, and guidance on today’s myriad of data storage options
Explain the differences and patterns of using various data interaction frameworks

Who Should Attend

Technology and business stakeholders, including CTOs, CIOs, VPs, Directors, Program and Product Managers, Architects, Lead Engineers, and IT Managers

When & Where

12/01/09: Irvine, CA

12/02/09: Los Angeles, CA

12/03/09: Phoenix, AZ

12/08/09: Mountain View, CA

12/09/09: San Francisco, CA

12/10/09: Seattle, WA

12/15/09: Denver, CO

How to Attend

This is a FREE event; only an online registration is required. Please follow the links on the event page at http://blogs.msdn.com/sac/pages/council-2009q4.aspx

Architect Innovation Cafe – Free Online Webcast Series for IT Architects

dachou — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 06:26:09 GMT

Each month through June 2010 (usually during the last week of each month), we’ll bring you a 90-minute Architect focused Webcast to educate on the latest trends/topics and how new technologies can align with your business needs.

Each webcast is also recorded, with content available for download. You can find all of the webcasts listed at http://blogs.msdn.com/sac/pages/architect-cafe.aspx.

Architect Council | Innovation is the Name of the Game

dachou — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:18:18 GMT

Adverse times are also best times for innovation! Choosing the right battles to fight, and reinventing ourselves with less resources are par for the course today. However, not all innovation needs to be revolutionary or transformative. In fact, in the current economic crisis, opportunities for innovation can be found in aspects of our core competencies, and implemented as incremental and iterative changes.

For this series of Architect Council LIVE WEBCASTS on August 24 and 25, 2009, we will discuss two of the many ways architects can innovate by recognizing the impact to architects, and learning how to effectively leverage cloud computing beyond just another place to host existing assets.

Role of the Architect in Turbulent Times – August 24, 2009
Miha Kralj – Architect, Microsoft

A Closer Look at an Internet Service Bus – August 25, 2009
Clemens Vasters – Principal Technical Lead .NET Services, Microsoft

For more details and registration, please visit http://blogs.msdn.com/sac/pages/council-2009-08.aspx

Architect Council | Pragmatic Patterns for Architects

dachou — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:03:43 GMT

“Cloud computing will supersede traditional IT”, “SOA will enable business agility”, “my way or the highway”, etc. We’ve all heard this type of proclamations before, as many look to the “next big things” in technology to exact sweeping changes and solve many issues; truth is, technologies and tools aren’t as instrumental in influencing progress, as the design and discipline in applying them to specific issues. When used appropriately, technologies and tools can be powerful enablers that bring about change.

To address this, and trying to be a bit more green, our team is hosting a series of live webcasts at noon PST on June 9th – 11th, 2009, which will focus on guidance and patterns for some of today’s hottest topics. Just another excuse to have lunch at your desk (if your time zone is nearby)! :)

Patterns for Moving to the Cloud – June 9
Larry Clarkin & Wade Wegner

Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism – June 10
David Hill

Patterns for Parallel Computing – June 11
David Chou

For more details and registration, please visit http://blogs.msdn.com/sac/pages/council-2009q2.aspx

Cloud Computing and Azure Presentation at South Bay .NET User Group

dachou — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:24:30 GMT

I had the privilege of speaking to the community at the South Bay .NET User Group again, on March 12, 2009; onsite at the Honda campus in Torrance, California. Thanks to everyone who made the time to attend!

For those who are interested, the slide decks I used can be found via the links below.

Architect Council | The Importance of the Client

dachou — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:47:25 GMT

Over the last couple of years, there has been a lot of innovation around of technologies that make it easier for the end user of an application to interact with systems. This innovation has been a boon for the end user because it has provided them a more natural interface with systems that span the web, computer, and phone. However, this has caused the complexity of systems architecture and development to increase. The focus of this session will be on how to prepare and manage this complexity within your organization.

Facilitated by Microsoft, the premise of this event is to provide an open forum where architects can meet to discuss technologies with their peers. This forum will provide first-hand experience and best practices that will enable its members to learn from each other and transfer knowledge. Please join us for this great opportunity to learn, share and network with your peers and other company leaders.

EVENT SUMMARY

The Value of the Client – In the past, the choice of how an end user interacts with an application has been dictated by IT and often without regards to the usage. Recently, as the population has become more tech savvy and are experiencing interactions on the web, computer, and the phone their expectations have increased tremendously. Many organizations now have to support multiple standards and technologies to accommodate their user base. We will discuss the opportunities and challenges this presents.

The Changing Face of the Web – The web has changed from a static collection of data to an application platform. In many cases, JavaScript and AJAX have enhanced the experience to enable more advance application scenarios. In other cases, the Rich Internet Application using technologies such as Silverlight and Flash can bring the experience to a new level. In this session we will discuss the web and in particular the investments Microsoft is making in this technology.

Creating Powerful Applications on Computers and Devices – The web has been a boon to application development and deployment, but it doesn’t always fit every scenario. There are certain classes of applications which provide a better experience when running on a device and utilizing local hardware. The ubiquity of the mobile device has also extended the expectations of users with anytime/anywhere access.

The Future of the Client – The pace of change in client technologies over the past few years has been tremendous and is expected to continue to evolve. From support of new device types such as tables and walls, to continued improvements in interactions on the web, client, and the phone the client will become more and more important from a technology perspective and more strategic to the organization.

