Business-Driven Architect

What are your 'Rings of Defense'?

brendamichelson — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:29:53 -0500

I'd like to attribute this recent 'catching up on my reading' to long sunny summer days in my Adirondack chair, but no such luck. On the few rainless days, Zephyr has commandeered my chair. Despite these obstacles, I've still managed to find time to read, and share some interesting articles. Today, an article in June's Fast Company caught my attention. The article is entitled "Through the Fire" and shares strategies Cisco, Corning, IBM, Intel and Schwab are using to survive in the current economic crisis, and emerge even stronger as the economy rebounds. Of the profiled companies and strategies, Corning's...

Still time to brag about your S-O-A Success --- Contest Deadline Extended until July 20, 2009

brendamichelson — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:35:09 -0500

By popular demand, the deadline for the SOA Consortium | CIO magazine SOA Case Study contest has been extended until July 20, 2009. The contest is a great way to recognize your organization, garner industry-wide praise for your hard working project team, and as Dave Linthicum suggests, contribute your knowledge and experience to further industry best practices. The entrance requirements and submission are simple. To qualify, your organization (business or government, any size) must have successfully delivered business or mission value using a SOA approach. That’s it. No membership, no fees, just brag about your success. As for the submission...

Lessons from Googlenomics: Data abundance, Insight scarcity

brendamichelson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:53:32 -0500

“"What's ubiquitous and cheap?" [Google’s Hal] Varian asks. "Data." And what is scarce? The analytic ability to utilize that data.” The June issue of Wired has an excellent article by Steven Levy, entitled Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability. The article delves into the history and algorithms behind Google’s auction based ad system, highlighting the significance of engineering, mathematics, economics, and data mining in Google’s success. On the economics front, the article explains Hal Varian’s role as Chief Economist at Google, including why Google needs a chief economist: “The simplest reason is that the company is an economy unto...

Conversation with Steve Goldman of the CME Group on CEP as Enterprise Platform & StreamBase

brendamichelson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:57:44 -0500

Late in May, Mark Palmer, CEO of StreamBase, piqued the event processing community's curiosity with this tweet: "Today I signed what I think is the most exciting CEP deal of 2009 - corporate selection by a household name...". While many household names use Complex Event Processing products, the products are acquired solve a particular business problem, or perhaps, a handful of scenarios within a business unit. In his tweet, Mark signaled an adoption pattern shift, from CEP as application enabler, to CEP as enterprise technology platform. For the event processing community -- vendors, researchers, early adopters and advocates -- this...

@ Enterprise 2.0 Evening in the Cloud Panel discussion

brendamichelson — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:16:42 -0500

[update: 6.23.2009 - "MIT CIO Symposium Organizer" is Christopher Reichert]David Berlind is our Evening in the Cloud host. David says the discussion shouldn't be about cloud computing definition, it should be about cloud computing benefits. The benefits will lead to the 'right' definition. Evening format is a panel discussion, followed by networking and speed geeking demos to win over our virtual $1 million. I'll blog the panel tonight. Probably offer commentary on the speed geeking via twitter and follow-on posts. Panel Format, each panelist has 8 minutes to "pitch us" as though they were visiting our organization. Mike Feinberg, Senior...

@ Enterprise 2.0 Cloud Roadmaps Panel

brendamichelson — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:00:00 -0500

Jake Sorofman, rPath, James Duncan, Joyent and Chet Kapoor, Sonoa Systems chat with Alistair Croll on the futures of cloud. These companies offer software, products that are adjacent to, or run on, the cloud. They are not cloud operators. Jake: rPath is adjacent to cloud. Platform to package applications for deployment and automated maintenance for many environments, inclusive of clouds. Chet Kapoor: Visibility, Control and Scale for APIs, feeds and services. Sonoa Systems provides technology for providers and consumers of cloud services. James Duncan: Company had internal IaaS cloud, took that knowledge and packaged as company called Reasonably Smart, which...

