Matt Deacon's digestive blog : Software + Services

Architect Insight Slides now live!!!

matt deacon — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:51:00 GMT

Finally, after much delay I can confirm that the slide decks and keynote video are now available for download at:

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/aic2009

Additional breakout videos and additional podcast interviews should follow soon!!!!

The Cloud, the architect, IT and the great disruption

matt deacon — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:54:00 GMT

Here's the deck I presented to Accenture technical consultants. Bit of fun and got a chance to give my view on what's happening to IT. Here's what I was asked to cover ...

What’s cloud computing?
What’s the industry trend, projections, opportunity and client value?
What does this mean for organisations and how are we expecting them to change?
What’s Microsoft doing to define, capture or ride this trend?
What’s Microsoft and Accenture doing together to capture this market?
What’s the next big Disruptive technology?

On the last point - I said that we're in it, but the only problem is with disruptive technologies is that you can't normally see them until they disrupt:)! On the whole Cloud in all its forms is an example of radical innovation but in certain cases it will disrupt. Here's some candidates for disruption IMHO:

Traditional OUtsourcers, that don't see the opportunity to innovate as organisations multi-source
System Integrators/Consultants that don't seak to generate IP and business partnerships with their customers
Organisations that don't service enable their IT & don't differentiate their assets against critical and non-critical functions
Organisations that don't invest in architecture and integration at a strategic level within IT (and the business)

Implications Of The Cloud

View more Presentations from Matt Deacon.

Thoughts welcomed ....:)

What ISVs should know about hosting/building on cloud/PaaS

matt deacon — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:29:00 GMT

I had the pleasure of talking at an IBM hosted SIIA event yesterday and thought it worth sharing some thoughts. It was hosted by Phil Waineright (http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/) a well known commentator on SaaS and comprised of a series of 5 minute "lightening talks" (as popularised by Cloudcamp) from various invited guests. Other than myself, these included IBM, BT, CohesiveFT, CODA (hosted on Force.com), Accounts IQ (OpSource) and Cast Iron. There were around 60 or so people in attendance with a healthy cross-section of SIs, Hosters and ISVs plus the obligatory IBM and of course Google too.

The presentations and format I find really appealing - if you can't get your words out fast enough then the buzzer goes and it's on the the next presenter! Some of the presenters fell foul of the time limit but using the importal words "I've started so I'll finish" I managed to get my final point out there before Phil reclaimed the stage:)! I spent some time preparing for this over the past day or so and although time is limited it really forces you to focus on what you want to share. What is the one thing you want to get across? We often get an hour or more to talk to an audience and to my mind I think this can make you lazy about getting your point across.

Cast Iron are an interesting company offering "Integration as a Service" a key barrier for SaaS adoption that I would recommend taking a look at. Alexis Richardson from CohesiveFT (who hosts Cloudcamp) was great, I'm a big fan of AMQP plus their work on crossing clouds is great - plus we got to chat about Azure too which was great!

I took most notes from the guy from AccountsIQ - I thought he gave a great insight into being a SaaS provider and here's a map I drew up from it.

Click on image to set larger version

Plus here's the deck I used. I ended up with what I jokingly called a "maturity model" for which I got some positive comments. I've also added the mind map I put together while preparing for the session in the hope that I get points for showing my working out:)!

View more presentations from MattDeacon. (tags: cloud isv)

Click on Image to see larger version

Anatomy of Software + Services

matt deacon — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:17:00 GMT

I was asked to talk to some people the other day about Software + Services and what it meant. For some reason I started to draw out a mind map. After a little tweaking here's where I got to after the chat. One bit I particularily liked were the architectural principles.

Be interested in feedback here - what's majorly missing?

Click here or on picture to see readable version

The shrinking Enterprise

matt deacon — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:42:00 GMT

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.

SQLServer in the Cloud?

matt deacon — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:04:00 GMT

** 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!

UK Services Revolution Architect Forum

matt deacon — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:33:00 GMT

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