http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6967ff37-813e-47c7-b987-889124b43abd&displaylang=en
Overview
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 to enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure.
New for the November 2009 release:
· Service Model UI: A redesigned and significantly more complete interface for manipulating Role configuration information. To access, double-click on a role node in the Solution Explorer.
· Additional role templates: Support for ASP.NET MVC 2 (2010 only), F# worker roles (2010 only), and WCF Service Application web roles.
· VS2010 Beta2 Support: Support for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and VWD Express 2010 Beta 2.
· Support for dynamically creating tables: The Create Tables functionality is now performed automatically; there is no longer a need to right-click and select Create Tables… on the project after your table definitions have changed.
· Full support for and installation of the November Windows Azure SDK release:
o The sample storage client has been replaced by a new production quality library.
o New Diagnostics library enables logging using .NET APIs and enables the collection of diagnostic information from the service.
o Service Runtime library updated to support inter-role communication and notification of configuration changes .
o Support for input endpoints on Worker Roles.
o Higher fidelity simulation of Development Storage: supports all current cloud storage features, including dynamically creating tables.
o Ability to choose the size of the VM for a role instance.
o Ability to persist data in local storage even after the role is recycled.
o Ability to manage certificates to install to the role VMs.
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio includes:
· C# and VB Project creation support for creating a Windows Azure Cloud Service solution with multiple roles.
· Tools to add and remove roles from the Cloud Service.
· Tools to configure each Role.
· Integrated local development via the Development Fabric and Development Storage services.
· Running and Debugging a Cloud Service in the Development Fabric.
· Building and packaging of Cloud Service Packages.
· Browsing to the Windows Azure Developer Portal.
Enterprise Architecture has a role to play in both developing a vision of the future, and in providing governance and oversight to make sure that the organization can measure its progress towards that future.
The governance part is tricky. Architectural Governance is part of a larger fabric of governance that needs to exist throughout the organization, not just in IT but also in the business groups themselves. This means that governance has two masters. Governance has to align to business value, on one hand, and “measures of compliance” on the other.
For enterprise architecture, the business value lies on the proposition that systems designed with better architecture will be more flexible, maintainable, and reliable than systems that are not. Measures of compliance, on the other hand, can include things like “numbers of projects reviewed” or “evaluated quality of architecture is trending upward.”
In my opinion, governance is about motivating people to do the right thing. All compliance programs are really all about helping a person or team to do the right thing. There are many ways to that goal.
Of course, it’s a challenge, in any society or organization, to define what it means to “do the right thing.” I’ve noticed, as I conduct the architecture review program here in Microsoft IT, that there is a spectrum of governance. Different people in the organization tend to fall somewhere along this spectrum. Some folks want to “educate and encourage” good behavior, while others want to “monitor and inform” management about bad behavior.
The reason that I point out this obvious fact is that your Enterprise Architecture governance program will have many components. One component may surround innovation, and another may surround process improvement. In my organization, we have a governance process around architectural standards and review.
Each component will have an owner. The owner is the person who is accountable for insuring that a particular behavior (do the right thing) is happening. For architectural review in Microsoft IT, that is the Microsoft IT CTO Barry Briggs. He also happens to own the measurements for our architectural repository.
For each component of governance, it is important that you expose the governance owner to this spectrum and get agreement to the question: “Where on the spectrum do we want to be?” Even better: add the element of time to the conversation. “Where should we start?” and “Where should we end up?”
By getting your compliance owner to declare, specifically, where your compliance program needs to be on this spectrum, you are able to do many things:
- Everyone, including the compliance owner, knows and understands the posture that the compliance team needs to take. Other folks may want to interject their own opinion about where, in the spectrum, compliance should land. If the compliance program team members have a clear direction, then communication is clear, processes can be correctly designed, and expectations can be correctly set.
- The compliance owners’ direct manager (often an executive) can have some idea about where the compliance program is going and why it is going there. In some cases, this means that the executive can take responsibility for the level of risk they are accepting.