@ Enterprise 2.0: Alistair Croll on Moving to the cloud

brendamichelson — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:53:48 -0500

Which cloud you go to, depends on what you are moving. Move machines, code, processes or content. This is the clearest way to determine what type of cloud an operator is offering, ask them “what do I move to you – machines, code, processes or content”. Alistair is qualifying “move”, in that some code might need to tweaked for the features/functions/services of the cloud, or perhaps re-written in the case of tightly coupled legacy code. Clouds as a utility Nick Carr, Big Switch. Common need set, not a differentiator, economies of scale. When these things happen, this pattern exists, you...

Next Cloud Watching Stop: Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, June 22, 2009

brendamichelson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:47:49 -0500

Continuing my broad survey of cloud computing, I’m dropping by Enterprise 2.0 in Boston. The cloud computing program starts with a full day of talks and panel discussions and concludes with an Evening in the Cloud: “…leading purveyors of cloud computing will explain how best to leverage your existing IT investments while getting the benefits of the cloud. In addition to provoking discussion, this interactive program will allow you to "invest a virtual $1 million" in the cloud-based solution(s) you believe will give your business the most bang for its buck.” As has become a habit, I’ll share the highlights...

Are you a SOA Zombie? Want to meet fellow SOA Zombies?

brendamichelson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:41:53 -0500

Despite the continued reports of SOA’s death, do you find yourself with SOA based solutions in production, delivering business value? Or, on the way to production? Both? Well, according to my friends at ZapThink, that makes you a member of the fast-growing SOA Zombie tribe. What to do about it? Connect with fellow zombies, believers, and one famous SOA obituary writer (murderess seems harsh) and celebrate the “Night of the Living SOA Dead”, at ZapThink’s Boston ZapForum. “On July 23, 2009 dozens of experts, pundits, and influential guests will gather in Boston, MA for an evening of networking and discussion...

Grumpy Architect week: There is more to services than re-use

brendamichelson — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:01:19 -0500

Perhaps I’m just grumpy this week. Or, concerned for the future. Or, most likely, both. Nevertheless, I find conventional SOA lore more bothersome than usual. Specifically, the paired notions that the sole reason to implement services (or not) is re-use potential, and that the main architectural aspect of SOA is governing said services for re-use. Now, don’t misinterpret, there is true value in sharing services and governance is critical. However, SOA, or better said, services-architecture doesn’t begin and end with re-use potential and enforcement. For those with architectural backgrounds – software not marketing trend – what follows is nothing...

Curious about SoaML (UML Profile for SOA)?

brendamichelson — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:56:34 -0500

At the March SOA Consortium meeting, Cory Casanave, CEO, Model Driven Solutions & ModelDriven.org, gave an overview presentation & demo on Enterprise SOA Modeling with the new OMG SoaML UML profile. (pdf) SoaML is a UML profile and metamodel for the design of services within a service-oriented architecture. SoaML can be used for architecture level modeling, or as part of a model driven architecture (MDA) process, starting with a business model and transitioning through logical and physical models, resulting in technology implementation. Since it is a UML profile, it is immediately compatible with existing UML tools. Casanave began by setting...

Business Outcomes from Services & Assemblies? Bragging Rights on your S-O-A success

brendamichelson — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:09:27 -0500

Did you hear SOA died again last week? Does this make SOA more dead? Finally dead? Or, on par with Jason from Friday the 13th, deadish, but always lurking for a sequel? Bad analogies aside, this time Anne is much more deliberate in separating "SOA" the marketing term, from s-o-a the practice: "SOA" as a term has lost its luster, but "SOA" as a practice is essential for all organizations going forward" So, you could say I was right in my "cheeseburgers are dead, but demand for burgers with cheese is at an all time high" quip from January. This...

