Joe's Thoughts on Software Architecture

Architect Innovation Cafe Webcast

2009-11-13T00:23:03Z

I will be doing a cloud-computing webcast on November 25. The abstract and registration link are below. November 25, 2009, 11:00am – 12:30pm PST Title: Cloud-computing architecture – designing multi-tenant applications on Windows Azure. Speaker: Joseph Hofstader Abstract: Cloud computing is one of the hottest topics in information technology today. With all the confusion surrounding acronyms ending in ‘aas’ like Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and...(read more)

Harvard Business School Cybersymposium

2009-10-29T18:08:44Z

I will be on the Cloud Providers panel at the Harvard Business School Cybersymposium on Saturday, November 21. This panel will explore the benefits and obstacles of cloud computing as seen through the eyes of cloud providers. While many companies extol the scalability that cloud solutions offer, they often express concerns regarding lock-in, loss of control of underlying infrastructure, security, service-level agreements, and regulatory compliance....(read more)

Ribbit for Silverlight (R4SL) – Deep Dive Event

2009-10-29T17:49:44Z

Ribbit, a subsidiary of British Telecom, has been working with Microsoft on a project called Ribbit for Silverlight (R4SL). R4SL is a set of drag/drop Silverlight controls that make it easy for Designers/Developers to create communications enabled applications and web sites. The controls are complete and the launch is approaching quickly! Please join us in San Francisco November 5, 2009 for an invitation only deep dive into Ribbit’s open telephony APIs — and a Sneak Peek at the unreleased...(read more)

Supercomm 2009

2009-09-23T21:12:48Z

SUPERCOMM 2009 is at McCormick Place in Chicago From October 21 to October 23 2009. I will be presenting at the Building Broadband Business pre-show summit on October 20. The title of my presentation is Programmable Communications -- The Network as a Platform and focuses on the economics of opening up the telecommunications networks for application developers. For anybody who follows this blog, you know that this topic is growing in importance as companies move headlong into...(read more)

Communications as a Service Goes Mainstream

2009-09-12T02:34:24Z

Over the last couple of weeks both the mainstream media and industry-specific publications are raising the awareness of Communications as a Service. Back in April I did a presentation at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Telecom2009 conference entitled Watch, Click, Connect, Buy: How to Create Instant Customer Connections . In the presentation I made the case that providing click to call as part of a web advertisement (in the form of a video) can be used to increase...(read more)

Interview on SaaS/CaaS and Cloud Computing

2008-10-30T18:57:25Z

This interview from the Internet Telephony Conference has been posted on TMCnet CaaS community site . In this interview with Charles Studt, VP of Product Management and Marketing from IntelePeer, and me we discuss SaaS/CaaS and Cloud Computing and the platform that IntelePeer is building using Windows Live Services. Here is the Link to the video: http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/videos/default.aspx?vid=609...(read more)

Using Visual Studio DSL Tools to Simplify Network Activation

2008-10-24T00:23:00Z

Travis Brown and Gary Sidhu from Qwest Communications and I have written a whitepaper on the benefits of using the Visual Studio DSL toolkit for a software system that activates IP VPNs for a telecommunications network service provider. The whitepaper makes use of the TMForum's Shared Information and Data (SID) model and the DSL is based on the RFC2547bis standard. This paper is available at this link on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd320274.aspx...(read more)

What Matters?

2008-10-16T21:18:30Z

Last month I sat on a SaaS panel during the Internet Telephony conference in Los Angeles. The panel began with opening statements from the speakers, and much to my surprise the first speaker went into a diatribe on the notion of SaaS as a concept and architecture, how SaaS had no meaning, and how anybody who tried to define what SaaS was was fighting a "religious war." The speaker kept hammering the point that a business shouldn't care about how to deliver products and only...(read more)

Cloud Computing, Government and Privacy

2008-09-13T20:07:34Z

There was an interesting article on CNET News on September 12, 2008 describing a forum on cloud computing hosted by Google. The article provides a series of quotes from members of the panel. Notable comments from Mike Nelson, a visiting professor at Georgetown University's Center for Communication, Culture, and Technology and a former tech policy adviser under the Clinton administration: "Most users understand enough" to feel comfortable with cloud computing, Nelson said, "but...(read more)

More on Internet Telephony Conference on September 17

2008-09-11T18:15:14Z

SOA Telecom Architect , an on-line publication focused on service oriented telecommunications software, published this press release on the panel that I will be part of discussing SaaS (and CaaS). Also participating in this panel are representatives from Jamcracker and IntelePeer . For those less familiar with IntelePeer, this week they released their AppworX platform , which is an open CaaS platform that seamlessly delivers enhanced voice and multimedia features from within any Web or...(read more)

Internet Telephony Conference and Expo

2008-08-28T18:54:31Z

I will be on a SaaS panel at the Internet Telephony Conference and Expo in Los Angeles on 9/17/2008 (details below). If you're attending the conference and interested in chatting about SaaS/CaaS/S+S/Design Patterns/.NET/Baseball/Bicycling/Jazz/or the upcoming ski season send me an e-mail and we can set a time to get together. Software-As-A-Service: The Basics (SAAS-01) Wednesday - 09/17/08, 9:00-9:45am You may remember the term “Application Service Provider” or “ASP.”...(read more)

Silverlight and WPF Workshop in NYC 9/3/2008

2008-08-28T18:48:29Z

My colleague Michael Scherotter, a User Experience aficionado, will be conducting a Silverlight and WPF workshop in NYC on 9/3/2008. Foe more details on this workshop, please go to Michael's blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/synergist/archive/2008/08/27/silverlight-and-wpf-workshop-in-nyc-9-3-2008.aspx...(read more)

Service Syndication for CaaS at NXTCOmm

2008-06-12T19:31:50Z

I will be at NXTComm next week talking about Services Syndication for Communications as a Service (CaaS) solutions. Services Syndication allows for the aggregation of CaaS services into a cohesive product offering and addresses many of the management aspects of a CaaS environment like provisioning and billing. Please stop by the Microsoft booth to learn about this topic and discuss it with me....(read more)

Communications as a Service (Caas) on Channel 9

2008-06-12T18:36:41Z

My colleague Michael Scherotter and I had a couple of conversations about CaaS on Michael's Communicating show on MSDN's Channel 9. The first show contains an overview of CaaS. This show talks about: the evolution in telecommunications equipment from monolithic hardware and software solutions to applications implementing a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) on commodity hardware; trends in networking that support CaaS; and the other tenets of CaaS, like multi-tenant software. http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Communicating/Communications-as-a-Service-CaaS/...(read more)

Feedback on "we don't need no architects"

2008-05-02T17:47:00Z

It's been over a week since The Architecture Journal published it's latest issue and my article " We Don't Need No Architects ." The intent of this article was to present some of the common perceptions of architects in the IT community and look at the skills possessed by effective architects. As could be assumed in any article about architects in IT, the feedback on this article has conjured up some raw emotions - which is honestly appreciate. I enjoy candid feedback and appreciate the respectful,...(read more)