- Processes won’t get out of line with the intended behavior. I’ve seen examples, from our consulting engagements, where the business wants to encourage a particular behavior, and they asked for compliance processes, only to produce the opposite of the desired effect.
In one case, one of our partners was working with Microsoft on their SOA program. Their IT Leadership wanted to improve the use of shared services. They developed a shared service reuse program and a governance model to make sure that everyone used the services. The governance program was poorly rolled out and executed, and the program lost credibility.
As a result, whenever anyone asked about using those shared services, that person was derided and their idea discarded. In order to get past compliance, managers created a crafty way to “game the system” in reporting the results. While the compliance numbers looked good on paper, the actual use of shared services declined overall. The program that sought to increase the use of shared services caused it to decline instead.
Compliance is part of the game when you are trying to encourage good behavior in an organization. Making it work is not easy. The person responsible for insuring that compliance occurs has to have the right level of ownership and accountability. But just as importantly, they need to carefully consider where, on the spectrum of governance their program should be, now and in the future, in order to deliver on business value without encouraging different kinds of bad behavior.
External source: http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik/archive/2009/11/06/how-to-develop-a-governance-program-that-doesn-t-suck-the-life-out-of-your-organization.aspx
The public beta of SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 will be available in November.
For more resources, take a look at:
- SharePoint 2010 Website - to view SharePoint 2010 in action
- SharePoint 2010 forum- for SharePoint 2010 questions
- SharePoint 2010 PressPass- for the SPC 2009 keynote video, a Q&A with Jeff Teper, and more
- SharePoint 2010 Developer Center - for developer info
- http://www.mssharepointitpro.com - for IT Pro info
- http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint - for more SharePoint information
Each month through June 2010, Microsoft will 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.
November 24, 2009 at 11:00am – 12:30pm PST
Title: An Architect’s perspective on Silverlight 3
Presenter: Tim Heuer
Abstract: Many .NET developers are becoming more and more interested in the Rich Internet Application development space, and in particular Silverlight. In this session we will step back from a detailed implementation technology and take a higher level look at Silverlight from the architect’s perspective. We will discuss the types of applications where Silverlight makes sense and some scenarios where Silverlight may not be the appropriate technology. We will also delve into some of the architectural decisions that the architect must consider when writing applications for this platform and where some of the tradeoffs may lie.
Event ID: 1032432980
Link to Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032432980&Culture=en-US
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 Software as a Service (SaaS) it can be intimidating for even seasoned IT professionals. This presentation will briefly discuss the different types of cloud platforms and then address one of the key business scenarios for the cloud: Software as a Service.
Software as a Service is a business model for making applications available over the Internet. One of the key tenets of SaaS is multi-tenancy, or software designed to be used by multiple parties. Designing SaaS applications touches on many of the technologies that comprise the Azure platform: Processing, Storage, Workflow, Database and most importantly security. This presentation will discuss how each of technologies can be utilized to define a flexible architecture for multi-tenant solutions.
Event ID: 1032432981
Link to Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032432981&Culture=en-US
SPEAKER BIOS
Tim Heuer
I currently work for Microsoft as a program manager for Microsoft Silverlight, a web technology aimed at delivering rich internet experiences to users. Before this current role, I was a developer evangelist for Microsoft serving the Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana and Utah areas aiming to strengthen and support communities and software developers in these geographies.
Josepher Hofstader
Joseph Hofstader is an architect/evangelist in Microsoft Communications Sector. Joe has spent his career architecting, designing and developing solutions in the telecommunications industry. Over the last 5 years, he has been involved in architecting solutions that provide telecommunications services in the cloud. Joe presents regularly at industry events sponsored by organizations like the TMForum and the National Association of Broadcasters. In his spare time Joe is an adjunct professor in the department of Information Technology and Electronic Commerce at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business.
