The Liquidator : Enterprise

Coming events .... May - June 2009 UNPLUGGED Roadshow

Mark.Carroll — Fri, 01 May 2009 06:04:00 GMT

Mike Zeff, Nigel Parker and Nathan Mercer are hitting the road again to bring you the latest and greatest around Windows 7, Windows server 2008 R2 and Silverlight. There are two streams for this roadshow – The Technet Stream and the MSDN Stream.

Locations are Palmerston North, Tauranga, Hamilton, Auckland, Chsritchurch, Dunedin and Wellington.

Get into it – should be awesome – more details including registration are here.

TechNet UNPLUGGED Event: Windows 7 Technical Overview and Installfest - April 2009

Mark.Carroll — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:21:00 GMT

Heads up ! - the excellent Mr Nathan Mercer is doing the rounds again this time focusing on Windows 7.

This is a must if your into all things Tech Net and comes highly recommended for developers and architects as well. Lets face it most of us will using this technology or at least touching it within the next 12 months so here is a chance to get up to speed earlier rather than later. If you are not in Auckland, Wellingon or Christchurch then there is a live meeting option so you dont miss out entirely whereever you are.

TechNet UNPLUGGED Event: Windows 7 Technical Overview and Installfest - April 2009

Come along and learn about Windows 7 and get the opportunity to install the beta on your PC too.

Windows 7 Technical Overview for IT Pro’s – 90 minutes

The Windows 7 beta is out and everyone is excited about it. In this TechNet UNPLUGGED update we’ll feature what the new Windows 7 release means for the IT Pro in NZ. We will cover off both the new business and consumer technologies in this jam-packed-demo-filled session including: the new UI, taskbar and shell, Federated Search, BranchCache, DirectAccess, UAC, IE8, AppLocker, BitLocker To Go, the new Problem Steps Recorder as well as the updated Management, Compatibility and Deployment tools.

At the end of the learning session, stay around and load Windows 7 beta onto your machine -

Windows 7 Installfest – 60 minutes

This is your opportunity to install the Windows 7 beta on your own machine. You bring your computer - we bring the Windows 7 installation and a Microsoftee to help.

A test PC for the Windows 7 Beta should meet these minimum hardware recommendations:

· 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor

· 1 GB of system memory

· 16 GB of available disk space

· Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (in order to enable Aero theme)

· DVD-R/W Drive or machine that supports booting from USB

Please bring a spare, non-production computer to install the beta software onto. We will help with loading Windows 7 onto your machines, and will have wired or wireless Internet connections available for drivers and updates. If for some reason, Windows 7 does not have the appropriate driver for your computer hardware, we will do our best to download drivers off the Internet and get them onto a USB key for you. We won’t be able to provide “support” afterwards, but we’ve created an online forum where you can ask questions.

If you didn’t get a chance to download your own copy of Windows 7 beta we will have a supply of Windows 7 DVDs.

What you need to know before installing the Beta

Presented by Microsoft Technical Advisor, Nathan Mercer. This is a Level 300 event for IT Pros. Registration is free, dates and locations below.

AM Sessions: 9 - 11.30am

Wellington 2 Apr: Register
Auckland 14 Apr: Register
Christchurch 16 Apr: Register

Live Meeting 9 - 10.30am 21 Apr: Register

PM Sessions: 4 - 6.30pm

Wellington 2 Apr: Register
Auckland 14 Apr: Register
Christchurch 16 Apr: Register

Big Deal #1 – Cloud computing - Announcements from PDC in Los Angeles – Oct 2008

Mark.Carroll — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 06:29:00 GMT

Speaking personally – ‘Big Deals for Me’ of 2008

I am starting the New Year with reflections on the year just gone in the form of three ‘big deals for me’ that came out of 2008. I’ll discuss each of these ‘Big Deals for Me’ , how they are inter-related and where I expect them to lead in 2009 over the next couple of weeks via this blog.

Big Deal #1 – Cloud computing - Announcements from PDC in Los Angeles – Oct 2008

Cloud computing platforms will not sweep all else before them.

