ARC Thoughts

SmackShopping

mmoin — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:02:29 GMT

Well you might be wondering where I disappeared since last year. I haven’t gone far from Retail, in fact I am now part of the innovative SmackShopping team. If you have not heard of it, please check out SmackShopping which is a unique way to buy products....(read more)

Retail Technology Summit 2007

mmoin — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 01:14:56 GMT

ARTS (Association of Retail Technology Standards) is hosting the Retail Technology Summit 2007 in Brussles, Belgium on October 18th 2007. It is a good conference if you want to understand ARTS work in the Retail XML space and also to learn about SOA (Service...(read more)

Indian Retail Technology Observations

mmoin — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:00:33 GMT

I know its been a while since my last post. Unfortunately I was suffering with flu for a week. It was a nasty one which knocked me out for a week. Anyway's, lets get back to the topic on hand. During my tour of Indian retailers what I found is they have...(read more)

Indian Retail Observations

mmoin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:40:58 GMT

As I said in July, I spent 4 weeks in India. It was a great trip, mainly a personal one however I did take out some time to do some official work as well. I had the pleasure to visit Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai. Across all the metros, two...(read more)

Interview on Indian Retail

mmoin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:11:35 GMT

There is an excellent interview with Kishore Biyani who is considered to be King of Indian retail. He recently spoke at the Indian Retail Forum. He is the founder of the Indian Retail chain, "big Bazaar", which is really doing well. According to him 2009...(read more)

Microsoft PCI 07 Conference

mmoin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 01:23:00 GMT

PCI DSS deadlines are looming right around the corner. Retailers in general are rushing to get the compliance just in time to avoid any penalties. This just shows the importance and criticality of PCI in retail. It has become a huge business and security...(read more)

On vacation

mmoin — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:08:06 GMT

I'll be on vacation for next month, so you'll most likely not see much from me. While on vacation I'll be checking out the new phenomenon in India known as "Retail Boom'. From what I read India is going through a massive transition from the unorgnized...(read more)

Challenges faced by Retailers in the Stores

mmoin — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:11:45 GMT

I was at a roundtable discussion with some 20+ retaile VPs and CTOs. It was a very lively and interesting discussion. We were talking about challenges faced by the retailers in the stores. These were the top challenges in the stores, How to improve morale...(read more)

Software as a Service (SaaS)

mmoin — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 23:04:12 GMT

With the resurrection of internet bubble once again, which is affectionately called Web 2.0. There has been increasing focus on services. Everyone is talking about services, how they will revolutionalize the software industry, etc. In my humble opinion...(read more)

Architects in China

mmoin — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:05:00 GMT

Recently I heard from my Chinese counterparts and they showed strong interest in my blog. They wanted to translate it to Chinese for local architects due to the demand. I'm very happy and honored to hear that and wanted to express my appreciation to you all for following my blog.

Architects in China, thank you for reading my blog. It would be great to hear from you, any feedback you may have please send it to me in english or forward it to Microsoft employees in China with reference to my blog. I'm sure they'll be happy to translate your feedback to me.

I do think this is an exciting time to be an architect as the last few years have seen tremendous developments in the technology space. Take the mobility space or the growth of Web 2.0 or the SOA space. All these emerging technological concepts are keeping the job of an architect challenging, exciting and interesting. So keep up the good work...drop me a line when you get time.

OBA RAP for Health Plans is announced (a.k.a CERA)

mmoin — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 03:36:32 GMT

Microsoft today announced the availability of Office Business Application (OBA) Reference Architecture Pack (RAP) for Health Plans, also known as Consumer Engagement Reference Architecture (CERA) There is a white paper and two different presentation that walk thorugh the guidance of this RAP. There is a also a video of ARCcast.TV with Ron Jacobs, Dennis Schmuland and myself. This RAP provides the guidance on the value of OBAs to health plans to engage and keep consumers engaged in their health. It also demonstrates several unique advantages to health plans seeking to engage consumers in their health, gain a competitive advantage, and elevate their perception in the eyes of their customers as trusted health advocates.

in general health plan industry is under tremendous pressure to improve quality of care while reducing the ever growing costs. This OBA RAP addresses this particular and demonstrates how technology can help in engaging with consumers to improve their health.

Health plan RAP shows how to build architectures that unify people, process and technology through familiar Office 2007 user interfaces. It includes an architecture framework for Health Plan with an OBA based scenario, Windows Live platform for member and coach identification and the Windows Live Service Agents as automated bots. As demonstrated through many releases of OBAs, this is a new class of applications that connect people both inside and outside the organization with both existing line-of-business (LOB) systems and third party applications. Also, enable much needed collaboration between various care providers ranging from health coaches to physicians. Collaboration that is contextual, via many channels and scalable.

