Architecture + Strategy : Strategy

Microsoft Implementing Software Plus Services

dachou — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:09:00 GMT

Microsoft has been talking about "Software + Services" (S+S) as its vision of the future for a while now (see related posts on S+S: Microsoft Platform Overview & Talking about Software Plus Services). People like Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie often talk about the applicable patterns and trends that exemplify this concept, even though they don't always mention the moniker.

And Microsoft's execution on this direction is quite visible too. From continued investments on the desktop and enterprise software, to the latest and still growing cloud platform that brings many of the traditional capabilities into the Web.

For example, many of the enterprise servers - Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications, and eventually Biztalk and SQL Server as well, are all being implemented as services in the cloud that users can use directly, without investing in their own physical infrastructures to host and manage them. There are also a lot of progress being made in the consumer space in the form of Windows Live services.

However, a major value proposition in S+S is the ability to integrate traditional software with distributed services, and bring the best of both worlds together. What has Microsoft done so far to implement that S+S vision?

Basically, many efforts are happening across the board. Some of the more visible ones include:

Exchange - it supports multiple delivery means (hosted on-premise, outsourced hosting/management by a partner, and cloud-based service from Microsoft), it supports many clients (Outlook, OWA, Outlook Mobile, Outlook Voice Access), multiple licensing models - traditional perpetual and subscription; plus itself can be a consumer of attached services such as Forefront spam/filtering services

Office System - Office clients combined with SharePoint server represents a business productivity platform (client-server interaction and leveraging the many valuable enterprise services in SharePoint such as enterprise search, content management, business data catalog, business intelligence, etc.). Excel spreadsheets can be published into SharePoint and then provisioned as web services, InfoPath forms, stored as part of SharePoint’s InfoPath services, can be rendered on InfoPath clients but can also be rendered directly from SharePoint as forms services. Office clients themselves can also be extended with .NET to connect to back-end systems whether directly or via SharePoint or Biztalk. For example, Office Live Workspaces which is a cloud-based SharePoint service for consumers, SharePoint Online for businesses, etc.

SharePoint - SharePoint Server itself can be deployed on-premise, outsourced hosting, or accessed as a subscription service from Microsoft (SharePoint Online). It also has many other flavors such as Office Live, Office Live Workspaces that live in the cloud as services for consumers to use

Windows Live - known as a set of cloud-based services, but Microsoft has also delivered a set of client-side software (Mail, Messenger, PhotoGallery, Toolbar, Writer) to improve the user experience, in addition to the browser-based interfaces. Also many of the services offer API’s for people to build applications with.

Office Communications Server - similar to Exchange, it now also has a cloud-based service for people to use (Office Communications Online), plus API's for developers to build specific branding and user experiences

Duet - a product that integrates Microsoft Office with SAP. Basically users can use the Office clients as the UI to SAP services

Xbox - Xbox Live is one of the first examples of S+S

Dynamics - similar model to Exchange - multiple deployment/delivery models, licensing models, and client access channels

Windows - Windows Update is a componentized client and cloud-based service interaction model; similar is OneCare

These examples all demonstrate the fundamental principles of S+S:

One recent offering that is particularly interesting, is Windows Live Workspaces (http://workspace.officelive.com). This service offering, in a way, is Microsoft's response to Google Apps. Instead of converting the Office client software suite (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Groove, OneNote, Visio, InfoPath, Access, etc.) into browser-based solutions to compete head-on with Google Apps, Windows Live Workspaces was delivered to offer the sharing and collaborating capabilities that have been cited as the biggest shortcoming when using the Office clients.

Now Microsoft actually has been delivering SharePoint services for a number of years now to provide that file sharing and collaboration scenarios for workgroups and enterprises. But there was a gap for consumers and inter-organizational scenarios that traditional SharePoint deployments (inside the firewalls) don't address very well.

Thus Windows Live Workspaces is still built on SharePoint, but has been designed specifically to support consumer and end-user collaboration. It provides capabilities for fine-grained document-level access control, ubiquitous access, cloud-based storage, and client-side add-on's that integrate directly into the Office clients. So users can create/open/save documents into Windows Live Workspace directly from Word or Excel, for example. And of course, user always have the option to save documents locally until they're ready to share with other people.