AGENDA

12:15 PM Arrival

12:30 PM Lunch and announcements

01:00 PM The Value of the Client

01:45 PM The Changing Face of the Web

02:45 PM Creating Powerful Applications on Computers and Devices

03:45 PM The Future of the Client

04:15 PM Raffle and close

SPEAKER BIO

Joe Shirey

Senior Architect, Developer & Platform Evangelism

Microsoft Corporation

http://www.joeshirey.com

Joe Shirey is a Senior Architect Evangelist for Microsoft based in the Denver area. In this role, Joe works closely with customers and the community to help them understand where Microsoft technologies fit into the architecture of their solutions. Prior to joining Microsoft, Joe was a Vice President at Interlink group where he was responsible for service and delivery for Interlink's Denver market. In the past, Joe was a Microsoft Regional Director, a member of the Microsoft Architect Advisory Board, and sat on the .NET Partner Advisory Council. Joe has more than eighteen years of hands-on technical and functional experience in project management, systems analysis, design, development, and implementation. Joe attained his Microsoft Certified Architect award in 2005.

Woody Pewitt

Technology Evangelist, Developer & Platform Evangelism

Microsoft Corporation

http://blog.pewitt.org/

Woody is a Technology Evangelist with Microsoft in Southern California. He gets to work with all kinds of people who are interested in Microsoft development technologies. He is an experienced teacher/trainer and is a part-time instructor at University of California San Diego.

Before joining Microsoft in 2005 he worked for as a Principal Engineer for a Microsoft partner, InterKnowlogy. He has been involved in software and system architecture, code, development and infrastructure reviews and analysis of several fortune 500 companies for salability, security, performance and standards & practices. He is also an accomplished author, having written Microsoft Official Curriculum and has authored several published magazine articles.

Locations

Click on the city name for details and to register

3/24/2009 – Bellevue, WA
3/25/2009 – Mountain View, CA
3/26/2009 – San Francisco, CA
3/31/2009 – San Diego, CA
4/1/2009 – Irvine, CA
4/2/2009 – Los Angeles, CA
4/7/2009 – Denver, CO

Cloud Computing and the Microsoft Platform

dachou — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:09:14 GMT

It has been a couple of months since I wrote about cloud computing and Microsoft’s plans and strategies. Now that Azure Services Platform has been unveiled at PDC2008, and after having the opportunities to discuss it with a community of architects from major enterprises and startups via the Architect Council series of events, I can talk about cloud computing from the perspective of the Microsoft platform, and the architectural considerations that influenced its design and direction.

Okay – cloud computing today is a really overloaded term, much more than SOA (service-oriented architecture) when it was the hottest ticket in IT. There are a lot of different perspectives on cloud computing, adding to the confusion and the hype. And unsurprisingly, there are a lot of confusion around Microsoft’s cloud platform too. So here is one way of looking at it.

Microsoft’s cloud includes SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) offerings as shown in the top row of the above diagram, such as Windows Live and the Business Productivity Online Suite; and the PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) offering currently branded as the Azure Services Platform. For the rest of this article we will focus on the Azure Services Platform, as it represents a platform on top of which additional capabilities can be developed, deployed, and managed.

Comprehensive Software + Services Platform

At Microsoft, we believe that the advent of cloud computing does not necessitate that existing (or legacy) IT assets be moved into the cloud, as it makes more sense to extend to the cloud as opposed to migrate to the cloud. We think that eventually, a hybrid world of on-premise software and cloud-based services will be the majority norm, although the balancing point between the two extremes may vary greatly among organizations of all types and sizes. As a platform company, Microsoft’s intention is to provide a platform that can support the wide range of scenarios in that hybrid world, spanning the spectrum of choices between on-premises software and cloud-based services.

Thus Microsoft’s cloud platform, from this perspective, is not intended to replace the existing on-premises software products such as our suite of Windows Server products, but rather, completes the spectrum of choices and the capabilities required for a Software + Services model.

Cloud Platform as a Next-Generation Internet-Scaled Application Environment

So what is a cloud platform? It should provide an elastic compute environment that offers auto-scalability (small to massive), and ~100% availability. However, while some think that the compute environment means a server VM (virtual machine) allocation/provisioning facility that provides servers (i.e., Windows Servers, Linux Servers, Unix Servers, etc.) for administrators to deploy applications into, Microsoft’s approach with the Azure Services Platform is remarkably different.

Azure Services Platform is intended to be a platform to support a “new class of applications” – cloud applications.

On the other hand, the Azure Services Platform is not a different location to host our existing database-driven applications such as traditional ASP.NET web apps or third-party packaged applications deployed on Windows Server. Cloud applications are a different breed of applications. Now, the long-term roadmap does include capabilities to support Windows-Server-whichever-way-we-want-it, but I think the most interesting/innovative part is allowing us to architect and build cloud applications.

To clarify, let us take a quick look at the range of options from an infrastructure perspective.

The diagram above provides a simplified/generalized view of choices we have from a hosting perspective:

On-premises: represents the traditional model of purchasing/licensing and acquiring software, install them, and manage them in our own data centers
Hosted: represents the co-location or managed outsourced hosting services. For example, GoGrid, Amazon EC2, etc.
Cloud: represents cloud fabric that provides higher-level application containers and services. For example, Google App Engine, Amazon S3/SimpleDB/SQS, etc.

From this perspective, “Hosted” represents services that provide servers-at-my-will, but we will interact with the server instances directly, and manage them at the server level so we can configure them to meet our requirements, and install/deploy applications and software just as we have done with existing on-premises software assets. These service providers manage the underlying infrastructure so we only have to worry about our servers, but not the engineering and management efforts required to achieve auto-scale and constant availability.