I encourage you to download the available resources go thorugh them and provide feedback.

PCI DSS on fire at ERIxChange

mmoin — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:50:23 GMT

I don't mean to say PCI DSS regulation was on fine, but rather the session I was in, got fired down. As I indicated earlier I was on a panel discussion about PCI DSS at the ERIeChange conference in Boston. There were about 6 panelists and it was moderated by Evan Schumann of StoreFrontBackTalk. It started on time and we were doing great with all the panelists enthusiastically chiming in.

Some of the discussion was around, how it is fundamnetally important to identity the data that must stored to do business versus nice to have. There are lots of retailers that retain cardholder data without much thinking and it and that in fact leads to compromises. One panelists suggested a recent compromise where the cardholder data was stored in a marketing database which was obviously not well secured and lead to the compromise.

We were into the session for about 15 minutes when the room started getting filled with smoke from the ceiling. Some cables and/or lights were on fire in the ceiling. We all had to vacate the room and that was the end of the session. By the time the event organizers found another room, it was time for next session. So it was a tragic end to a potentially great session as the session was packed with attendees.

Good news is, we plan to re-host the panel discussion on StoreFrontBackTalk as a webcast. So tune in to listen and ask questions. I'll post the exact date/time of the webcast as soon as it is finalized.

PCI DSS Panel discussion at ERIeXchange

mmoin — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 07:55:35 GMT

PCI DSS is a hot topic. Every where you turn there are panel discussions, forums, sessions, surveys and solutions to deal with it. Yet, there seems to be lots of confusion and dilemma by the retailers to comply. I think the key to getting compliant is the mindset. The motivation should not be to get compliant but rather to identify and mitigate the business risk as far as credit card information goes. Also, as some one said PCI DSS should be taken up as a way life and not a specific milestone to hit and forget.

Anyways, I'll be on a panel discussion to discuss just this important topic along with Evan Schuman of StoreFrontBackTalk at ERIeXchange in Boston on June 5th 2007. Hope to see you there and connect with you.

OBA RAP for Price Management

mmoin — Thu, 10 May 2007 01:58:28 GMT

Microsoft today released an Office Business Applicaion (OBA) Reference Architecture Pack (RAP) for Price Management. This is a critical area in the industry and many enterprises struggle with communicating the pricing rules to their sales field. Price Management is a crucial aspect of any company’s product sales strategy. Price is where the supply meets demand and is also the fundamental measure of a product or service value in the market. So to help in this critical scenario, Microsoft released an OBA RAP that show cases use of Office Application platform to build a real time price generation solution.

The Price Management RAP shows how to build architectures that unify people, process and technology through familiar Office 2007 user interfaces. It includes an architecture framework for Price Management with an OBA based scenario and BizTalk for the quote creation process. OBAs are emerging as new breed of business applications that connect existing line-of-business (LOB) systems with the people that use them every day through the familiar user interface of Microsoft Office. These OBAs bridge the gap between how business process systems work, and how people work. Price Management OBA helps in quote creation process both in online and offline mode and helps in real time decision making. It also simplifies the process of pricing rule communication especially to the field sales force. Creation and management of real time workflows is another critical area addressed by this OBA. Overall this OBA improves efficiency and ultimately lowers time-to-market, faster turn-around and reduced cost.

Please check it out on MSDN and let me know any feedback you may have. Source code is currently not there, but it'll be posted for you to download for free soon.

ARTS committee for SOA blueprint

mmoin — Thu, 03 May 2007 20:49:08 GMT

Earlier this week Association for Retail Technology Standards announced that it has launched the SOA Blueprint for Retail project, a program that will provide retail businesses with specific guidelines and best practices for implementing a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Retailers require SOA to more easily link business operations across stores, the Web, suppliers and merchandisers.

The committee working on this effort consists of representatives from variety of vendors and customers. There are close to 25 members in the committee and includes representation from Kohl’s, Big Lots, CSK Auto, IBM, Oracle, Cisco, SAP and Microsoft.

Retails have been slow in adopting the SOA despite all the benefits it brings to the business. So this group's goal is to create the much needed blueprint and define the steps to get started on this path. Talking to Retailers, it was obvious that there is an urgent need for help on how to get started. So this committee will do its work in helping the retailers get started and realize the benefits of SOA.

I'm representing Microsoft on this committee. So if you have any questions, please feel free to ping me.

Technorati tags: SOA, Service Oriented Architecture, Service Orientation, ARTS, Standards