The UK IASA Chapter is pleased to announce the next UK meeting will be sponsored by SCL and Lattix:
Mapping the Architecture of Applications, Frameworks and Databases with a Dependency Structure Matrix
Dependencies are key to managing Software Architecture
Learn a new approach to representing and managing software architecture by utilizing inter-module dependencies using a Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM). There will be an actual demo and several real life examples.
- Understanding Dependency Structure Matrix
- Architectural Patterns
- Design Rules
- Architectural Evolution (Demo)
- Exploring Real Projects
- Q&A
If you're in London on November 4th then come along and find out more about the IASA
Tuesday, November 04, 2008 from 06:00 PM - 09:00 PM (GMT)
Just realised I'm speaking next week at the QCON in Finance Exchange on the 8th October:)!
Great announcement yesterday from Amazon that from this autumn you'll be able to host Windows and SQL Server on EC2!
Deck I recently used at the HP Innovating for a sustainable future event last week.Full of fun pictures if nothing else ...
If you can't wait for the PDC ( or aren't planning on going) then these should help ...
Microsoft's Distributed Destination: Oslo
The Origins of Microsoft's Oslo Software Modeling Platform
Just looking at the latest sessions listed for PDC makes me think attendance is a must!
Probably old news to many but I am amazed it hasn't raised more of a buzz so far
I for one am really excited by this development ..
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/sep08/09-10OMGModelingPR.mspx
At long last I've finally got the report I produced with Dr Steve Moxey of Manchester Business School published on MSDN.
In short the report concludes that SaaS as a general concept is being seen as a "radical incremental technology" more than being "disruptive" which makes sense given that SaaS as an architectural pattern builds on existing architectural patterns such as SOA. That said, although the approach is itself "incremental" it will still depend on the individual scenario as to whether that will be disruptive or not.
The framework below describes the approach we took in workshops with software vendors that's proved a useful tool in understanding one's own particular market.
I got the following link to Obama's campaign from a friend over the weekend and while I am not sure how true this example really is it made me think about the web is driving behavioural change in relation to the environment.
Everywhere I look environmental issues are taking centre stage across the events I attend, the analysts I talk to and the web sites I visit. It maybe all too late, or it might not change the way we behave ... or could it?
There are many names I keep hearing repeated some of which are reasonably obvious like that of Jonathan Porritt whom I remember idolising as representative of Friends of the Earth while I was a student. He's now Programme Director of Forum for the Future and Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission and his blog is a must read IMO. However, the guys that have got me most interested are Rob Hopkins and Ben Brangwyn who together set up the Transition Towns which describes a model for responding to the twin challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change. Now Peak Oil is worth further exploration (excuse the pun) and if you don't know the concept then it's worth reading up on. According to wikipedea since 2006 the number of towns taking part is now at over 50 and not just limited to those in the UK. What I like is that the program encourages communities "to seek out methods for reducing energy usage as well as increasing their own self reliance" - all of which plays to the power of social networking and collective intelligence in finding real and practical ways to make a difference rather than waiting for the inevitable but lethargic response of government.
Thought it worth sharing the following data from a recent study I conducted with Freeform Dynamics.
What I find interesting is how much the “Green” agenda has moved up over the course of the past year. This was clear and evident for large organisations but is now significant for the medium to large sector of 250-10,000. I’m digging into this group further so expect more data as it comes.
The second element that relates more directly to the focus of the report we have just produced is the significance of architecture. There is the appearance of a growing gap between those that ‘get’ architecture and those that do not. The latter is increasingly significant within the medium sized organisations where the overwhelming majority view IT as a cost centre. This in my opinion is rather large cause for concern and well worth further investigation.
For more information on the report then drop me a comment and I’ll ping you a copy.
Just nosing around for any comments on the recent Architect Insight Conference and came across the following full review from Matt Johnson at EduServ.
There are also a few comments from Richard Steel from Newham City council who gave his 10 prinicples for IT - you can find the deck of the Insight site.
Found a great comment of why we don't do this in the US too from Doug Holland at Intel - they (meaning Microsoft US) could learn a lot from us here in the UK methinks!
Plus a pile of blogs from Black Marble who were there in force - shame I couldn't get a spot for you guys to present -seems they're going to run a series of events covering Oslo so I'd suggest getting along to one of them if I were you.