“Cloud” moves the concerns even higher up the stack, where application teams only need to focus on managing the applications and specifying to the environment their security and management policies, and the cloud infrastructure will take care of everything else. These service providers manage the application runtimes, so we can focus on deploying and managing business capabilities, as well as higher-level and differentiating aspects such as user experience, information architecture, social communities, branding, etc.

However, this does not mean that any one of these application deployment/hosting models is inherently better than the other. Yep, while most people look at “hosted” and “cloud” models as described here, both as cloud platforms, they are not necessarily more relevant than the on-premises model for all scenarios. These options all present varying trade-offs that we as architects need to understand, in order to make prudent choices when evaluating how to adopt or adapt to the cloud.

Trade-Offs in the Cloud

Let us take a closer look at the trade-offs between the on-premises model and the cloud (as differences between “hosted” and “cloud” models are comparatively less).

At the highest level, we are looking at trade-offs between data consistency and scalability/availability. This is a fundamental difference between on-premises and cloud-based architectures, as “traditional” on-premises system architectures are optimized to provide near-real-time data consistency (sometimes at the cost of scalability and availability), whereas cloud-based architectures are optimized to provide scalability and availability (by compromising data consistency).

One way to look at this, for example, is how we used to design and build systems using on-premises technologies. We used pessimistic locking, optimistic locking, two-phase commit, etc., methods to ensure proper handling of updates to a database via multiple threads. And this focus on ensuring the accuracy and integrity of the data was deemed one of the most important aspects in modern IT architectures. However, data consistency is achieved by compromising concurrency. For example, in DBMS design, the lowest transaction isolation level “serializable” means all transactions occur in a serial manner (in a way, single-threaded) which promises safe updates from multiple clients. But that adversely impacts performance and scalability in highly concurrent systems. Raising the isolation level helps to improve concurrency, but the database loses some control over data integrity.

Furthermore, as we look at many of the Internet-scale applications, such as Amazon S3/SimpleDB, Google BigTable, and the open source Hadoop; their designs and approaches are very different from traditional on-premises RDBMS software. Their primary goal is to provide scalable and performant databases for extremely large data sets (lots of nodes and petabytes of data), which resulted in trading off some aspects of data integrity and required users to accommodate data that is “eventually consistent”.

Amazon Web Services CTO, Werner Vogels, has recently updated his thoughts on “eventual consistency” in highly distributed and massively scaled architectures. An excellent read for more details behind the fundamental principles that contribute to this trade-off between the two models.

Thus, on-premises and cloud-based architectures are optimized for different things. And that means on-premises platform are still relevant, for specific purposes, just as cloud-based architectures. We just need to understand the trade-offs so each can be used effectively for the right reasons.

For example, an online retailer’s product catalog and storefront applications, which are published/shareable data that need absolute availability, are prime candidates to be built as cloud applications. However, once a shopping cart goes into checkout, then that process can be brought back into the on-premise architecture integrated with systems that handle order processing and fulfillment, billing, inventory control, account management, etc., which demand data accuracy and integrity.

The Microsoft Platform

I hope it’s kind of clear why Microsoft took this direction in building out the Azure Services Platform. For example, the underlying technologies used to implement Azure include Windows Server 2008, but Microsoft decided to call the compute capability Windows Azure, because it represents application containers that operate at a higher level in the stack, instead of Windows Server VM instances for us to use directly. In fact, it actually required more engineering effort this way, but the end result is a platform that provides extreme scalability and availability, the transparency of highly distributed and replicated processes and data, while hiding the complexities of the systems automation and management operations on top of a network of globally distributed data centers. This should help clarify, at a high level, as to how Azure can be used to extend existing/legacy on-premise assets, instead of being just another outsourced managed hosting location.

Of course, this is only what this initial version of the platform looks like. From a long-term perspective, Microsoft does plan to increase parity between the on-premise and cloud-based platform components, especially from a development and programming model perspective, so that the applications can be more portable across the S+S spectrum. But the fundamental differences will still exist, which will help to articulate the distinct values provided by different parts of the platform.

Thus the Azure Services Platform is intended for a “new class of applications”. Different from the traditional on-premise database-driven applications, the new class of “cloud applications” are increasingly more “services-driven”, as applications operate in a service-oriented environment, where data can be managed and provisioned as services by cloud-based database service providers such as Amazon S3/SimpleDB, Google MapReduce/BigTable, Azure SQL Services, Windows Azure Storage Services, etc., and capabilities integrated from other services running in the Web, provisioned by various private and public clouds. This type of applications inherently operate on an Internet scale, and are designed with a different set of fundamentals such as eventual consistency, idempotent processes, federated identity, services-based functional partitioning and composition (loose-coupling), isolation, parallel and replicated data and process architecture, etc.

This post is part of a series of articles on cloud computing and related concepts.

Architect Council - Irvine 2008.12.11

dachou — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 06:38:23 GMT

Here are the content for the Architect Council event at Microsoft's Irvine campus on Thursday, December 11, 2008. We would like to thank everyone who made the time to attend, and sharing your feedback. We appreciate the kind comments, as well as areas we need to improve upon. If you have any further questions and/or comments, please feel free to reach out to us (via blogs listed on this site, our email addresses, or other information contained in the slide decks).

