Hope is not an Architecture : Events

Adelaide Bank - Enterprise Architecture and Motion

nilsv — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:48:00 GMT

We were fortunate enough to have Glenn Smyth, Chief Architect of Adelaide Bank present at the Canberra Architect Council last week.

Many folks that have been around the traps in Canberra for a number of years will know Glenn from his days at ATO and also DEWR. He is a great presenter and a colourful character.

I think Glenn did a great job of describing the Enterprise Architecture Framework that he is champoining at the bank. He decribed the approach to capability modelling that is being used to ensure that the services being built are the "right services", something which is often challenging in SOA.

The capability modelling work is drawn from much of the work that has come out of Microsoft for the last number of years. Formerly known as Motion and now officially named MSBA, Microsoft Business Architecture (I gotta admit I like the name "Motion" better).

You can find a copy of Glenns slides here which includes some notes and references (approx 3 Mb in size).

Canberra Architect Council - Dr. Don Ferguson

nilsv — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 13:40:21 GMT

Last week we were fortunate to have Dr. Don Ferguson in Australia.

Don is a Microsoft Technical fellow and fairly new to Microsoft after many years at big blue.

During this time he visited Canberra and presented at the Canberra Architect Council and shared some interesting thoughts on SOA, ESBs, Web Services and Web 2.0.

Don was also the keynote speaker at the Australian Architect Forum that was held in Sydney and Melbourne.

You can find a copy of Don's Slides here (approx 5.5 Mb in size).

Next meeting of the Canberra VSTS User Group

nilsv — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 04:34:21 GMT

Hi there, it’s that time of the month again.

The next breakfast meeting has a changed date of Tuesday 27^th Feb at 8:00am to 9:30am.

We had to move because the SharePoint user group were meeting at the same time – oops.

Thank you to all for registering and attending last month’s Canberra VSTS User Group. The feedback has all been excellent.

WHEN:

This Tuesday 27^th Feb.

8:00AM to 9:30AM

WHERE:

Microsoft Canberra

Level 2

44 Sydney Ave, Barton

Map: http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point.93fcn8xdtnk1_Microsoft%20Canberra

TOPICS:

Working with Work Items (or herding cats) – Mitch Denny
TFS tools to make your life easier and the API – Grant Holliday

REGISTRATION:

Registration is essential for catering! Please email Grant.Holliday@readify.net

Register for the first Canberra VSTS user group meeting!

nilsv — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 04:25:00 GMT

The inaugural meeting is on Wednesday 24^th January at 8:00am to 9:30am

WHERE:

Microsoft Canberra
Level 2, 44 Sydney Ave
Barton ACT

The topics for the first meeting are

· Migrating from VSS to TFS (Andrew Lynes based on experiences at DEWR)
· Source Code Control – Approaches to branching, shelving etc (Sean Ferguson ATO / AFP experiences)

Registration is essential! Please email Grant.Holliday@readify.net

Thanks to Grant Holliday for taking on the task of managing registrations for the group!

Canberra Architect Council - Software as a Service

nilsv — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 12:32:00 GMT

Yesterday my colleague, Nigel came to Canberra to present at the Canberra Architect Council.

The topic was "Software as a Service – Catching the Long Tail".

I have seen the presentation before but the interesting thing about this delivery was that it was to a public sector audience. Is SaaS even relevant to public sector?

You bet it is! I was aware that several federal agencies are using external services such web content management services, CRM such as Salesforce.com and even customer matching data services and this was discussed a little more yesterday.

The other interesting scenario that was discussed was using the SaaS model for offering or sharing services between government agencies, perhaps in a limited group of government departments. Sharing and exchanging data between agencies is not a new problem, but applying some of the principles and learning's from commercial SaaS offerings does present some different perspectives, such as the models for cost recovery, delivery methods to the SaaS consumer as well as the underlying SaaS architecture to support the economies of scale as more SaaS consumers (in this case government agencies) use a particular service.

The slides that Nigel presented can be found here . (Note: approx 7Mb in size).

Good job Nigel!