What is an application platform? It’s a broad concept that can include a range of interconnected technologies. ASP.NET is a platform for creating Web applications, for example, while at the same time it belongs to the larger application platform provided by the .NET Framework. Because the SharePoint 2010 application platform is based on ASP.NET, learning how to use it isn’t a huge learning curve for ASP.NET developers. But when does it make sense to build an application on SharePoint instead of on raw ASP.NET? The goal of this paper is to answer these questions. Doing this requires describing what the SharePoint 2010 platform provides and looking at the types of applications SharePoint is designed to support. If your application can benefit from the SharePoint framework, building it on SharePoint will enable you to focus more on creating value and less on building infrastructure.
External source: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5184cb27-98d9-4cc0-bb0b-4b24d5b62db6
A good reading to share….
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“Business Architects design, obtain approval, translate and administer the implementation and ongoing improvement of the transformational business initiatives that enable organizations to convert strategy into commerce and prevail in the marketplace.”
“Strategists are primarily concerned with the direction of the organization, Business Architects with the design of its dynamic structure, and line managers with driving results.”
-- Paul Arthur Bodine
Business Architecture is an important new corporate activity. Organizations like Allstate, Wells Fargo, Pepsico, HSBC, W.W.Grainger, Blue Cross Blue Shield and United Air Lines have taken the lead and are already piloting Business Architecture Groups. Business Architecture is performed by cross-organizational generalists who possess professional skills for transforming corporate strategy into business designs that enable corporations to increase market share, profit margins and flexibility, while reducing risk. Their unique skills include:
· Designing dynamic, flexible new models for businesses that enable them to adjust and thrive in constantly changing competitive environments.
· Preparing business cases that provide Executive Management with the information they need to make wise decisions.
· Incorporating the insights of customers, line employees and managers to ensure their unique needs are accommodated.
· Engaging subject matter experts throughout the organization in the solution process.
· Coordinating and sequencing solutions to remove conflicts.
· Defining metrics that provide the data necessary to make improved decisions in the future.
· Generating necessary documentation, packaging and translating it into terms each audience can understand and embrace.
Business Architecture skills are obtained through specialized training and real-world experience, magnified by a broad network of skilled professionals accessed through active participation in professional industry associations like the Business Architects Association®. In order to be effective, Business Architecture practitioners must enjoy open relationships with an organization‘s Executive Management, line managers, front line employees, subject matter experts and consultants, enabling them to get to and solve cross-organizational issues early and prevent them from becoming caught up in debates among functional departments.
Those performing Business Architecture activities provide direct support to Executive Management by making them aware of emerging issues and trends, providing training in new management methodologies, and researching opportunities and concerns as they arise. They also work to ensure all elements of the corporate strategy are implemented properly.
There is universal agreement on the value a Business Architecture program brings to an organization, the need to include experts from all areas of the organization and the importance of direct sponsorship from Executive Management. Failure to maintain an up-to-date business architecture can result in loss of agility and competitiveness, destabilization and business failure.
Business Architecture: An Emerging Profession by Paul Arthur Bodine and Jack Hilty, edition: April 28, 2009, published by: Business Architects Association Institute™
Enterprise Architects, Solutions Architects, Infrastructure Architects, and Business Analysts all work hand-in-hand to deliver value to the enterprise. In this interview, Joe Shirey talks to Matt Hessinger about the dynamics of each of these groups and some strategies for improving these dynamics.
The Architect Innovation Cafe presents Jim Wilt on Using Architectural Skills to Increase Solution Adoption Success - Products, Solution Frameworks, and Development Tools are too often touted by vendors and development teams as solutions to customer business problems. Why do development teams, customers, and users seek products to fill this gap? When solutions fail is it too easy to blame a given platform than for those really responsible to take responsibility? It more often has to do with one's level of problem solving skills, planning, and ability to align technology with business strategy.
Mario Cardinal and Aaron Kowall discuss how to easily test in an autonomous way an application conceived with modular abstractions such as the "layer". Mario and Aaron discuss how to partition the concerns of the application into layers and best practices regarding application architecture and modularity.
Each month through June 2010, Microsoft will 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.