Microsoft And Cloud Computing

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: architecture platform)

A Lap Around The Mesh Services Woodyp

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: architecture framework)

Azure Services Platform

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: architecture computing)

And a couple of upcoming events:

SOA & Business Process Conference 2009 - Jan. 27-30 – Redmond, WA

http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=628664

MSDN Developers Conference 2009 - Feb. 19 – San Francisco, CA

http://www.msdndevcon.com/Pages/SanFrancisco.aspx

MIX 2009 - Mar. 18-20 – Las Vegas, NV

http://2009.visitmix.com/

Tech•Ed 2009 - May 11-15 – Los Angeles, CA

http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2009/

Professional Developers Conference 2009 - Nov. 17-20 – Los Angeles, CA

http://www.microsoftpdc.com/

Architect Council - Los Angeles 2008.12.04

dachou — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:50:52 GMT

Here are the content for the Architect Council event at Microsoft's Los Angeles campus on Thursday, December 4, 2008. We would like to thank everyone who made the time to attend, and sharing your feedback. We appreciate the kind comments, as well as areas we need to improve upon. If you have any further questions and/or comments, please feel free to reach out to us (via blogs listed on this site, our email addresses, or other information contained in the slide decks).

Microsoft And Cloud Computing

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: architecture platform)

A Lap Around The Mesh Services Woodyp

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: architecture framework)

Azure Services Platform

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: architecture computing)

And a couple of upcoming events:

Architect Council - Dec. 11 - Irvine, CA

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032393294

SOA & Business Process Conference 2009 - Jan. 27-30 – Redmond, WA

http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=628664

MSDN Developers Conference 2009 - Feb. 19 – San Francisco, CA

http://www.msdndevcon.com/Pages/SanFrancisco.aspx

MIX 2009 - Mar. 18-20 – Las Vegas, NV

http://2009.visitmix.com/

Tech•Ed 2009 - May 11-15 – Los Angeles, CA

http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2009/

Professional Developers Conference 2009 - Nov. 17-20 – Los Angeles, CA

http://www.microsoftpdc.com/

Multi-Enterprise Business Applications (MEBA) as Cloud-Based Next-Generation B2B Business Processes

dachou — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:47:00 GMT

Multi-Enterprise Business Applications (MEBA) are a new class of applications that can be used to support business processes that span enterprise and organizational boundaries. MEBAs leverage best practices and patterns from service-oriented architecture (SOA) techniques and technologies, and specifically cloud-based platforms, to facilitate the next-generation B2B (or multi-enterprise) collaboration.

This is a project I had the privilege to participate in for the past few months, along with my esteemed colleague, Wade Wegner, and under Jack Greenfield's leadership, as part of Microsoft's Platform Architecture Team. This project was just highlighted at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC2008) in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, as the RedPrairie keynote demos that showcased Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, and discussed in more depth in one of its breakout sessions (see Wade's blog for more info).

And more recently, we took a more architectural look at MEBA's at Microsoft's Strategic Architect Forum 2008 (SAF08).

Multi-Enterprise Business Applications

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: architecture multi-enterprise)

So what do we mean by “multi-enterprise business applications”? They are a new class of applications, different from the traditional data-driven applications that focus on managing data and resources and providing access to end users. They are more focused on implementing business processes that span enterprises, such as traditional B2B integration and collaboration scenarios. They leverage and build upon message-based integration and use well-defined protocols and roles, such as fundamental approaches and technologies used in enterprise service-oriented architecture initiatives. Actually, in a way, they represent an approach of extending enterprise SOA beyond the four walls of each enterprise, to integrate and work more seamlessly with other enterprises.

At the same time, multi-enterprise business applications also have some differentiating requirements. Scenarios may include participants distributed throughout different parts of the world. And since they are intended to support mission-critical business activities, we need to have a very robust architecture that can ensure high availability, high reliability, a high-level of security; plus the need to have auditing, reporting, regulatory compliance, and so on; not significantly different from our enterprise IT architecture concerns from that perspective.

And unlike traditional SOA applications that are more focused on functional capabilities within one enterprise, MEBAs extend the SOA concepts and technologies to business processes that span multiple enterprises. In addition, because MEBAs operate between organizations, their primary concerns are also different – community management, identity management, process execution management, multi-enterprise governance, etc.

Moreover, unlike incumbents in the B2B software and service providers spaces where implementations today consist mostly of customizing proprietary products and services; MEBA defines an architecture in which foundational, common services should be implemented, and how they can composited into applications that define business processes. The evolution and maturity model of MEBAs are also more dependent on the community, than any one vendor maintaining a solution. MEBAs are a new class of applications; not a new class of products or solutions.

Thus MEBA’s can be used across many different industries, especially ones that, from a traditional B2B perspective, tend to have a lot of cross-organizational collaboration needs. During this phase of the MEBA project, we attempted to take a more detailed look at the supply chain industry. And a more detailed view found many capabilities, within the supply chain industry, that today leverage various forms of technologies and implementation approaches to facilitate communication and integration across multiple partners on supply chain networks, or in a way, multiple enterprises. And for our project, we chose just one specific area, supply chain orchestration, to investigate further to evaluate how MEBA’s can be used to meet its specific requirements. So at the next lower level of detail, we have identified a set of common scenarios in supply chain orchestration. And then we chose just a few to prototype out, such as search for capacity, product recall, etc.; by building with Microsoft's Azure Services Platform.

Challenges Today

So now taking a few steps back up. Let’s talk about how some of these scenarios and capabilities are implemented today across the various industries. First of all we have multiple protocols that are intended to standardize the interaction models and data being exchanged. Some are more industry specific, such as RosettaNet, HL7 for healthcare, and FIX for financial services. While some are designed to be more general purpose, such as ebXML, WS-BPEL or BPEL4WS, and many others such as WS-Choreography, Java Business Integration (JBI), etc.