This approach illustrates the S+S approach by leveraging best of both worlds. Rich client-side software (criticized as bloatware sometimes but it can also be perceived as having the capabilities ready-to-use regardless of where a user is; having internet access or not) that fully leverages the power of the client device platform to maximize individual productivity, while leveraging cloud-based platforms for sharing and collaborating with others to maximize group productivity.

Microsoft Platform Overview

dachou — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:57:09 GMT

I also had the privilege of speaking at the South Bay .NET User Group, at their April monthly meeting, held at the Honda Motors U.S. headquarters campus in Torrance, CA.

The topic of this presentation was an overview of the neat and new things on the broad Microsoft platform, to help distill an understanding of how Microsoft is evolving the platform in response to major trends in IT environment today.

| View | Upload your own

We took a quick glance over many interesting platform components from Microsoft:

Software + Services (S+S): http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/aa699384.aspx
S+S Blueprints: http://www.ssblueprints.net/
SOA - Oslo: http://www.microsoft.com/soa/products/oslo.aspx
BizTalk Services: http://labs.biztalk.net/
Windows Live Platform: http://dev.live.com/
Office Business Applications: https://www.obacentral.com/
Office Live Workspaces: http://workspace.officelive.com/
Silverlight: http://www.silverlight.net/
Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/cc303301.aspx
Silverlight Streaming: http://silverlight.live.com
Popfly: http://www.popfly.com/
Robotics Studio: http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/
XNA Game Studio: http://www.microsoft.com/xna/
Surface: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
Photosynth: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
HD View: http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/hdview/hdgigapixel.htm

The intention is to show that, in addition to building .NET applications on the core .NET platform (ASP.NET, Atlas/AJAX, WinForms, WPF, WCF, WF, etc.), there are many rich frameworks for building different kinds of applications, and often available at a higher abstraction level or specialized in specific scenarios. Having an awareness of these components means additional options for .NET developers to address specific problems or implement specific capabilities. The skills and knowledge on the .NET platform, such as programming in C# and familiarity with the Visual Studio development environment, can easily be extended to create solutions using these rich frameworks and platform components.

All this is being brought together under the context of Microsoft's perception of the the future of technology, influenced by major trends today including SOA, Web 2.0, Software-as-a-Service, etc. Microsoft uses the term "Software + Services" to describe this vision, where rich and targeted software components (client-side and installed on-premise) connect to and leverage distributed services (server-side and cloud-based).

The big question is, is this "Software + Services" view of the future relevant? Arguably Microsoft seems to be the only one advocating this view of the world where both client software and distributed services combine to deliver compelling user experiences, when mainstream mindshare today seems to be focusing on browser-based applications. And while it is worth noting that most of the major services players, such as SalesForce, Google, Adobe, Yahoo, Mozilla, etc., all are delivering desktop components that live outside of the browser (or at least work in off-line modes), their approach seems to be client-side software as an augmentation to cloud-based services (i.e., Google Desktop, Adobe AIR, etc.).

It is still difficult to say whether "Software + Services" will be more relevant, or browser platforms will become more dominant than they already are. As we can expect to see that the browser platform will become more sophisticated, whether via continued improvements in HTML and JavaScript or shift to RIA platforms such as Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight (and Java FX, Open Laszlo, etc.); and that smart client applications will become easier to distribute and manage (like how FireFox manages its own updates). But I do think probability is higher that we can expect that not everything will be delivered through browsers.

In particular, we should expect that organizations will continue to invest in additional channels beyond the browser to reach customers. Desktop gadgets, desktop applications, plug-ins or add-ons to existing desktop application platforms (such as Office clients, Windows Live Mesenger, Vista Sidebar, SideShow, etc. on the Microsoft side), multiple device platforms (such as Windows Mobile, XBox, Zune, Media Center, Windows Embedded, etc.; again on the Microsoft side), and various services platforms (such as Windows Live, Popfly, SharePoint Online, etc.; on the Microsoft side), are all potential channels to add value to browser-based user experiences, and in many cases, very viable options to differentiate from others.

Now Microsoft may be the most vocal about the value of client-side software combined with server-side services, and building a platform that provides a spectrum of choices (which may be criticized as adding complexity as opposed to simplifying and unifying into a "good enough" approach). Similar approaches can also be identified from other leaders in the industry. Google for one is delivering more and more platform components - Google Apps, Apps Engine, Android, Desktop, GrandCentral, iGoogle, Search/Analytics/Ads, Youtube, and many more in the pipeline such as audio and video advertising, etc. From a high-level the visible trend is that Google is aggressively diversifying its platform and providing value by allowing customers to leverage the capabilities in those platforms.