October 27, 2009 at 11:00am – 12:30pm PST
Title: An Architect’s perspective on Silverlight 3
Presenter: Tim Heuer
Abstract: Many .NET developers are becoming more and more interested in the Rich Internet Application development space, and in particular Silverlight. In this session we will step back from a detailed implementation technology and take a higher level look at Silverlight from the architect’s perspective. We will discuss the types of applications where Silverlight makes sense and some scenarios where Silverlight may not be the appropriate technology. We will also delve into some of the architectural decisions that the architect must consider when writing applications for this platform and where some of the tradeoffs may lie.
Event ID: 1032427862
Link to Register: An Architect’s perspective on Silverlight 3
October 28, 2009 at 11:00am – 12:30pm PST
Title: Deploying Windows 7 from an Infrastructure Architect’s Perspective
Presenter: Doug Klokow
Abstract:
We’ll discuss 5 key areas centered on deploying Windows 7: Developing business justification – Evaluate the capabilities provided by Windows 7 and develop a plan for how to realize business value from these solutions; Where are you today – Explore the differences of preparing for Windows 7 based on your current desktop operating system; Application readiness – Explore the tools and resources available to gain insight into your readiness to deploy Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8, and/or Office 2007/2010; Deployment readiness – Explore the tools and resources available to create a design and deployment solution for your enterprise; Training your employees – Discuss available resources for training your IT Staff and End Users.
Event ID: 1032427863
Link to Register: Deploying Windows 7 from an Infrastructure Architect’s Perspective
SPEAKER BIOS
Tim Heuer
I currently work for Microsoft as a program manager for Microsoft Silverlight, a web technology aimed at delivering rich internet experiences to users. Before this current role, I was a developer evangelist for Microsoft serving the Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana and Utah areas aiming to strengthen and support communities and software developers in these geographies.
Doug Klokow
Part of Microsoft Consulting Services for 9 years focused on client desktop deployment solutions. He is part of the Virtual Deployment Practice that is focused on driving early customer deployment on Microsoft client technologies and is also supporting Microsoft’s Desktop Virtualization capabilities and service offerings.
Achim Ruopp, an internationalization specialist and a former program manager at Microsoft, discusses the typical process of and efforts involved in internationalizing existing applications in this interview with Zhiming Xue. If you are interested to know how to plan and get started with the process of internationalizing applications, how applications are typically re-architected for internationalization, what tests are conducted once they are internationalized, and what tools and resources are available to facilitate application internationalization, this video is made for you.
Microsoft Security Essentials is officially released in 8 languages and 19 countries around the world.
You can download Microsoft Security Essentials now at http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/.
About Microsoft Security Essentials
- Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.
- Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.
- Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so that you are free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times.
Companies need infrastructure to integrate services for internal enterprise systems, services running at business partners, and systems accessible on the public Internet. And companies need be able to start small and scale rapidly. Joe Shirey talks to Clemens Vasters, senior program manager on the Windows Azure team, about the architectural implications of the Internet Services Bus and .NET Services.
You can now download or read online the latest Microsoft Architecture Journal 21 on Service Orientation Today and Tomorrow! Happy reading!
An interesting article below…. happy reading!
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An early 2009 Forrester interview with the CIO of a retail firm produced a great quote: “Our business execs have two views of IT: a big budget blob or their BlackBerry.” Now, maybe those retail business execs think of IT as a strategic budget blob, but it’s more likely that’s a shop with alignment issues. If that CIO’s business execs don’t see technology as enabling anything more than mobile email, then they really don’t get the power of technology and they’re not going to see the value in the IT department.
But alignment issues are not limited to shops where business execs don’t see value in technology. The whole IT-to-BT transition is about how the business is enthusiastically embracing technology – they’re just not bothering to go through the IT department to find it, deploy it, or use it. Today’s alignment problem is more about the gap between the business’s valuation of technology’s potential and their valuation of the IT department’s ability to deliver on that potential.