But this at the same time also hints at some challenges we have today, as in a way, there are just too many standards. And many organizations are in the process of developing more standards to define how multi-enterprise collaboration should be facilitated in their industries. For example, automotive, auto parts distribution, etc.; just to name a few.

And the observation today, is that, B2B, or integration or collaboration between multiple enterprises, or inter-enterprise SOA, is still relatively complex and difficult to implement and manage.

For example, we have a very diverse set of technologies, collected from the past 25 years or so in various attempts at optimizing or streamlining communications between multiple organizations. Everything from EDI, FTP, on-premises software, integration service providers, B2B gateways, to the current class of SOA solutions that can be extended to support B2B scenarios.

And not just the underlying technologies used, enterprises have very sophisticated needs and concerns in many areas, such as security, data ownership, management, and governance, etc. What’s more here, is that these needs and concerns are in a way, amplified or more complex when we look at them from a cross-organizational perspective.

Why MEBA?

So integration and enabling business processes across organizational boundaries, have been complex and difficult to accomplish, for many years. Why do we think now we may have a better chance at simplifying and streamlining efforts in this area, and moreover, why do we think MEBA’s, as a new class of applications may have a better chance at doing so?

Traditional B2B or multi-enterprise communication and collaboration were complex to implement and often unreliable and error-prone. Organizations had to deal with a multitude of technologies, standards, and additional sets of technologies and implementations with each partner organization on a one-to-one basis. MEBAs aim to streamline and simplify these inherent complexities, by providing an architecture that builds on existing technologies and abstracts infrastructural concerns.

From a timing perspective, the growing inter-dependence and always-connected environment for businesses, and availability of key new technologies (Web services, SOA, cloud computing, etc.), are showing signs that the time is right to take a new approach at multi-enterprise (or B2B) interactions. MEBAs build on the best practices and proven technology models of today, and offer the potential to greatly streamline and simplify efforts of implementing business processes that span multiple enterprises.

And in general, by leveraging many of the best practices and building on many of the latest trends, such as the concept of an “Internet Service Bus” (ISB) providing an architecture and platform, upon which multi-enterprise business applications can be constructed, that simplify and streamline many aspects of B2B integration today, while meeting the needs of the organizations and participants involved. We think, this concept of the ISB, will significantly transform the architecture, and how we design and implement approaches to facilitate multi-enterprise business applications.

And of course, this doesn’t mean we intend to replace the work organizations have already done with protocols and standards (such as RosettaNet, ebXML, HL7, FIX, etc.). In fact we think we can leverage those work, and use MEBA’s to provide implementations of these protocols, as well as an environment / platform to facilitate their orchestration and management.

Thus MEBAs provide the potential of these high-level benefits:

Business benefits – improve business agility, bottom-line revenue (reduced errors and cost, and faster response), and top-line revenue (higher automation, improved relationships with partners and customers)

Technical benefits – simplify and streamline connectivity, improve visibility and governance, higher quality of service, focus on delivering business processes instead of infrastructure, leverage standards-based technologies, bridge multiple and disparate identity systems, etc.

MEBA Reference Architecture

Now let us show you what a reference architecture for multi-enterprise business applications may look like. Just as you would expect, there are many layers of capabilities from this perspective. Basically, these applications will need to have a foundational services layer, which provides some core infrastructure capabilities such as compute or runtime environment, identity management system, workflow execution and management, robust messaging infrastructure, data management solution, and operational management services. On top of that, we can then build a layer of higher-level services, which are considered more functional, and provides capabilities such as community management (extending from trading party management in a traditional B2B perspective), services orchestration, business process management, party management, and so on. Then finally, we can build various types of communities, or partner networks, that define working relationships between multiple organizations. For example, each organization can belong to multiple communities, or as administrators to a particular community, can invite and add new partners, and so on. We would also like to use model-driven techniques to define business processes, and to be able to provision one or more instances of a given business process, each supporting a specific community of trading partners.

Azure Services Platform

When we saw the plans for the Azure Services Platform, we studied them to understand the kinds of applications it would support. Our conclusion was that it will spawn a second generation of B2B applications. We then coined the name MEBA to describe this new class of applications. Our focus here is to talk about MEBAs and how they can leverage this Azure Services Platform. So we will not get into the details of the Azure Services Platform, but we do want to articulate specifically how some of its components help support the MEBA concept.

Windows Azure – the cloud compute platform, provides the underlying runtime environment for the foundational services and MEBA implementation. It offers high scalability and reliability, and global reach to partners across the world

.NET Services – with its Service Bus, Access Control Services, and Workflow Services, provides the fundamental “Internet Service Bus” that can effectively address common concerns around identity and security, connectivity, and service orchestrations between multiple organizations

SQL Services – provides the scalable and reliable cloud-based database solution, which helps to establish databases in the cloud to manage the data that is shared across the multiple organizations, and especially data that support the communities and their interactions

Live Services – provides capabilities to connect to end users and support many aspects of human interaction needs

Food for Thought

MEBAs have the potential of completely changing the way enterprises interact with each other. If we further extend the MEBA vision and how it continues to simplify and streamline infrastructure concerns in facilitating business processes across organizations, we may see a world where business networks can be quickly and dynamically constructed to deliver business capabilities, simply by being able to connect the dots (or building with blocks). Business results delivered by the collective resources and capabilities from a network of multiple enterprises will become true differentiating factors, and more significant than any one enterprise can deliver alone. New business models may also emerge, as increasingly enterprises can participate in the larger scheme of things, and sometimes be a part of the process that span industries. The control of processes may begin to shift away from being enterprise-centric, to community-centric. Ultimately, enterprises can create new, more diverse, and more differentiating business offerings by being able to leverage the community of partners.

