Old Favourites
Why projects fail? It’s all the business’ fault!
Maybe it’s because I’ve been on leave and enjoying the late spring surf of Cornwall but I’ve come to realise that it’s not all been ITs fault after all! Fundamentally, we’ve spent far too long blaming ourselves for the failure of IT to deliver on it’s…
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO made the statement back in April that “ We’re All In ” when it comes to the cloud. He mentioned that over 70% of the $2.5billion Microsoft R&D budget is now focused on cloud innovation and that this will head to 90% over…
Talking Architects – Kim Cameron and friends from AIC2010
Finally, all 8 of my interviews for AIC2010 are available on Channel9! Talking Architects with Kim Cameron, Chief Identity Architect, Microsoft Corporation “The Internet was born without an identity”. -Kim Cameron. With the growing interest in “cloud…
The Economics of Cloud Integration
I met up with an integration partner the other day and we talked about how cloud could impact their business. He talked about the typical integration project and that it was quite an investment for the customer. Phase 1: Partner builds out integration…
In their recent newsletter IASA have reported that Microsoft will end it’s Microsoft Certified Architect Program for Infrastructure and Solutions and cover the cost to transfer existing MCA holders to CITA-P. Here’s the full press release below: Austin…
Appfabric: the gateway to the cloud, an easyjet story.
A year ago, easyjet would not have predicted the level of cloud adoption it has seen across its core IT assets. At Architect Insight last year, Andy Caddy, Head of Enterprise Architecture gave an account of their IT cloud strategy explaining that easyjet…
At the next UK IASA meeting we will get the chance to hear directly from one of the first UK IASA Certified IT Architect Professionals, Wayne Filin-Matthews. The first official CITA Board will sit on 26 and 27 June and the first IASA Foundation training…
It was a great pleasure to have Iain Mortimer, Chief Architect, Bank of America Merrill Lynch keynote for me at the last Architect Insight Conference …
Why we need Certification for IT Architects
We all know the world of IT is changing rapidly and the need to do more with less has never been more significant. But as we emerge from these economically challenging times business is re-awakening and seeking new opportunities and to drive innovation…
The Pre-Manufactured Data Centre
Neat video that describes Microsoft’s data centre evolution from “Generation 4 vision” towards the pre-manufacturing of every part of the data centre: the IT, mechanical and electrical components as part of Pre-Assembled Components that they call an …
How can IT become more proactive?
In response to a number of concerns raised about IT today, the final question posed by Andy Hopkirk at the NCC Think Tank on the Future of the IT Department, was much more tactical in nature than the scope of the session would suggest How can IT become…
Outlook: partly cloudy with sunny spells to follow
Ah – just found a link to the whitepaper by Dan Scarfe and Myself http://bit.ly/cW8MfC
Enterprise IT and Maintaining the Innovation Edge
Excerpt from Outlook: partly cloudy with sunny spells to follow written by myself and Dan Scarfe (published soon) It is pretty hard to envisage an enterprise today, that is not wholly reliant on their IT to function, and this has been true for some considerable…
It really amazes me that there is still so much confusion about cloud, and maybe it’s just a result of having spent far too much time involved in the subject, such that I have separated the “wheat from the chaff” and to me it all looks quite simple now…
When’s a principle not a principle? When it’s an Anti-Principle!
“When’s a principle not a principle?” was what I muttered to the person next to me at the UK IASA meeting earlier this week. But I think I do “an anti-principle!” About 30 people turned up at the Onalytica offices to enjoy pizza supplied by Microsoft…
Why planes crash and software projects fail
Among the great many Christmas presents I received this year was the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell . In it he argues that success is as much about where we’re from and what we do as who we are and that even the genius needs a helping hand. While this…
Talking Architects with Jason Zander
Jason Zander, GM for Visual Studio talks openly about Visual Studio 2010 and what’s in store for developer architects with UML support etc. but what about wider out across the lifecycle? What about Enterprise Architecture and architecting the Lines?