Thus, we can expect to see that the technology "platform" is evolving into a much more diversified set of capabilities, and increasingly, those capabilities can be leveraged via a multitude of means beyond tradition API-based or Web services-based integration; beyond writing code.

2007.12.04 MSDN PowerSeries Event in Irvine, CA

dachou — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:06:09 GMT

I had the opportunity to present at the MSDN PowerSeries event in Irvine, on Software + Services, Windows Live Platform, and the Office Platform. It was a tough act to follow after Lynn Langit's morning session, but the audience was great and allowed me to talk about these topics at an architecture level and not providing implementation-level details.

For those who attended the event - thank you again for your time at the event and the feedback you've provided; both positive and otherwise. Here are the presentations:

Announcements

| View | Upload your own

Software + Services Overview

| View | Upload your own

Windows Live Platform Overview

| View | Upload your own

Office Platform Overview

| View | Upload your own

The presentation decks have also been uploaded to my Windows Live Skydrive in PowerPoint 2007 (PPTX) format. If you don't have Office 2007, you can download the free PowerPoint Viewer 2007. Here are the direct links to the presentation slide decks in PowerPoint 2007 (PPTX) format:

Announcements
Software + Services
Windows Live Platform
Office as a Platform

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Describing Web Platform Stack

dachou — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:30:11 GMT

Context

In an earlier blog post I talked about "Web as a Platform" (in Web 2.0's context) and briefly described a layered and componentized perspective in looking at the Web platform in general. And I thought it would be more clarifying to illustrate what a Web platform stack might look like, so this post is intended to describe (not define) a stack view of the Web platform.

Plus, the evolution of this stack is the result of collective innovation contributed by many brilliant minds, and not driven by any single entity. Just as Eric Schmidt had said, "don't fight the Internet", I also don't think we need to model the Web after a specific prescribed framework. Rather, just allow the collective consciousness continue to innovate organically.

Thus this is a description of the Web platform (not a definition), as it is merely an attempt at categorizing the observed patterns and trends, and their relationships and dependencies, in the Web 2.0 phenomenon, into a structured context. There are many ways to describe and categorize these patterns, so this view is not necessarily exact and accurate, but hopefully it can provide some clarifications into the way Web is evolving.

Architecture of the Web

Below is a high-level rendering of the layered components architecture view of the Web platform stack:

The choice of words used is questionable, but the intention here is to highlight the trends and patterns (and their relationships) and hoping to effectively convey the concepts, without spending the time to make sure they are semantically accurate.

Just as I mentioned in my earlier blog post, layers towards the bottom of the stack are progressively closer to raw data and IT architectures, and layers towards the top are closer to people. In general, this layered stack view is used as I think lower layers serve as platforms that encapsulate the underlying complexities and provide abstraction and support to the upper layers. Even though this also kind of describes the evolutionary path (or a maturity model) of the Web in the past few years, I think this stack view is relevant as innovation is still occurring across this entire view.

Some examples to help clarify (nowhere near a comprehensive list; just intended to illustrate the categorizations):

Infrastructure:

Standards - XML, HTML, CSS, SOAP, REST, Atom, RSS, BitTorrent, HTTP, SMTP, FTP, SMS, VoIP, etc.
Tools - LAMP, WISA, JavaScript, .NET, Java, Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc.
Media - video streaming, podcasts, vcasts, electronic gaming, interactive TV, Microsoft IP TV, Microsoft Media Center
Runtimes - hosting environment, servers, desktops, browsers, clients, mobile devices, Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation, Nintendo Wii, Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, etc.
Networks - Internet, Wi-Fi, VPN, WAN, cellular, wireless LAN, DSL, FiOS, etc.

Foundation:

Utilities - Amazon EC2, programmableweb, etc.
Data - Amazon S3, Google Base, Microsoft Astoria, etc.
Storage - Google GDrive, Windows Live Skydrive, XDrive, DriveHQ, Box.net, Elephant Drive, etc.
Messaging - Amazon SQS, Microsoft BizTalk Services, etc.
Identity - Windows Live ID, Google Accounts, Yahoo! Accounts, OpenID, etc.