We all know that cloud computing is going to factor a lot more in the future of IT and subsequently the future of all of us as IT professionals. I don’t believe cloud computing is the ‘next big thing that will sweep all else before it” - but I can see why some folk would want to believe this. What I believe is more likely is that there will be an incorporation of ‘the cloud’ onto existing platform models including Client and Server. This has always been the case in the past with major changes – for example mainframes and batch computing which by in large pre-dated ‘client’ and ‘server’ platform models still abound out there it is just that now a majority have switched to front to PC clients instead of using card readers and drum printers.

How platforms have become established in the past.

Market forces and ‘existing investments’ always dictate that new types of platforms first ‘attach’ themselves to existing models, then extend those existing models and finally subsume them if they are really that great. This more likely evolutionary rise to any prominence for the cloud is entirely consistent with the Software plus Services (S+S) strategic pattern that I have been talking about for the last couple of years. The announcement of Windows Azure (internet-scale cloud services platform which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together) combines with past experience to create a clear strategy for cloud computing platforms for architects. That clear strategy is to attach (the cloud) from existing assets on existing platforms (client, server) rather than consider a ‘rip and replace’ strategy. Given current economic conditions and the emphasis they will inevitably place on the protection of ‘existing investments’ that architectural strategy is also consistent with the experience of new platform technologies that I just outlined earlier. The first step is for new platform models to ‘attach’ to existing models. The cloud platform will be no different. S+S provides patterns for that ‘attach’ strategy when attaching the cloud to existing Client and existing Server applications.

Gartner’s platform triangle.

If you think of the existing mainstream platform models as being ‘Client’ and ‘Server’ then I agree with Gartner’s summation of the PDC announcements about Azure when they say that cloud based Windows Azure is the ‘completion of the Microsoft platform triangle’. That summary though does not entirely acknowledge the very important facts that the Azure architecture is designed to be compatible with both the .NET platform (which already underpins client and server platform models) and the existing development platform - Visual Studio. That means developers do not need to learn a whole new set of paradigms, libraries and development tools and can leverage both their existing knowledge and some of their existing building block ‘assets’.

Where to in 2009?

My own views are that , as it evolves, the addition of Cloud computing to the Microsoft platform triangle will drive two key thought processes in the coming year;

- A renewed interest in architecture and software development best practices;

- A whole new set of standards debates and standards initiatives.

Both of these ‘Driven thought processes’ feature in my in my other ‘big deals for 2008’ and I’ll explain the linkages when I outline those in the next couple of weeks in this blog.

NZ Events: November Unplugged – Technical sessions for Developer and Support professionals

Mark.Carroll — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:54:00 GMT

For those of you who have never been to an unplugged event before they are a lot like our architect forums but with a more operational ‘hands on’ focus. They have been running for just over a year now and have proven to be very popular.

In current times money can get a little tight for things like training – Unplugged events are one way that you can help keep those valuable technically focused resources up to speed.

So if you want to attend a more operational ‘hands on’ focused session or if you have staff who could benefit from the subject matter described below then either register yourself and / or cut and paste the entries below and distribute them to appropriate staff.

November TechNet UNPLUGGED Update – Double Sessions

Join us in November for the last TechNet UNPLUGGED sessions of 2008. Come to two technical morning sessions and learn about Windows Vista Deployment, and deploying Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Centre Virtual Machine Manager.

Free registration, sessions begin 9.00am and concludes 12.30pm. Click here for more information.

Christchurch Tue 11th Nov: Register

Wellington Thu 13th Nov: Register

Auckland Tue 18th Nov: Register

Note: This is a Level 300 technical event

November MSDN UNPLUGGED Update - Double Sessions

Join us in November for an MSDN UNPLUGGED Update. Come to two technical afternoon sessions to see next Generation User Experiences WPF 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio Tips and Tricks to increase your productivity.

Free registration, sessions begin 1.30pm and concludes 5.00pm. Click here for more information.

Christchurch Tue 11th Nov: Register

Wellington Thu 13 Nov: Register

Auckland Tue 18 Nov: Register

This is a Level 200 technical event

Attend the TechNet or MSDN UNPLUGGED Update in November to be in to win some fantastic prizes*

· 3 x XBOX 360

· 3 x Samsung 22” LCD Monitors

· 3 x Office Professional 2007

· 3 x Windows Vista Ultimate NFR

· 6 x Microsoft Explorer Mice

Silverlight 2 Available Tues Oct 14 US Pacific time

Mark.Carroll — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:44:00 GMT

Following on from last month’s Architect Forums with Matti Seikkula which showed the use of Virtual Earth, SQL 2008 spatial and Silverlight I promised a number of folk that I’d blog when Silverlight 2 actually becomes available.