Talking Architects with Roger Sessions
According to Roger Sessions in his recent white paper ” The IT Complexity Crisis “, the worldwide annual cost of IT failure is over $6 trillion a year and what’s worse is it is on the increase. The culprit, Roger believes, is complexity,
Talking Architects with Angela Yochem
Angela Yochem is an executive architect with a leading multinational organisation and an IASA fellow. Her public role and passion for architecture is incredible but it is her clear business focused approach that really sets her apart from the rest. We…
Talking Architects with Neil Ward-Dutton – Do architects love the cloud?
Well, maybe they don’t actually ‘love’ the cloud but according to the research by MWD Advisors in partnership with the IASA it appears that they are cautiously optimistic which came as quite a surprise. Neil, Research Director from MWD talked to me recently…
Talking Architects with Len Bass – new series on Channel 9
Talking Architects is a UK channel 9 series that I’ve just launched to reach out to prominent people within the Industry to discuss the issues that architects face. If you think I should talk to you or to anyone you know especially in the UK then drop…
Dave Chappell on Azure and other cloud offerings
been out a while but here’s a great interview* between Dave Gristwood and Dave Chappell on the value of Azure in comparison with other cloud platforms like AWS, Google AppEngine and Force.com well worth the time to watch! * Ok, so when I say great video…
Cloud: An Architects Perspective
Many thanks to everyone who took part in the Architect Forum on the 25th, and I mean everyone – I haven’t witnessed such a vocal audience in some time – really great mind share all round. Here’s all the links to slides that were used and I hope to have…
It is so often the case that integration is a secondary concern and along with identity, audit/logging and reporting it ends way below the fadistic significance of the UX in driving developer time (and cost). Not that I want to decry the importance of…
Do architects need certifying?
Following on from my ” mind the architect gap ” posting the other day we’ve put up a quick poll on the UK IASA portal to test opinion . Go and have a look and remember if you’re a practising architect then have you joined IASA yet?
A final thought before the weekend … I received the 2009 Standish CHAOS report from a colleague the other day that shows yet another jump in project failure rates. I often refer to Standish in my presentations so decided to look at the trends from 1994…
Great explanation of Windows Azure from Steve Marx … Video: What is Windows Azure?
I’m fortunate to know and work with a great many really influential architects both within my organisation and outside through my work as UK chair of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA). However, it has become increasingly apparent…
You can imagine how I feel now! I’d always thought I was “Baby boomer” but according to Robin Cavonious and Jonathan Peach I’m a GenX – Cool!! Only problem is that GenX is so yesterday and the Millennials are the new black! This is great podcast discussion…
The Interoperability Files: Defining Interoperability and Integration Part 2
Ah Mr Nanni, I am indeed humbled and excited at reading your reply to my posting on Defining Interoperability and Integration and for highlighting the apparent paradox in my definition. However, as to whether this leads us back to using the original definitions…
Bletchley Park Architects Council Part 2
The Microsoft UK Architect Council Meeting 8 & 9 June 2009 Bletchley Park , Milton Keynes On the afternoon of the second day the Council broke into 3 groups to discuss interoperability in the context of Security & Identity Standards SOA The groups…
Bletchley Park Architects Council Part 1
Microsoft UK Architect Council Meeting 8 & 9 June 2009 Bletchley Park , Milton Keynes <Video problems resolved> In June 2009 a group of senior IT Architects from across the industry assembled at Bletchley Park, the home of the World War II code…
The Interoperability files: Defining Interoperability and Integration
Something that has confused and annoyed me over quite a few years are the words Interoperability and Integration and that they are used widely in IT and are often used interchangeably to suggest that perhaps they mean the same thing. My instinct has always…
Just found that the German for environment is Umwelt after getting a mail from MS Germany on the launch of their new environment site http://www.microsoft.com/umwelt ! Kinda cool word I thought but the domain name is already taken;)! But better than that was…
This March I met with 30 senior architects for two days to discuss cloud computing and what impact this might have on enterprise. Sessions were delivered from Industry trade associations, industry analysts, early adopters of cloud computing plus sessions…
Sustainable Lifecycle and Innovation Management @ TechNet Virtual Conference
Just realised that I’m presenting at the TechNet Virtual Conference this Friday:)!! Boy was it fun recording this :)!!! I’ll be talking for the first time about SLIM, a Sustainable approach to lifecycle and Innovation Management … this is the follow…
The Cloud, the architect, IT and the great disruption
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…
So by now we all pretty much know that we need to take significant action on climate change but the question is how do you get others to act? Here’s my paper that spells out the four arguments to use in arguing for change within your organisation: The…
What ISVs should know about hosting/building on cloud/PaaS
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…
Anatomy of Software + Services
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…
Direct Connect – kick out your gnarly ol’VPN!