By the way - if you went then I really should have done this earlier and say a huge thank you to you for making it probably the best Insight we've done so far!
Here's to already looking forward to Insight 4.0 ... but I guess we've got the PDC and a few TechEds to look forward to first;)!
if you missed the event last week you can still get to see some of the content here!
We filmed some of the sessions and will make them available as soon as they've been editied etc.
It was great to meet up with Richard Steel, CIO of Newham City Council at the Architect Insight Conference again this year. Not just because he's a long standing member of the Microsoft UK Architect Council which I host but because he has now been named as president of the Society of Information Technology Management, the professional association for public-sector IT managers.
Well done Richard!
Keep an eye on the Insight website for Richard's session on "A CIO's perspective on Architecture" in which he walked through the 8 IT principles by which they run Newham!
For the majority of my time I work away from the main Microsoft office and the one thing that really gets to me is the need to RAS in. The VPN connection is always going up and down and if I want to access an external web site then the speed has halved as all the traffic now goes via the corporate network. As you can imagine email traffic at Microsoft is high and the use of Sharepoint to share docs and lower the weight of emails is viral. So you end up forever having to log on through VPN wade through the security checks and finally, fingers crossed access the document. Alternatively you invest in Groove and the handy sharepoint integration tool which will cache sharepoint sites whenever you’re on the network.
Wouldn’t it be great if my machine could behave as though it was on the LAN whenever I want to access corporate data and to think I’m in the cloud whenever I want anything external?
Well, I’m not going to tell you about a funky device that will solve all these problems but I am hearing more and more about an emerging trend by many corporations to “Shrink their enterprise” that got me thinking that this type of thing is really what’s needed.
Many IT organisations are visiting their technology portfolios and asking the simple questions, “Do I care about this technology? Is it core or secondary to the business I support? Could I get this as a service elsewhere? What form would I like this service to take?”
In so doing technology assets such as email are first under the lens and interestingly the desktop (or laptop) is not far behind. “Why do we have to go through the cost of managing and maintaining these assets? Couldn’t we push that out to the user? Let them have the choice of what to purchase and they look after it as they would their home computer?” This is getting considerable traction but the sticking point comes down to security when accessing corporate resources and obviously the risk of having corporate resources (data in particular) on ones device. This is where the shrinking enterprise comes in to play.
One can imagine an enterprise as having a data centre at the middle with some level of perimeter security and then the corporate network bounded by some thick layer of network perimeter security layer for simplicity let’s just notionally call the firewall. If I am outside this firewall then in order to access corporate resources I need to create a link via VPN. However, if I am already inside the firewall then access to resources is pretty much direct.
Now imagine a scenario whereby we shrink the corporate firewall down to encapsulate just the data centre alone. This would render the model for accessing corporate resources the same for both the external user and the internal user.
The corporate network would then become little more complex than that of an internet cafe! You would all need to VPN in order to access corporate resources, but the cost in terms of performance for people located at the office would be minimal so as to not cause the frustrations of the home user. The ability to test a machine before it accesses these resources is easily configurable and so the possibility of reducing support costs for the desktop becomes much nearer to reality. It also reduces or at least consolidates the concerns of IT into a much more simplified model of operation.
However, that said, the problems for us remote user still remain. The need for the ‘switchable’ VPN routing device on your laptop still remains a dream, albeit a tangible and relatively simple dream to realise I would have thought. Maybe it’s not too far off being a reality;)! If not then the increased demand for more flexible, remote and home working options in the face of different working habits, green concerns etc. will certainly render such a device invaluable and certainly cement the path to shrinking the enterprise. Therefore those that are looking at this model already will undoubtedly benefit most moving forwards.
** URLs fixed**
Yesterday at MIX we announced SQL Server Data Services which is a set of data storage web services and query capabilities hosted on our datacentre infrastructure. This provides another element of the cloud infrastructure services layer that Ray Ozzie has been talking about as part of the Microsoft Services Platform for sometime.
We'll be definitely talking about this at Architect Insight so if you haven't booked a place then check out the agenda and book your self in!
We held a great forum in the UK last week on the future of software and services and finally I have got the slides posted up on to the web!
Here's a brief write up from the event by Richard Yeryard in which he challenges Phil Wainwrights view of Microsoft's Kool-Aid in the Cloud