@ Interop's Enterprise Cloud Summit: Fireside Chat w/Microsoft’s Amitabh Srivastava

brendamichelson — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:24:33 -0500

Alistair Croll is interviewing Amitabh Srivastava, Senior Vice President, Windows Azure, Microsoft. Amitabh is responsible for Azure, his background is core O/S. Once again, I've captured some, but not all of the conversation. AC: Are you faced now with open cloud/closed cloud dilemma? AS: Big advantage in cloud is centralized control. Cloud provider picks the hardware, don't have to worry about accommodating old equipment and software. This control and homogeneity drives down the cost. However, still want to build a very general purpose platform. Microsoft views cloud as extension of enterprise. Developer can choose how to write the apps for...

@ Interop's Enterprise Cloud Summit: Fireside Chat w/Lew Moorman, Rackspace | Mosso

brendamichelson — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:14:48 -0500

Alistair Croll is "interviewing" Lew Moorman, CSO, of Rackspace. I've captured some, but not all, of the conversation. AC: From your recent filing, you have 62,078 servers. 69% are cloud. Rest are managed. What's the difference? LM: Cloud is set of technology about pooling and automated software. Cloud makes shared environments robust and reliable. Previously, in a shared environment, if someone else burst, everyone else loses. Lew describes dedicated hosting as a house, and cloud as a hotel room. AC: You have one set of costs associated with virtualized servers and another for dedicated. Where do you (financially) want customers...

@ Interop's Enterprise Cloud Summit: Cloud Costs and Billing Models

brendamichelson — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:09:04 -0500

Paying for It: Cloud Costs and Billing Models Moderator: Allan Leinwand, Venture Partner, Panorama Capital Speakers: Thorsten von Eicken, CTO and Founder, Rightscale Grace Kim, Sr. Manager, Marketing, WebEx (Cisco) Jesse Robbins, Co-Founder and CEO, Opscode Richard Dym, Chief Marketing Officer, OpSource Allan Leinwand opens with telecommunications innovation story, how "friends and family" plan broke AT&T's monopoly and points out that "friends and family" is back now in cell phones. As such, he sub-heads the panel as "Why Pricing Matters". What do you use as pricing model for cloud based service, has it evolved over time? Webex has 3 pricing...

Links for 2009-05-15 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 16 May 2009 00:00:00 PDT

WP Remix - Home

Links for 2009-03-23 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 PDT

10 Must-Know Topics For Software Architects In 2009
"after quite a lull, the software architecture business has gotten rather exciting again...The hegemony of traditional 3 and 4-tier application models, heavyweight run-time platforms, and classical soa that has dominated for about a decade is now literally being torn asunder by a raft of new approaches for designing and architecting applications...incautious words but major changes are in the air and architects are reaching out for new solutions as they encounter novel new challenges in the field...these new advances either address increasingly well-understood shortcomings of existing approaches or add new capabilities that we haven't generally focused on before...Mainstays of application architecture such as the relational database model, monolithic run-times, and even deterministic behavior are being challenged by non-relational systems, cloud computing, and new pull-based systems where consistency and even data integrity sometimes take a backseat to uptime and performance."
James Governor’s Monkchips » Amazon Web Services: an instance of weakness as strength
"Amazon isn’t the de facto standard cloud services provider because it is complex - it is the leader because the company understands simplicity at a deep level, and minimum progress to declare victory. Competitors should take note - by the time you have established a once and future Fabric infrastructure Amazon is going to have created a billion dollar market. And what then? It will start offering more and more compelling fabric calls… People will start relying on things like SimpleDB and Simple Queue Service. Will that mean less portability? Sure it will…"
IBM, Sun and cloud computing | Gathering clouds | The Economist
"The economic crisis has pummelled Sun, which never really recovered from the dotcom bust. As its share price plumbed new lows, IBM’s remained relatively unscathed—a reflection of its business, which has been protected by the computer giant’s global scope and the fact that it makes most of its money from software and services. In the months to come, more big fish will seek to swallow smaller fry. That is because something deeper is going on in the computer industry. Thanks to ever more powerful chips and new software, servers and other hardware can now be “virtualised”, meaning physically separate systems can act as one. This enables computing power to become a utility: it is generated somewhere on the network (“in the cloud”) and supplied as a service. To simplify their complex data centres and cut costs, more and more companies are thinking about building in-house computing utilities, called “private clouds”, or outsourcing computing to “public clouds” of the kind Sun launched..."
What SOA Can Learn from Cloud Computing and Vice Versa | David Linthicum
SOA can learn from cloud computing Service Design & Expandability. Cloud from SOA: Governance & Architecture driven. Service Design: "Those who deploy services in the cloud, such as Amazon, TheWebService, Force.com, have done a pretty good job with service design. You really have to do a good job in order to rent the darn things out. Many SOA projects have a tendency to build services that are too course-grained, too fine-grained, or just not at all well designed. The reality is that services that are not well defined and designed won't sell well when delivered on-demand, and thus those who provide services out of the cloud - which are most major cloud computing providers - have to spend a lot of time on the design of the services, including usability and durability. I urge those who build services within their SOA, no matter the enabling technology and standards involved, look at what's out there for rent as good examples of how services should be designed, developed, and deployed."

