NBC's coverage online of the Olympics using Silverlight was awesome. I know I am not the only guy in the world that started watching the women’s sand volleyball initially just for the bikini's. But after watching how good these athletes (especially, May/Walsh) actually are I was astounded. I really got in to it and it became my favorite event...even stopped noticing the bikini's (well...mostly). My most memorable moment of these games was sitting in a bar in San Francisco. The volleyball game with May/Walsh started...and the bar went silent...everyone was watching the game. Cheers, ohhhs and high fives were pervasive throughout the game. I chest bumped a guy I didn't even know. Amazing!
Anyway, enjoy the gold medal match (May/Walsh vs. China) and also appreciate what Silverlight can do for the coming IPTV world that is rapidly approaching.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/player.html?assetid=0824_hd_bkm_hl_l1348r2
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But that does not mean I don’t have anything to say.
Good news is one thing I love to spread; Neal Stephenson is coming out with a new book… "Anathem" this September. I have already pre-ordered it from Amazon and expect to be cooped up with nose inserted in said book while not being distracted by things like my job, family, eating (don’t want crumbs in the hardback), etc.
After many years of struggling to write in my blog, I have come to the conclusion that blogging is something that is squarely in the domain of extraverts. I am not one of those. Wikis are my preferred way to get information and contribute to conversations on topics. Whimsy, rambling and general banter, which many blogs are chock full of, are not things that introverts do easily. Wikis allow Introverts to digest, noodle, reflect then proselytize profoundly on a subject in a timely manner. The dominance of blogs, even with track-backs do not create a stream of conscious thoughts, but rather a meandering journey often in a haze of confusion.
Now, I am not slamming blogging, but rather stressing the importance of Wikis as a great place for introverts of the world to contribute to the greater corporate knowledge in a tighter context.
Like one of my favorite authors Neal Stephenson who points out the article in the Atlantic Monthly by Jonathan Rauch which explains introverts, we are not recluses...
Sure this will stir things up for awhile, but needless to say, you will see me contributing more to world of wiki than blog in the future...
Marley
The Banking Integration Factory describes our vision for the last mile in Banking Integration. The factory will establish cross-cutting service implementation details for our partner offerings as well as present our strategy for Composite Banking Solutions that can be built using the factory by our customers and partners.
Check out the press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/nov06/11-14MSBankingIntegrationPR.mspx
Check out the Technical Overview: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/aa727128
The factory is a work in progress, but it represents a major step forward for our partners, Microsoft and the industry.
Do you remember when the promise of broadband was so close but you just could not get it? The communications company had pulled the fiber to your local area, but you just had to wait until that bandwidth was available to you. Well, the banking industry is in the same space. Banks have spend the better part of 5 years working on cross channel initiatives eventually settling on Service Orientation as their approach to address the problem. However, IT in banks has spent a ton of resources both in $ and people to develop these services but have not delivered any noticeable innovation to the people writing the checks for all this work. The branches (stores), ATM, Call Centers, IVR and web have basically not seen the benefit from a user perspective…as yet.
Integration in the early days was all about integration at the data tier, which was great...but all you had was data and you lost the behavior that went along with that data. Once SOA became popular, the promise of delivering both data and behavior was very enticing and proved a slam dunk for service to service integration. However, it left much to be desired when it came to human interaction. As a UI developer when presented with a WSDL, it is often trial and error to get the right experience to effectively work against the actual intentions of the service. This get compounded with each additional service that is introduced into the human interaction.
Composition is the next level of integration to address the gap that exists between services and the end user. Whether it is a Web 2.0 mash-up, a SmartClient, Mobile or Office Business Application…composition provides developers and architect the opportunity to extend their intent for a service (data, behavior and human interaction) into the story. The great news is that we have started to tackle the complexity in service creation and UI composition with the recent P&P factories (http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices). The next step is to look at further industrializing these factories to specific industry scenarios...
The last mile will soon be crossed…
I'll be participating again in the Financial Services webcast week where I'll discuss enabling workflow in the retail banking environment. The key word there is "enabling", because that means architecture...
Please join me on September 7th:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?culture=en-US&eventid=1032303399&x=16&y=9
Also check out the other sessions:
http://www.financialdevelopers.com/registration.aspx
Been a silent for sometime now...mostly because I have been busy and had nothing to say until I figured out what I was going to do at Microsoft. I have left the DPE (Developer & Platform Evangelism) team where I focused on the Financial Services industry to become the Industry Technical Strategist for Banking in the US.
What does that mean? Still figuring it out, but mostly it will be putting some architectural and design meat underneath the experienceBanking theme and then spreading that message around. Banking is a big area, but I think of it as more focus since I can now ignore Insurance and Capital Markets.
My main ideas for banking and technology is how do we use the technology to provide:
1. Cost Take Out.
2. Time to Market advantage
3. Bring innovation back to banking
4. You guessed it…creating great User Experiences (UX) to generate brand differentiation across channels…
So, as I get ramped up I'll start putting tidbits here…
I have seen such tremendous interest in leveraging WPF in the Financial Services Industry targeted at brand differentiation in creating new experiences in ATM Channels, Investment Banker, Trader and Broker applications, etc…I believe we are on the verge of a UX revolution. This revolution is fueled by new visualizations of data (3D-animated market data, CRM navigation, BI, etc…) that will push the software market for services and design agencies to meet a stiff market reality. This will compound a problem in the consulting industry’s general lack of supply of those capable of creating the next generation of UX that our customer’s will demand.