Framework:

Personalization - My Yahoo!, iGoogle, Netvibes, Windows Live, bookmarks, favorites, etc.
Transformation - Microsoft BizTalk Services (part of Don Ferguson's description of the "Internet Service Bus")
Composition - Yahoo! Pipes, Google Mashup Editor, Microsoft BizTalk Services, etc.
Orchestration - Microsoft BizTalk Services (part of Don Ferguson's description of the "Internet Service Bus")
Privacy - TBD; in general, interoperable services to give users control over what parts of their online presences to share and what not to share

Applications:

Information - Google Analytics, Google Trends, MSN, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Upcoming, etc.
Visualization - Google Maps, Virtual Earth, Yahoo! Maps, Google Gadgets, Windows Live Gadgets, Vista Sidebar Gadgets, mobile clients, etc.
Commerce - Amazon, eBay, Paypal, Google Checkout, MSN Shopping, Microsoft Points, etc.
Monetization - Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter, pay-per-click, cost-per-action, impressions, etc.
Accessibility - TellMe, Google Translate, Live Search Translator, services for the visually impaired like Google Accessible Search, plusmo, ZapText, etc.

Integration:

Search - Google Search, Yahoo! Search, Ask, Windows Live Search, etc.
Distribution - Facebook Platform, Microsoft Popfly, etc.
Aggregation - Newsgator, Bloglines, Rojo, NetNewsWire, My Yahoo!, Windows Live, iGoogle, PageFlakes, etc.
Syndication - Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook Newsfeed, Feedburner, Technorati, etc.
Portability - Gadgets, Widgets, Google OpenSocial, etc.

Participation:

User Content - blogs, wikis, reviews, photo sharing, Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournals, Wikipedia, CrowdRules, Flickr, Youtube. Epinions, Urban Dictionary, Trip Advisor, eHarmony, Match, etc.
Communities - MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, hi5, Bebo, Windows Live Spaces, Friendster, LinkedIn, World of Warcraft, Xbox Live, Second Life, etc.
Folksonomies - del.icio.us, Digg, reddit, Simpy, Furl, Netvouz, etc.
Collaborative Filtering - Amazon, half.ebay.com, NetFlix, TiVO, Last.fm, StumbleUpon, etc.
Mashups - Microsoft Popfly, JackBe, etc.

Interaction (emerging):

Social Graphs - capability to enable social network analysis and moving towards mapping physical relationships
Collective Intelligence - capability to comprehend and extract meaning from composite/aggregate communities
Microformats - creation of various metadata formatting approaches to add contextual relationships
Semantic Relationships - adding meaning and contextual mapping to various forms of content available on the Web
Implicit Networks - frameworks for capturing and analyzing dynamic aspects of user activities on the Web

Interpretation (futures):

Derived Intelligence - a form of artificial intelligence derived from collective intelligence to aid predictive analysis
User Intent - discernment of user intentions based on historical user activities, responses, and collective trends and patterns
Dynamic Relationships - ability to map dynamic aspects between user activities throughout the Web

In general, each component in each layer is worthy of a separate detailed analysis, and only a minor fraction of things that are examples of a particular category have been listed. Though the intention is to show that each site or service individually is not representative of the layer component; it is the network effects created by the collection of sites and services in that category. Similarly for the layers in the platform stack, it is the aggregation of individual components that really exemplify the characteristics of that layer.

As a result, we can see that each layer in this stack view has dependencies on the services offered in the underlying layers. And each layer itself provides a level of abstraction and support to the layers above. Thus architecting solutions using the Web as a platform is quickly becoming a process of choosing a target layer (where the solution will reside), and choosing the appropriate combination of support services from the underlying layers.

This view can also be helpful in visualizing general trends of innovative development on the Web, and identify potential spots where opportunistic developments can occur, and areas where they have been turned over to systematic developments. For example, the current state (as of this writing) is that mainstream efforts can be categorized as focused in the "Participation" layer, and is where many of the opportunistic developments are being turned into systematic ones (basically, gaining maturity). The "Interaction" and "Interpretation" layers are considered to be the subject of the next Web (or Web 3.0), and is where much of the research & development efforts are focused in.

One fundamental aspect is that, the Web platform is created and maintained by the collective wisdom contributing to it. It is too big and too diverse for any one entity to own, even though many organizations have investments in multiple areas, and some more than the others. But it is interesting to see how this view of the Web platform is taking shape, based on the inter-dependencies and (almost "symbiotic") relationships established between the clusters of sites and organizations operating on the Web.