This post is part of a series of articles on cloud computing and related concepts.

Architect Council - Mountain View 2008.11.18

dachou — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:19:00 GMT

Here are the content for the Architect Council event at Microsoft's Mountain View campus on Tuesday, November 18, 2008. We would like to thank everyone who made the time to attend, and sharing your feedback. We appreciate the kind comments, as well as areas we need to improve upon. If you have any further questions and/or comments, please feel free to reach out to us (via blogs listed on this site, our email addresses, or other information contained in the slide decks).

Looking forward to another set of events next quarter!

Microsoft And Cloud Computing

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Azure Services Platform

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A Lap Around The Mesh Services Woodyp

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Announcements (PPTX):

Microsoft and Cloud Computing (PPTX):

A Lap Around the Mesh Services (PPTX):

Azure Services Platform (PPTX):

And a couple of upcoming events:

XAMLFest - Dec. 16-18 – Mountain View, CA

http://www.isvconcierge.com/Lists/Articles/DispForm.aspx?ID=335

Architect Council - Dec. 18 - San Francisco, CA

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/InviteOnly.aspx?EventID=5D-BC-15-14-81-B7-05-DA-9F-C0-E7-E4-23-88-67-BE&Culture=en-US

SOA & Business Process Conference 2009 - Jan. 27-30 – Redmond, WA

http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=628664

MSDN Developers Conference 2009 - Feb. 19 – San Francisco, CA

http://www.msdndevcon.com/Pages/SanFrancisco.aspx

MIX 2009 - Mar. 18-20 – Las Vegas, NV

http://2009.visitmix.com/

Tech•Ed 2009 - May 11-15 – Los Angeles, CA

http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2009/

Professional Developers Conference 2009 - Nov. 17-20 – Los Angeles, CA

http://www.microsoftpdc.com/

Using Events in Highly Distributed Architectures

dachou — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:23:35 GMT

I had the privilege of publishing another article, "Using Events in Highly Distributed Architectures", in the Architecture Journal, issue 17, after the previous one on Strong User Authentication on the Web in issue 16.

I discussed Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) in this article, in terms of its concepts, and how it can be applied in enterprises as the next step of evolution in SOA initiatives.

The discussion took the direction of building on top of existing SOA infrastructures, so I didn't go into some key aspects for EDA, such as the importance of a robust and reliable messaging infrastructure that can ensure the reliable delivery of messages. It needs to support capabilities such as durable subscribers, message persistence and delivery tracking, idempotence, etc. Without a reliable messaging infrastructure, the collective architecture will not achieve a high level of data consistency, which is what EDA is ideally suited for.

I also did not go into much details, in the article, regarding modeling business processes as another logical layer on top of the asynchronous event distribution models. Now most practices today when modeling business processes follow very BPEL-like approaches - sequential logical workflows and orchestrations. And there are observations that many of these efforts, attempts to catalog or define enterprise business processes, often don't succeed at achieving the intended results. One possible explanation is that it is kind of "unnatural" to try to describe series of business activities as a sequentially linked list of tasks (with conditional branches, loops, etc.). Consequently, many architects end up not modeling the processes appropriately.

On the other hand, we can more easily map out business tasks as lifecycles or state transitions for each object, because that model is actually closer to how business analysts perceive business activities. The EDA perspective is that, in the context of asynchronous eventing models, these state transitions can then be defined into a state machine. Then, a layer of sequential workflows from a traditional business process definition perspective, can be added simply by drawing relationships across the state transitions of each object. It is a more abstracted view of business processes, but the underlying state machine model may bridge many of the gaps in traditional process modeling approaches, and can be mapped directly to an EDA technical implementation.

Lastly, asynchronous systems are inherently more scalable than synchronous systems. Today when people use asynchronous communication patterns to connect systems, they often integrate processes at a functional level (i.e., having logical dependencies on the outcomes of other distributed processes). As we move towards an environment where applications become much more inter-connected, both internally within an enterprise SOA environment, and with external partners via the open Internet (from a B2B perspective); and applications becoming more dependent on a growing number of externally distributed components, higher levels of functional decoupling will be needed to improve many aspects of the distributed architecture. EDA approaches seem to provide some relatively good answers from that perspective, but in practice, just like over-arching SOA initiatives, still have many challenges to overcome.

Architect Council - Cloud Computing and Impact on Architecture

dachou — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:34:53 GMT

Cloud computing is a disruptive force that has the potential to change everything, but how do we take advantage of it? At Microsoft, cloud computing is a major component of our technology strategy and platform, and a rich and massively scalable cloud platform called the Azure Services Platform was just unveiled at PDC by Ray Ozzie (Ray’s keynote). Come for a discussion on how Microsoft’s platform can be leveraged to create a new class of applications that are more connected, dynamic, and can extend existing IT investments towards cloud computing.

Facilitated by Microsoft, the premise of this group is to provide an open forum where architects can meet to discuss technologies with their peers. This forum will provide first-hand experience and best practices that will enable its members to learn from each other and transfer knowledge. Please join us for this great opportunity to learn, share and network with your peers and other company leaders.

EVENT SUMMARY

Microsoft and Cloud Computing – Cloud computing represents the new wave of innovation that will significantly transform many aspects of computing as we know today. During this session, we will discuss Microsoft’s outlook and strategy in moving towards cloud computing, providing the next-generation cloud-based platform for building services in the cloud. We will also take discuss what cloud-based applications may look like, and how they need to be architected differently from today’s on-premise enterprise applications in various scenarios.