Enterprise architecture (EA) has always had the capability to bridge that gap. Now, I certainly can’t claim that all or even most organizations that implemented an EA practice have solved all their alignment problems. But the simplest explanation of how an EA program is supposed to work would stand in for a perfect formula for aligning any enterprise: Map out the current and future states of your organization’s business, information, application, and infrastructure architectures, create the detailed roadmaps that spell out how to go from where you are to that desired future state and bingo! Business execs would know exactly what IT was up to and why they were doing it. They’d be cheering and carrying their IT and EA pals on their shoulders on the way to the next stockholders’ meeting.
What? Hasn’t happened to you yet? What could possibly be wrong? Perhaps it’s that most EA programs haven’t exactly executed the classic formula. Perhaps EA has focused almost entirely on technology and applications and the business has perceived EA – if it has indeed been perceptible at all to the business – as just another thing IT was doing that didn’t matter much to them. Maybe until very recently, for most organizations the business architecture piece has been missing in action (and let’s talk about information architecture another day). No business architecture, no relevance to the business community.
But all that is changing. Suddenly it seems business architecture is the hottest topic in EA circles. When I spoke to clients at Forrester’s IT Forum in May and our EA Forum back in February, business architecture was practically all anyone in the EA role was talking about, whether their EA practice was 10 years or 10 days old. A variety of forces have conspired to make technology-only architecture initiatives seem only marginally worth pursuing. These forces include a relentless drive for value – which implies an accompanying drive for transparency – and a continuing breakdown of the insularity of the IT organization.
But for whatever the reasons, business architecture programs are taking off, and I think that wherever they get traction they will finally put an end to business-IT alignment problems for good. Why? Because whatever the form of the business architecture program, business and IT will interact regularly and work together on addressing business problems and attaining business goals. Business execs will become invested in the connection between implementing the to-be business architecture and the rest of the enterprise architecture domains, at least in terms of the dependencies. And of course, IT will recognize the opportunity to communicate meaningfully with their business partners to ensure complete transparency and to relate all IT resource expenditures to business goals.
But wait a minute, back up – did he say “whatever the form of the business architecture program”? Isn’t there a cookbook of best practices that everyone can follow? The fact is that best practices are evolving, but at this point there are many approaches to business architecture initiatives. Jeff Scott and I have written a series of case studies on business-focused architecture to showcase the different approaches and provide a context for the value they are producing. We also presented a webinar on August 5 that discussed three of the case studies briefly and presented Forrester’s approach to starting business architecture initiatives. We touched on a number of issues, either through the planned agenda or the lively Q&A, including the role of business architecture in the context of the larger EA program and recommendations for the right business architecture artifacts. Regarding the latter point, I discussed a capability map from one of the case studies (see below) and Jeff talked about this type of representation as the “Rosetta stone” for business-IT alignment, which got some traction in the Twittersphere.
In the concurrent chat session embedded in the webinar, we covered a number of very interesting questions, but, given the circumstances, we really just touched on them lightly. Some of these issues clearly warrant further analysis and discussion, such as:
How would we reconcile the two opposing views presented in the case studies, where IT management was intimately involved with business architecture discussions in one case and locked out of the room in another in order to avoid biasing the discussion with current system constraints?
What are the best tools for creating business architecture artifacts? How important are the more elaborate EA tools?
How might capability maps work in organizations that have advanced ITIL/ITSM practices? Or that have successful APM/PPM efforts? Wouldn’t this form of business architecture artifact work well in analyzing IT as a business?
I invite anyone who attended the session or access the archived version to post comments here on the above questions – or any related issues for that matter. There are plenty of best practices to be surfaced as this area is still evolving.
There is actually a lot you can accomplish with business architecture, from finding efficiencies to launching new business capabilities to transforming the business. Important as it is, attaining business/IT alignment, the subject of the webinar and this blog post, can seem like just a beneficial side effect when you consider the high-impact possibilities.
External source: http://blogs.forrester.com/ea/2009/08/will-business-architecture-initiatives-put-a-permanent-end-to-businessit-alignment-problems.html