Get ready for the wave! Bone up on our Expression tools http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/default.mspx and think differently about the end user experience. Now, is the time to start putting the sizzle back into UX! With SOA initiatives in full swing, it is time to start composing great experiences and delivering back to business users with a great experience.
Enough! with the “Web Browser” being the answer to all requests, do more, do it right and WOW your users. Use a browser UI when it is called for, but always strive to deliver the best UX, regardless of the technology…the barriers to Rich Clients have been broken…it is 1996 all over again, but this time we have a great UX story instead of a half baked Browser…
One is not truly innovative unless your audience notices your innovation.
I see too many IT organizations focus on infrastructure innovation while ignoring and stagnating the end user Experience. To often IT makes decisions about the UI using 20th century restraints as decision points and forcing user’s to deal with the status quo or building new UI using least common denominator technology like the Web Browser when they do not have to. Building compelling UI using a Web Browser as the client is a daunting task, despite new tools on the horizon; IT still is focusing too much on the middle and backend layers.
Have you seen the new stuff that can be done using WinForms and SmartClient technologies and the new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) coming out later this year? (If not check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/smartclient/ and http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.aspx) The web browser is great, but leverage the architectural infrastructure being built around with Service Oriented principles to deliver the best user experience regardless of channel. We should shift our focus as an industry to radically changing the way humans interact with computers by concentrating on the UI.
Build infrastructures that can support multiple UIs while reusing the same service façades and deliver the best experience possible to your consumers…that will be innovation that your audience will notice.
We need to develop a decision tree for when to use a SmartClient vs. a traditional Web Client. Most architecture committees struggle with when and where to use a SmartClient and they want a simple matrix to follow. Are you seeing the same thing?
It is easy to decide when you have local devices, constant use, low latency requirements and heavy data input...SmartClient all the way. But when you make that decision, how do you partition your business logic? General rule of thumb...if it affects data input...put it on the client, but there is more. The general mindset of people looking at SmartClient find themselves tending to start thinking 2-tier, instead of making the leap to using them in 3-tier architectures (SmartClient calling a service facade). This is a flaw, using a SmartClient as a thin composite solution that is working in a service oriented way provides a responsive (snappy) interface that makes users very happy.
It may seem obvious to us, but there is a real need for guidance...
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Finally I have put the finishing touches on a presentation that puts our Connected Systems theme together with a Composite Application approach that supports both a Smart and Web Client interface. (Nothing new and groundbreaking here, just composing a message that resonates with a mix of business and technical audiences.) The presentation blends together and end to end scenario that deals with Entity Aggregation, Comprehensive Workflow/Orchestration, Service Orientation, Dynamic Messaging and Composite applications to present the big picture.
Part of my reasoning for building this message is trying to articulate to people what the value is in differentiating your applications using the UI. What sort of infrastructure is required to enable a composite application approach is required and finally what Microsoft products fit where in the architecture? Among the topics are questions like:
- So you measured what the TCO is for your Web Application UI for operations and maintenance...did you look at the cost for the additional time it now takes all of your users to conduct a transaction? TCO is usually measured over a 3 year period, but the average lifespan of an application is 7. Let’s say your application adds 2 seconds to every user transaction due to the Web UI architecture and you have 2000 users. What is the cost of the additional 2 seconds * 2000 * 7? Depends on how much a second costs. In a call center there are places where shaving a second off each call saves a million dollars a year. If you app is a call center application, your UI choice just cost and addition 2 million per year.
- Service Orientation is not architecture! Architecture is what we use to build our houses; we do not pour a foundation for a house before the architecture is complete. We use services in our houses: water, electricity, cable tv, gas, phone, etc. We do not architect these services to use them. Now each service is architected internally & differently with a service orientation mindset for how the services are consumed. (Water - On/Off; Gas - On/Off, etc) We as house builders can then compose the services together to create new value...electricity/gas + water == hot water! So if you insist on making Service Orientation a TLA, then use SOM (Mindset).
- Using SOM we expose our infrastructure in simple ways that application for applications to combine them to create new value....this is Connected Systems enabling Composite Applications.
Enough of the rant…
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I know this has absolutely nothing to do with Financial Services, but I took my son to see Serenity (http://www.serenitymovie.com) and was quite impressed. The movie was awesome, a little campy at times and a bit (B)ish but fun nonetheless. I recommend it...
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Are you seeing interest in WCF (Indigo) for market data and pre-trade info? I am...
Big questions arise...can WCF handle the load? How many ticks can it handle per second to n traders? The interest in WS* is there (security, entitlements, priority?) but is the cost in packet size too much? Can you really do ASC XML, or should you do binary? What about binary XML? How hard is it to write a custom serialize?
I am not sure, but we are going to find out...
Watch this space...
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