Hypothesis

The general concept here is that, Web 2.0 applications are taking on a new form. They are composite applications in nature, and increasingly can be created and hosted completely in the Web (cloud), without any dedicated on-premise infrastructure. And they are increasingly being implemented at higher levels of abstraction (moving up the stack).

For established enterprises, this marks a shift in Web application models. From approaches to open up enterprise data silos and providing value-added services to customers ("Applications" layer aspects), to migrate to a model where various higher-level components of the Web ("Integration" and "Participation" layer aspects) can be integrated and leveraged to connect to the communities. For emerging businesses, it is now possible to quickly establish an initial online presence by completely building on the cloud-based Web platform, while looking to add differentiating values with a variety of options (such as dedicated on-premise solutions).

From a user participation perspective, lower layers are progressively closer to people with higher technical expertise, but are populated by smaller communities. On the other hand, upper layers are progressively closer to larger communities as barriers to entry, from a technology perspective, are increasingly lower. This aspect demonstrates the power of network effects in enabling the participation age, and fueling the explosive pace of innovation towards creating a Web that connects/involves more people and is more relevant and intelligent.

Certainly, areas where boundaries are being pushed may still sound like science fiction, and it's fun to imagine that new breakthroughs will bring about sea changes that will overthrow all conventional wisdom. The blogosphere already has tons of speculations in that respect. Though I believe "could" does not equate to "should", such that change for change sake will not add value; only changes that lead to better outcomes will gain adoption. Thus my assessment is that, significant changes are surely imminent, but conventional wisdom will also not cease to complete irrelevance. Eventually, when the pendulum settles, we usually see a hybrid world, with some changes more dominant, and some changes less. The Web is a place where rapid changes are occurring, and as architects and strategists, using a pragmatic viewpoint when facing these changes may help us better plan the migration path between current and future states.

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Thoughts from the WebbyConnect Summit

dachou — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:44:58 GMT

I had the opportunity to attend the WebbyConnect Summit on October 3-5 at Laguna Beach. It was a series of non-technical panel discussions on the various growing trends on the Web, and their social and cultural impacts, especially with respect to the media and internet industries. Topics discussed include:

Web as an essential media channel
Convergence of online and traditional media
Convergence of minority expert knowledge and mass collective intelligence
Disruptive innovation in organizations
Privacy vs. piracy on the Web; cultural impacts on the next generation
Convergence of the Web and physical worlds
Emergence of social networks and online media as political platforms
Importance of brand and storytelling on the Web
Web 2.0 as a customer engagement platform
PR’s transition from absolute control to dialogues with consumers

It was a very insightful event, as the various very notable speakers presented their thoughts on how media and social trends are impacting the evolution of the Web, and vice versa.

Some highlights:

General theme of “convergence” between extremes; emerging focus on “and” and away from “either/or” debates; best of both worlds and hybrid models instead of one dominating/replacing the other. For example,

Traditional TV media and online media
Computers and devices
Online and offline
Inherent openness and selective filtering / segmented privacy
User generated content and high production value content
Mass collective knowledge and expert editorial

Summit opened with Tommy Means’ (Creative Director, Mekanism) overview of the “Clarifications” campaign for Microsoft Windows Vista launch
Rei Inamoto (Global Creative Director, AKQA) provided an overview of the “Iris” alt-reality game (ARG) and “Believe” campaigns for the Halo 3 launch
Amanda Kelso (Executive Producer, DBH) – Mentos Intern “Trevor” campaign
Nick Bergstrom (Creative Director, FarFar) – Diesel “Heidies 15MBs of fame” campaign
Ricardo Figueira (Creactive Director, AgencialClick, Brazil) - Motorola RAZR2 campaign
Rob Master (Director of Marketing U.S., Skin, Unilever) - Dove webisodes and AXE campaigns
Arianna Huffington (Co-Founder, The Huffington Post) mentioned during her keynote address: "stop the debate of either/or", and "Get connected to figure out how to get disconnected, then reconnect with ourselves"
Michael Eisner (Founder, Tornante; former Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company) mentioned during his keynote address, that change is the constant theme (based on what he has seen in the media industry over the years), but the ability of great storytelling and expert editorial remains essential
Vinton Cerf (Chief Internet Evangelist, Google) mentioned trends of convergence and mobility ("I P on everything!"), and that client-side software is still relevant. Also interesting was the observation on challenges of the digital age, where information preservation (for thousands of years) will become a major issue due to the rapid advancements in technology