The answer is Tuesday Oct 14 (US Pacific time) – there is a press pass announcement which has a link off to where the download will be available.

Yes you are reading the announcement correctly when you see Microsoft are working with Soyatec to “lead a project to integrate advanced Silverlight development capabilities into the Eclipse IDE.

Key features of Silverlight 2.0 from the press pass announcement;

Highlights of new Silverlight 2 features include the following:

•	.NET Framework support with a rich base class library. This is a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework.
•	Powerful built-in controls. These include DataGrid, ListBox, Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar controls and more.
•	Advanced skinning and templating support. This makes it easy to customize the look and feel of an application.
•	Deep zoom. This enables unparalleled interactivity and navigation of ultrahigh resolution imagery.
•	Comprehensive networking support. Out-of-the-box support allows calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS and standard HTTP services, enabling users to create applications that easily integrate with existing back-end systems.
•	Expanded .NET Framework language support. Unlike other runtimes, Silverlight 2 supports a variety of programming languages, including Visual Basic, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby, making it easier for developers already familiar with one of these languages to repurpose their existing skill sets.
•	Advanced content protection. This now includes Silverlight DRM, powered by PlayReady, offering robust content protection for connected Silverlight experiences.
•	Improved server scalability and expanded advertiser support. This includes new streaming and progressive download capabilities, superior search engine optimization techniques, and next-generation in-stream advertising support.
•	Vibrant partner ecosystem. Visual Studio Industry Partners such as ComponentOne LLC, Infragistics Inc. and Telerik Inc. are providing products that further enhance developer capabilities when creating Silverlight applications using Visual Studio.
•	Cross-platform and cross-browser support. This includes support for Mac, Windows and Linux in Firefox, Safari and Windows Internet Explorer.

Visual Studio Team System 10 on Channel 9

Mark.Carroll — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:05:00 GMT

I will be covering some of this material in a fortcoming New Zealand Team system Users group session later this year. In the meantime this session is well worth watching as an early 'heads-up' for what is coming in Visual Studio Team System 10 (aka Rosario).

Norman Guadagno, the Director of Product Management for Visual Studio Team System shares the key enhancements coming in the next version of Visual Studio, officially named Visual Studio 2010. In this video, you'll hear Norman discuss new features in Team Architect including new visual designers and UML support, new software quality features including historical debugging, how the Database Edition is being rolled rolled into the Team Developer edition and lots more.

Link > http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Dan/Norman-Guadagno-Announcing-Visual-Studio-Team-System-2010/

Events - Architect forums in Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland

Mark.Carroll — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:14:00 GMT

Title: Just like being there – Combining video with geo-spatial data by Matti Seikkula

Combining the visualisation of being there with the knowledge of where you are and with relevant information about that particular location is a powerful concept. Its potential uses include;

- Management of transport infrastructure assets such as highways and railways;

- Providing a preview for tourist and field experiences for tourism operators and emergency services;

- Providing training experiences based on real world locales;

In this presentation Matti Seikkula of Microsoft partner e-Spatial will outline some of the ‘being there’ experiences they are developing combining Virtual Earth, Silverlight, SQL Server 2008 and other technologies to provide a cost-effective and thin n-tier browser-based viewer that combines video, geo-spatial information and context relevant data. He will be discussing their experiences with managing customer requirements, working with the newer technologies they are leveraging and how to deal with some of the tricky architecture issues surrounding geo-spatial data representation and its synchronisation with video and back-end information stores.

About Matti Seikkula:

Matti has more than 18 years experience in systems design, software development, architecture and data modelling and over 12 years experience in spatial integration. Specializing on geo-spatial, e-Spatial have to be industry and technology independent, which means that Matti needs to maintain a constant process of research and development. This ensures that e-Spatial is always aware of the implication of new technologies, development environments and standards. Matti is also a recognized expert on New Zealand and international geospatial standards.

Matti holds a Masters degree of Computer Sciences from Joensuu University, Finland, 1990.