Live Services Platform – A deeper look into the Live Services component of the Azure Services Platform, designed to combine the world of the web and the world of digital devices. We will discuss the underlying service architecture behind this mass-scale cloud service and client platform, and how to build applications using Live Identity Service, Synch Service, Resource Model Service, Device Management Service, Notification Service, and Presence Service.

Azure Services Platform – Discussion on the enterprise-class components of the Microsoft Azure Services platform, with an overview of .NET Services (Access Control Service, Workflow Service, and Service Bus), SQL Services (SQL Data Services, SQL Reporting Services, and SQL Data Analysis Services), and Windows Azure (Compute Service, Management Service, and Storage Service). We will take a look at what these services provide, their long-term roadmaps, and discuss guidance on how they can used.

AGENDA

11:45 AM Arrival

12:00 PM Lunch and announcements

01:00 PM Microsoft and Cloud Computing

02:00 PM Live Services Platform

03:15 PM Azure Services Platform

04:30 PM Open discussion

05:15 PM Raffle and close

REGISTER

Register for a date and location near you! To register, please click on the link below (note - referral code not required to register) or call 1.877.MSEVENT (1.877.673.8368).

November 18, 2008 | Mountain View, CA
Microsoft Corporation
1065 La Avenida, Building 1
Mountain View, CA 94043
Main: 650.693.4000
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/InviteOnly.aspx?EventID=5D-BC-15-14-81-B7-05-DA-F3-EE-3A-14-5E-8B-0D-10&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032393291

December 4, 2008 | Los Angeles, CA
Microsoft Corporation
333 S. Grand Avenue, Suite 3300
Los Angeles, CA 90071
Main: 213.807.7300
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/InviteOnly.aspx?EventID=5D-BC-15-14-81-B7-05-DA-B5-BB-D8-65-4B-00-E3-8D&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032393292

December 9, 2008 | Phoenix, AZ
Microsoft Corporation
2929 N. Central Avenue, Suite 1400
Phoenix, AZ 85012
Main: 602.280.8600
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/InviteOnly.aspx?EventID=5D-BC-15-14-81-B7-05-DA-F7-7B-61-77-D0-0E-22-EC&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032393293

December 11, 2008 | Irvine, CA
Microsoft Corporation
1800 Park Plaza, Suite 1600
Irvine, CA 92614
Main: 949.263.3000
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/InviteOnly.aspx?EventID=5D-BC-15-14-81-B7-05-DA-68-F5-7D-59-6B-E7-02-AB&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032393294

December 16, 2008 | Bellevue, WA
Microsoft Corporation
Civica Office Building
205 108th Avenue NE, Suite 400
Bellevue, WA 98004
Main: 425.705.1900
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/InviteOnly.aspx?EventID=5D-BC-15-14-81-B7-05-DA-9E-26-99-66-72-50-7D-10&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032393295

December 18, 2008 | San Francisco, CA
Microsoft Corporation
835 Market Street, Suite 700
San Francisco, CA 94103
Main: 415.972.6400
Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/InviteOnly.aspx?EventID=5D-BC-15-14-81-B7-05-DA-9F-C0-E7-E4-23-88-67-BE&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032393296

Event - TechDays 08 Orange County

dachou — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:31:56 GMT

If technology is the backbone of your business, you won’t want to miss out on the TechDays ’08 event in Costa Mesa, CA. Filled with exclusive product information presented by insider experts, TechDays ’08 will show developers, IT professionals, IT executives, and partners how Microsoft technology can take their business to the next level.

Whether you attend just one day or all three, you’ll walk away with a greater understanding of the business value of Microsoft’s technology solutions. Plus, you’ll have the chance to take a closer look at Microsoft’s latest development tools. Check out the tracks below and register for these exciting sessions today!

TECHDAYS - ORANGE COUNTY, CA

November 11-13, 2008
Hilton Orange County / Costa Mesa
3050 Bristol St., Costa Mesa, CA 92626

WHAT'S NEW FOR DEVELOPERS
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 | REGISTER >

Join us for this free, live session designed to enhance your coding skills and make your life a little easier. By attending you’ll get up –to-the-minute technology delivered by seasoned developers and have lots of time to network and ask questions. Chat with your fellow developers get the latest coding tools and tips and learn how to create rich new applications. LEARN MORE >

SILVERLIGHT 2.0, SQL SERVER 2008 AND VSTO
Wednesday, November 12, 2008 | REGISTER >

Join us for the latest tips, tools and technical information you need to build powerful applications and engaging user experiences. We’ll show you how SQL Server 2008 delivers new development capabilities, including support for Spatial Data types, a fresh storage mechanism and more. You’ll also learn how to leverage the Silverlight platform to build next generation applications for consumers and business, and how Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System (VSTO) addresses some of the toughest challenges facing today’s Office solution developers. Don’t miss these free, live sessions near you. LEARN MORE >

Topic 1: What’s New in SQL Server 2008 for Developers
Topic 2: Power up your Office applications with VSTO
Topic 3: Build next generation applications with Silverlight 2.0

THE ROLE OF THE ARCHITECT: TODAY AND IN THE FUTURE
Thursday, November 13, 2008 | REGISTER >

In this session, we’ll take a look at the strategy behind the new Microsoft Cloud Services platform, provide an overview of building block services, and show how to facilitate cloud-based transactions that connect multiple organizations. We’ll also discuss the role IT architects play in the success of IT projects. The skill sets and certifications required to be a professional IT architect are still being defined, and we’ll have a panel discussion with local architects on how you can get involved and contribute to the process. LEARN MORE >