Links for 2009-03-17 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 PDT

The anatomy of cloud computing

Links for 2009-01-16 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:00 PST

The StreamBase Event Processing Blog: Case Study: BlueCrest Capital Management
Event Processing case study from Streambase: "In 2007, just as the credit crisis was breaking, BlueCrest set up a team..to develop a state-of-the-art market data management system. BlueCrest trades 24 hours a day, six days a week, across multiple markets using a wide range of data feeds. As markets move day to day and week to week, BlueCrest needed to rapidly reconfigure data feed connections and plug the data into real-time models while optimizing management of the necessary data feed licenses. BlueCrest devised a solution that combines the rapid time-to-market event processing capabilities of StreamBase with the instant storage and retrieval functionality of Vertica. It provides a total market data management solution that is able to meet the needs of low-latency trading and the demanding innovation of their quantitative analysts to achieve greater profitability."
Joseph E. Stiglitz on capitalist fools: vanityfair.com
Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz on 5 key contributing factors to the economic crisis. Easy read, important to understand how we got here. "There will come a moment when the most urgent threats posed by the credit crisis have eased and the larger task before us will be to chart a direction for the economic steps ahead. This will be a dangerous moment. Behind the debates over future policy is a debate over history—a debate over the causes of our current situation. The battle for the past will determine the battle for the present. So it’s crucial to get the history straight. What were the critical decisions that led to the crisis? Mistakes were made at every fork in the road—we had what engineers call a “system failure,” when not a single decision but a cascade of decisions produce a tragic result. Let’s look at five key moments."
The financial crisis: Who's really to blame? - Dec. 8, 2008
the keep up with cocktail party/coffee shop conversations version of "What happened in 2008? Chances are you can't succinctly express your views on that complex question. But the American public will settle on one of four catch phrases over the next several months. Whatever bit of conventional wisdom wins out will have an impact on the economy. The contenders are as follows..."