Venue Details:

When are the Events: Wellington is Fri 26 September 2008 (1pm and 3pm), Christchurch is Monday 29 September (1pm), Auckland is Thursday 2nd October (12 noon);

If you are working as an architect or are looking at moving into an architects role as part of your career planning and would like an invitation then send an email to nzac@microsoft.com with the wording 'Invite please for " AKL or WLG or CHC in the subject line.

Tech-ed 2008 is dead - Long LIVE Tech-ed 2008 !

Mark.Carroll — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:01:00 GMT

Tech-ed live is on-line !

In the opinion of yours truly who has been to absoluley every Tech-ed ever in New Zealand this years event was another success. For sure one may refelect that last years Tech-Fest was better than the year befores etc but on balance the event continues to grow in popularity and stature. This year sees the introduction of Tech-ed live which makes it easier to access presentation recordings and other materials.

Tech-ed Live - content from Tech-ed including access to session notes etc ; See http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/live.aspx

Tech-ed live architecture track - Details on the architecture track, sessions and exclusive interviews (most less tha 10 minutes) : See http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/live.aspx

Further direct links to areas in Tech-ed live shown below;

By Track;

· Developer - http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/developer.aspx

· Office & UC - http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/office-unified-communications.aspx

· Security - http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/security.aspx

· SOA & Architecture - http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/soa-architecture.aspx

· Virtualisation - http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/virtualisation.aspx

· Web - http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/web.aspx

Keynote

· Full keynote video - http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/keynote2008.aspx?m=1&autostart=true

· Keynote highlights video - http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/keynote2008.aspx?m=2&autostart=true

· Studio Interview with Amit Mital & Nigel Parker - http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/keynote2008.aspx?m=3&autostart=true

Full Session Recordings

Code	Session	Speaker	Location	TEL Deep URL

DAT302	Overview of SQL 2008 – New Features	Jeremy Boyd	NZ Room 1	http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/soa-architecture.aspx?m=3&autostart=true
SEC305	Virtualisation and Security – What does it mean for me?	Steve Riley	Sky City Theatre	http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/security.aspx?m=1&autostart=true
SVR315	Windows Server 2008 Hyper V Architecture, Scenarios & Networking Deep Dive	Ben Armstrong	NZ Room 2	http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/virtualisation.aspx?m=1&autostart=true
WEB304	Web Futures – The next 18 months	Panel	NZ Room 1	http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/web.aspx?m=2&autostart=true
WEB309	Silverlight 2 for Developers	Jonas Folleso	NZ Room1	http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/web.aspx?m=1&autostart=true
SVR319	Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Deep Dive	Tony Murray	Sky City Theatre	http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/virtualisation.aspx?m=4&autostart=true

Interviews and Roaming Clips

There are a number of these including

· TechFest - http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/techfest.aspx

· Interviews

o Neil Roodyn

o Jeremy Boyd

o Vittorio Bertocci

o Reed Shaffner

o Scott Hanselman

o Jason Buffington

o Johann Kruse

o Michael Norl

o Steve Riley

o Garry Gross

o Matt Heller

o Rob Bagby

· Roaming Clips

o The Marketplace

o Social Events

o Hands on Labs – and heaps more

Presentations

The main page is here... http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/searchDownload.aspx

You can filter to a track, speaker, or session by using a combination of variables: eg
http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/searchdownload.aspx?speaker=Anna%20Liu

http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/searchdownload.aspx?idnum=ARC203

http://www.microsoft.com/nz/teched08/searchdownload.aspx?presentation=Architecture

The Case for SOA - Harvard Business Review

Mark.Carroll — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:46:00 GMT

For those of you interested in the 'business justification' and Return On Investment (ROI) of Services Orientated Architecture (SOA) there is an excellent article in the June 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review (HBR).

Entitled "The Next Revolution in Productivity" the article focuses more on the 'structure' and 'de-composition' of business rather than the technologies required which it argues are not the most difficult part of the exercise. The article discusses that by far the most difficult area of SOA is getting to grips with the need to 'map' the business so its core competency focused areas can be separated from those that can be shared, shifted or automated.

The article concludes with the following gem “New ways of constructing software combined with a computer network that can distribute the modules instantaneously anywhere in the world give executives unprecedented tools for building ultra-efficient and flexible operations”.