Topic 1: Microsoft Cloud Services Architecture
Topic 2: The Role of an Architect, Experiences and Our Profession
Topic 3: Local Architect Panel Discussion

SQL SERVER 2008 ROADSHOW
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 | REGISTER >

Learn more about SQL Server2008 and its new features and capabilities the new enhanced capabilities of the product. We’ll be exploring security and database management, how to best manage your data, and what’s new in business intelligence with SQL Server 2008. Don’t miss this half day event that will give you a better understanding of what SQL 2008 has to offer and how you can best put it to use at your company. LEARN MORE >

Topic 1: Database Management and Security
Topic 2: Data warehousing
Topic 3: Integrated Business Intelligence

WINDOWS VISTA, POWERSHELL AND GROUP POLICY
Wednesday, November 12, 2008 | REGISTER >

Get the latest tips and tools from Microsoft that will make your life as an IT Professional a lot easier. First, we'll dispel some Windows Vista myths and address the top deployment blockers that have been reported. Then, we'll show how you can automate system administration tasks and increase your productivity using Windows PowerShell™. Finally, you'll get the inside track on Group Policy preferences, a new feature in Microsoft Windows Server® 2008 that will help you better deploy and manage Windows Vista and application settings. LEARN MORE >

Topic 1: Why Windows Vista with SP1?
Topic 1: Managing Windows Vista with Windows PowerShell
Topic 1: Group Policy Preferences, Templates and Scripting

VIRTUALIZATION AND ENTERPRISE SEARCH
Thursday, November 13, 2008 | REGISTER >

Join us for a series of demonstrations and technical discussions about virtualization and enterprise search. We’ll explore the powerful new Windows Server 2008 virtualization platform and data center management solutions, while covering the benefits of Microsoft’s integrated Hyper-V and System Center product families. We’ll also look at how to help information workers find, use and share the critical data they need to boost productivity and success. You’ll see how Microsoft’s robust platform of business-ready search solutions can quickly, securely and seamlessly connect people with the information they need – when they need it. LEARN MORE >

Topic 1: Virtualization
Topic 2: Enterprise Search

Talking about Service Oriented Architecture

dachou — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:29:45 GMT

I had the privilege to speak at the April monthly meeting at the Los Angeles Java Users Group. The meeting was held on April 1st at the Sun Microsystems office in LA, and so that in itself was the source of a few jokes lobbed at me. At times I was also referred to as Darth Vader, but all in good fun.

I had a great time chatting with the group, and was fortunate enough to see some familiar faces, especially a few back in the days when I worked at Sun Microsystems at this same office.

The topic of my presentation was "Service Oriented Architecture". This was picked as SOA is something that can be talked about from a technology-agnostic perspective, especially if we're focusing on the "A" in SOA.

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The presentation was mostly repeating what is considered "common knowledge" in SOA these days, such that SOA is an "architectural style", and that most of the fundamental principles consist of best practices and learned lessons in software and systems engineering in distributed computing, in the IT industry; and applied towards enterprise IT and systems integration efforts. And SOA is a pretty overloaded term too, such that many different perspectives exist, but all are valid:

Organizationally - developers, architects, managers, business stakeholders, executives, etc.

Architecturally - enterprise, infrastructure, security, data, integration, application, etc.

But in general, there is no one form of SOA that fits all organizations. Large enterprises tend to have a different set of issues and solution approaches at different priorities compared to medium-to-small businesses. The kind of SOA implemented at one organization may not necessarily be effective or needed for another organization. Just the same as all problem-solving scenarios, it is most effective to fully understand the issues, and then figure out approaches to address them.

Similarly, a maturity model-based approach is an excellent way to plan an SOA journey, but no existing maturity model (available from most of the technology vendors and analysts) is necessarily the right one to use. It's more important to pick out the aspects in a few maturity models that work for each organization, than to try to follow/implement a specific one religiously.

Meanwhile, many organizations looking at SOA are also faced with a number of questions at the implementation level:

Process vs. data integration
SOAP vs. REST
Data federation vs. data replication
Synchronous (RPC) vs. asynchronous (EDA)
Transactional (2PC / compensational) or not
Trust vs. impersonation
Centralized vs. federated ESB (or no ESB at all)
Stateful (BPM) vs. stateless (orchestrations)
Real-time vs. latencies

Conceptually, transforming a traditionally silo'ed enterprise environment into one logical real-time entity does seem to be a really beneficial proposition. However, that is often very difficult to obtain. Some of the factors include transforming all systems to be 24/7 instead of having independent maintenance outage windows, bear the transaction volumes of the highest trafficked systems, coordinating integration tests between multiple teams (or the entire enterprise), be subjected to the highest security compliance, etc.; when many didn't have to be when they were back in the silo environments.

Lastly, what may SOA look like in the future? There's talk about event-driven architecture (EDA) as the next step in evolution, which could be a more natural way of integrating business processes than the current RPC-style of tying everything together. There is also talk about extending SOA out to the Web, for enterprises, and additional advances in cloud computing, such as infrastructure services like internet service bus(es), federated security, cloud-based identity management and privacy controls, cloud-based data transformation services, etc. Continued progress in the semantic and interpretive Web may also play a major role in adding context to Web as a platform. And advances in model-driven programming and integrating them into service-oriented compositional architectures (such as Oslo on the Microsoft side, and SCA on the Java side) that change traditional multi-tiered application architectures to fully composite application architectures in all tiers (client-side mash-ups plus server-side mash-ups).