My thoughts:

It was very refreshing to hear from the thought leaders in the social Web and media and advertising agency spaces. Particularly many campaigns that worked wildly successfully, by leveraging many social elements of Web 2.0. For example, “Trevor” as world's intern where anyone can schedule Trevor's time and ask him to do things (like sending a heavy metal birthday gram), effectively used a combination of user-generated content, viral advertising, live web feeds, instant messaging, video streaming, community establishment in Facebook and Myspace, etc., that drew an extremely popular response on the Web. The campaigns discussed were just about the most effective use of Web 2.0 platforms I've seen.

To me it boils down to brand management, and the emergence of using Web-oriented techniques to drive a new breed of brand campaigns on the Web. However, a few principles remain the same (lessons for a technologist such as myself, but obvious to people working in these areas):

It's about storytelling and not product placement
Fun and humor (one layer of connecting at an emotional level), but also be able to poke fun at oneself especially if concepts are parallel to public perception of the brand to begin with
It is comparatively less effective if a brand tries to uphold itself by fighting against public perception; as after all, brand *is* perception

On the general trend of convergence:

This was my biggest takeaway from the summit, as it was clear that the pendulum has swung back away from the extremes, in many different areas. As noted earlier, online and off-line, traditional media and online media, collective intelligence and expert editorial, etc. Basically people are no longer claiming the absolute dominance of one extreme over the other, but are seeing trends that hybrid and combinatorial models work much more effectively. In the technology world, the focus is now shifting towards bringing information and access to the users in a seamless and consistent manner, but with targeted user experiences for different platforms.

Coming back closer to home, from a technology architecture perspective, I found all these trends of convergence are very analogous to the core of Microsoft's "Software Plus Services" (S+S) strategy (and moniker). I akin S+S to Microsoft's vision of the future, in response to all the recent innovation and mindshare on SOA, Web 2.0, SaaS, etc. I will leave the details of my thoughts on S+S to another post, but just briefly here - it's an architecture of "AND", where both local software and cloud-based services work together to provide the most targeted user experiences. Vinton Cerf noted a similar thought in his keynote, that the internet is still largely a transport that is agnostic of the context and data that traverses it. We still need software to interpret and visualize the information in meaningful ways. And the fact is, the dominant players in the online space, such as Google, Yahoo, eBay, Saleforce.com, etc., are all moving towards this middle by providing client-side software. It seems their current approach can be categorized as "Services Plus Software" where cloud-based services are augmented by client-side software, compared to Microsoft's approach of "Software Plus Services" where client-side software is augmented by "Web as features". It is arguable which approach (or direction) is more relevant, but I think in general the macro-trend that is occurring is that of convergence between software and services.

IT Architect Regional Conference 2007

dachou — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 20:45:31 GMT

Scheduled for October 15-16th, 2007, the ITARC 2007 conference is an event focused on the architecture topics in IT. The organizers at IASA (International Association of Software Architects) have arranged over 30 session in 4 concurrent tracks covering enterprise architecture, infrastructure architecture, software architecture, and architecture fundamentals.

Many notable speakers (just to list a few) are scheduled to present at the conference:

Chris Haddad, VP, Burton Group - Infrastructure Architecture in the Business Domain
Fred Waskiewicz, Director of Standards, OMB - Service Oriented Architecture: Making the Leap, Leveraging the Standards
Scott Ambler, Practice Leader, Agile Development, IBM - Agile Strategies for Enterprise Architects
Denise Cook, Rational Method Architect, IBM - Software Architecture Analysis Methods
David Chappel, VP & Chief Technologist, Oracle - Next Generation Grid Enabled SOA
Vince Casarez, VP, Portal Platform, Oracle - Web 2.0 for the Enterprise
Simon Guest, Director, Microsoft - Putting the User back into Architecture
Harry Pierson, Architect, Microsoft - Moving Beyond Industrial Software
Lynn Langit, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft - SharePoint Architecture, Lessons from the Trenches
David Chou (myself), Architect, Microsoft - Architecting Enterprise Security

The full agenda can be found at http://www.iasahome.org/web/itarc/socal/agenda

Also, it just so happens that Microsoft is sponsoring this conference as well. ;) As a result, we have a booth at the event. Looking forward to see you there!