Launching the Canberra Visual Studio Team System user group!

nilsv — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 22:46:00 GMT

There's quite a few Canberra based organisations and folks really using Team System in anger to support their software development lifecycle. Many are at different stages of the journey but there is certainly a great opportunity to share some of the experiences and ideas.

In the past few weeks I've been chatting with colleagues such Sean Ferguson, Mitch, Grant, Brad, Coatsy, Dave and Andrew Lynes about kicking off the Canberra VSTS user group and we've set a date for our first meeting!

The inaugural meeting set for Wednesday 24th January at 8:00am to 9:30am

Yep, early morning at the Canberra Microsoft office. Some of the details are subject to change but our charter is pretty well set.

The purpose of the VSTS User Group is to form a community of practice for Canberra-based IT professionals interested in the use of Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) to support the Software Development Lifecycle. The group meetings will not be used to deliver marketing or sales content, but instead will focus on knowledge sharing on effective use of VSTS (tips, tricks, traps).

We don't yet have a regsitration site up as yet, but expect to see something here in the next few weeks.

Informa SOA conference

nilsv — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 02:19:08 GMT

Last week I attended the Informa Service Oriented Architecture. In addition to presenting, I also had the pleasure of chairing the second day of the conference which basically involved introducing the day, keeping the other speakers to the scheduled time and most interesting was moderating the panel discussion.

The thing I liked most about this conference was the broad representation and speakers that attended. In contrast to some other conferences run by analysts organisations (or vendors!), the speakers and content seemed more realistic about actual SOA progress and maturity within organisations.

Some of the speakers included architects from Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, IOOF, St. George, QBE, ANZ, Accenture and Suncorp.

Was also good to catch up with Jim Webber from Thoughtworks and Kevin Francis from Infosys who also presented.

I presented on the second day on "Working through the issues of SOA implementation". The slide deck can be found here (note 5.8 Mb file). This presentation was pretty much based on Ron Jacobs content of Patterns and Anti-patterns of SOA.

CardSpace / Identity Metasystem Resources

nilsv — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 14:44:00 GMT

Today I had the opportunity to present to a large group of folks from some of the government agencies based here in Canberra on one of my favourite topics -CardSpace and the Identity Metasystem!

Of course, CardSpace addresses the problem of storing those passwords in odd places

But this topic is also sooo very relevant for cross agency services and of course federation too!

The presentation today seemed to go pretty well (i didn't catch anyone falling asleep :-> ).

There were lots of interesting questions and a robust discussion after the presentation which I take to be a good sign.

I promised to send out some resources to attendees so thought I'd post them here too.

The David Chappell whitepaper on Introducing Windows CardSpace is a great primer

There are also two great channel 9 presentations that I'd recommend:

The first is the InfoCard - Deep Architecture which is an CardSpace overview but also includes a drill down on the CardSpace architecture and design of the identity selector itself.
The other great channel 9 video is the drilldown on WS-Trust. Vittorio does a fine job of taking us through the use of WS-Trust and how keys are used and exchanged between the particpants of the identity metasystem. I'm not the only one who thinks this video is a cracker!

You can find the slides from my presentation here.

Ron Jacobs - Patterns and Anti-Patterns for Service Oriented Architectures

nilsv — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 14:49:00 GMT

Last Wednesday, 30th August we ran a Technical Architecure briefing at the Canberra Microsoft office.

Ron Jacobs from the Architecture Strategy Team based in Redmond did an excellent presentation on Patterns and Anti-Patterns for Service-Oriented Architectures.

You can find the slides from Ron's presentation here (warning: 11.3Mb)

If you weren't aware, Ron is the host of the Channel9 show ARCast which is really worth checking out. There are some great topics and interviews ranging from Software as a Service to High Performance computing and everything in between!

Ron has certainly been busy whilst downunder. The next day he was in Melbourne presenting to the Melbourne chapter of IASA

Heterogeneity Happens!

nilsv — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 14:37:00 GMT

The week before last I had the opportunity to travel to Auckland to present at Tech Ed NZ on the Microsoft interoperability story. I know it seems like ages ago, but some folks have asked for a copy of the presentation. You can find the slides “Heterogeneity Happens! Microsoft and Interoperability” here. The following day I did the same presentation in Sydney at Tech Ed Australia