Ric Merrifield of Microsoft, known to some of you in the NZ architect community for his work with Microsoft Motion, is one of the major authors.

In New Zealand HBR is available from most of the larger newsagents and bookstores or you may be lucky enough to have access to electronic copy via an EBSCO subscription or similar. Well worth a read to help with those more business focused discussions around SOA.

Microsoft Saas and S+S Architect Director coming to New Zealand

Mark.Carroll — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 02:32:00 GMT

Read it first on NZ ARCast.

Further to this entry on NZ ARCast I am delighted that Gianpaolo Carraro (GP), Director, DPE, Platform Architecture is coming down to New Zealand to give a series of talks on Saas and Software plus Services (S+S).

He will be talking to Independent Software Vendors, Hosters and Architects.

About ‘GP’

GP, as Gianpaolo is better known by us non-Italian speakers, describes himself on his blog as a dotcom refugee happily expatriated at Microsoft. He has recently contributed to both the Microsoft Architecture Journal Volume 12 and the MSDN architecture centre as well as speaking at numerous industry events. GP will be speaking in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland on December 3rd, 4th and 5th respectively.

Dark Horses are fun – especially in banking !

Mark.Carroll — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:58:00 GMT

The National Bank (www.nbnz.co.nz) have recently re-released a significant part of their customer facing web site using ASP.NET, the parts replaced were previously a mix of ASP and PHP. In terms of content the site is functional and clean and still retains all that good stuff that has helped make the NBNZ site one of the top ten sites in New Zealand – that and those high customer satisfaction ratings they receive as a bank. Even if you don’t bank with them their economic report section (http://www.nbnz.co.nz/economics/default.aspx) contains some good stuff especially the fairly detailed economic outlooks (http://www.nbnz.co.nz/economics/outlook/default.aspx).

The Challenges faced by Banking sites.

Banking sites face significant challenges – not only is content changing all the time but there is the added incentive that if you do get things wrong there are a raft of Authorities, Ombudsman , Acts and Regulations that will see you land in hot water very quickly if you make a mistake. You can only trust the best people with the best technologies in an environment like that.

Technology.

I had a quick chat with some of the team down there about how they approached the re-developments. Here are some interesting snippets based on their experiences. Key technologies used are ASP.NET, Expression and Visual Studio Team System. In terms of ‘best bits’ “ ASP.NET master pages rock” – they make the job a lot easier and you end up with a ‘cleaner’ more stable result developed in much less time. Another ‘best bit’ is the web testing facilities in Visual Studio Team system. The Visual Studio Team system testing facilities provided rigorous testing that gave the team a lot of insight into where efficiencies needed to be made and whether or not the site could withstand extremely high volumes of traffic. In terms of lessons learned the main one was around the idea of building a series of smaller site maps rather than one large one – this is probably quite a valid observation when dealing with larger sites that have volatile content and significant penalties associated with their failure. Within the site the team also pointed out some examples of where they had leveraged the features just mentioned;

· http://www.nbnz.co.nz/personal/life/default.aspx - based of an inherited master page. The left hand navigation is controlled through an XML SiteMap and the flyout menu is generated through a combination of javascript and the asp:repeater control.

· http://www.nbnz.co.nz/personal/product/index/tbrededucationfund.aspx - as above - this page inherits from the same master page – this keeps a consistent look and feel throughout the different navigation levels on the website. The nav is also controlled by a repeater code, with a bit of inline code for customisation.

· All the pages with the green bar at the top and the right hand side all inherit from the same master page e.g. http://www.nbnz.co.nz/economics/publications/marketfocus/default.aspx inherits from the same masterpage as the two above. This was a massive time saver in the development process.

Banks with animal association are OK in my book.

So what is it about NZ Banks that have a brand or name association with animals ? KiwiBank have also been doing some awesome work with web services integration layers using open standards based .NET 3.0 which I’ve blogged about before and maybe some time soon I’ll be able to share some details about how pigs really can fly ! [Note for overseas readers – you would have to watch NZ Television to get the last one]. Its great to see that the open and competitive nature of NZ banking is leading to some world class uses of technology in a tough and well regulated market place – exactly what those economists said would happen nearly twenty years ago when they opened up NZ banking for competition.