Links for 2008-12-02 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 PST

Inside Architecture : Creating a distinction between business services and SOA business services
Nick Malik provides a different perspective. Is metamodel varies from mine, but an interesting point-of-view nonetheless. "A business unit may provide zero or more business services. Not all of the capabilities required by a business unit may be involved in a business service. SOA provides the ability to share features. Those features may provide information, or calculations, or data manipulation. They may also include the limited automation of some elements of a business process. SOA services are provided by "installed software""..."The point of this post is to provide sufficient context to challenge the notion that SOA provides shared business services. It does not. SOA provides shared features that many business units call upon. Those features are required by the business processes within those business units."
When "IT Alignment with the Business" Isn't a Buzzword
disciplined approach to cost containment: "Well, let's be careful. First, project costs associated with large business initiatives are only one portion of IT spending. Additionally, cutting costs is easy; you just decrease the services you offer the business. Instead, we wanted to cut costs in ways that would enhance our business alignment, and increase (rather than decrease) the services we offer. To do that, we had to expose all of the costs in IT (PMO and non-PMO) in terms that the business could understand. In other words: business applications. We enumerated all IT budgetary costs by application, and then bucketed them based upon whether they were (1) existing services (i.e. keeping the "true" IT lights on) or (2) new services being installed in 2008. We then launched a theme of "convergence" in IT, which would allow us to converge to fewer technologies/applications that offer the business the same functionality, while increasing the level of service for each offering."
Continuations: Kaizen for Software Development Series
Intro to Kaizen for Development Series, check out the 5 posts to date. "Kaizen means loosely translated continuous improvement. It is a bundle of techniques applied by Japanese manufacturing companies. The goal of Kaizen is to break out of the notion that there is a fixed cost-time-quality tradeoff. Traditional thinking was that if you wanted higher quality it would imply more cost and longer production times. Kaizen posits that with the right process improvements you can get higher quality at lower cost and faster speed."..."I have found that Kaizen practices are also highly applicable to software development. Yet it seems that not that many folks in the software development community are familiar with the tenets and practices of Kaizen. So I am planning to write a series of posts that describes Kaizen principles and how they are applicable to software development."
Cost-Conscious Companies Turn to Open-Source Software - BusinessWeek
If you need some examples of Open Source Adoption and an exec friendly article on open source, check this one out. "As the recession puts pressure on tech spending, many companies are turning to open-source software to handle more IT tasks"
elemental links: Open Source Considerations
One more on Open Source. I wrote an open source considerations paper in October 2005. This post excerpts those 'considerations', which practitioners tell me still hold. Folks have incorporated some of these key points into new Open Source strategies for their organizations.
Why an Open Source SOA stack makes sense
Speaking of Open Source, Mike Kavis shares his open source SOA stack preference and points out a few others.

Links for 2008-11-14 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:00 PST

elemental links: Net Neutrality – An Important Topic for National Conversation
My Net Neutrality piece from Feb 2006. An attempt to frame the issue – how we got here and the positions of each side. I do offer my own opinion at the end, but my goal in writing the piece was to present the issue neutrally. With the intent to engage more people in the national conversation.
techPresident – Obama's CTO: Never Mind Who; What Should S/he Do?
The US CTO discussion is interesting. Some people/organizations are advocating that the CTO should focus "internally" -- cleaning up the Government's use of technology. Others, feel that the CTO should focus on the technology required for the US to regain competitiveness and be energy independent. While there is plenty of work to do in the former, I tend to lean towards the latter. How can we harness technology and encourage technology-based innovation to move the nation forward? For more views, click thru on the link.
Business Leaders to IT: You're Still Not Meeting Our Expectations - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership
This part reads like good news to me. The business should own business process and information definition. "The Forrester study also revealed that business leaders want their own staff to become more knowledge about certain technologies and become capable of playing a bigger role in facilitating technology for themselves. For instance, 59 percent viewed it as a top priority for staff to garner business process analysis skills, 53 percent said the same about project management and 47 percent indicated a similar interest in information modeling. In addition, 43 percent wanted to know more about collaboration tool configuration and customization, which Forrester attributes to business use of wikis, blogs, conferencing and instant messaging. Essentially if the technology directly impacts a business unit, leaders want to be involved."
Mindjet Player Offers Portable Visual Collaboration Maps
This looks interesting... "The crown jewel in Mindjet's new release is easily the Mindjet Player, which allows users to take the interactive mind maps they created with MindManager 8, turn them into Adobe PDFs or Flash .SWF files. These files can be shared with anyone with a computer. Or, if you don't want to share the mind maps, you can publish them in blogs or embed them in Web pages. "The idea is that I could send a PDF to somebody, they could open it up and what they would see instead of just a picture of a map, a fully functioning MindManager map with all of the content and links to external information," Rasking said."