I blogged some time ago about the ” Shrinking Enterprise ” and wouldn’t it be neat if we could do away with VPN. Well the other day I came across Steve Riley who works in Trust Worthy Computing. Seems he’s been talking about just this for quite a while…
Sustainability from Datacentre to cloud
Here’s a copy of the deck I presented at the Architect Forum in Bradford yesterday. Great event with lots of great discussions especially about green IT.
We’ve been talking about container DCs for a while now but this announcement today formalises this into a pretty compelling vision of how DCs might look in the future … “The concept behind the…
Relationships, the xbox and birthdays
Over at Microsoft SAF this week in San Francisco and among many great conversations was one I had with a delegate about how the xbox is allowing him to engage more deeply with his teenage son. When my wife gave birth to our first daughter my wife’s father…
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
SaaS as a Disruptive Technology?
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…
Social networks and saving the planet
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…
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…
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…
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…
I’m also doing a talk on the 17th January in London where I’m going to talk about Industry Mega-trends but also plan to spend time reviewing ‘Oslo’ and what we know of the so far … If you want to come and ask some questions then register here …
Software Architects – who needs ’em (and are they overpaid)?
Well I have my opinions – but do you? For some reason I agreed to share mine at an upcoming BCS meeting in Cambridge! If you’re in the area why not drop in! Software Architects – who needs ’em (and are they overpaid)? January 16th 2008, 7:00pm (light…
What to expect from Microsoft in 2008
I just had to share this link http://bink.nu/news/what-to-expect-from-microsoft-in-2008.aspx it’s going to be a fun year:)! And this is just the stuff we know is going to drop … add in what’s happening around live and sites like blink.nu are going to…
SOA is rubbish according to Steve Craggs (ex worldwide executive for IBM’s MQSeries business) who suggests that the fault is not actually with SOA itself but more with the way it is implemented! We’re delighted that he’s agreed to come and talk to the…
Does Microsoft get Enterprise Architecture?
Good question … Well Mike Walker from Microsoft is charged with finding out and it should be an interesting journey one which I have always pushed for the need to work hand in hand with Industry. I’m about to launch my own campaign on the enterprise…
The Ox, the jam jar and the architect REVISITED!
Something has been gnawing away at the back of my mind since the recent “Software + Service” Architect Forum with the Jam jar experiment in particular. When I got to the venue I still need to get more pennies to fill the jam jar! I went to the coffee…
The Ox, The Jam Jar and the Architect
Back in 1906 at the age of 84, Francis Galton came across an Ox weighing competition at the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition. The fair goers were asked to guess the weight of the Ox after it was slaughtered and dressed with the nearest…
“Technology is the primary business driver in the banking industry” or so Craig Heimark said during his session at QCon today, not that the business is really aware, all they see is the changes in the competitive landscape. However, as he argues this…
Does Microsoft get Interoperability?
Working in the Architect space interoperability is never far from your door especially given the advances in communications, performance etc. I had the great fortune to meet up with an co-host a round table with the legendary Jean Paolo, GM Jean Paoli…
SaaS is a continually evolving mix of existing and emerging technologies and business models and as I have suggested seems to be best described in terms of the following six characteristics (although I am sure there are more). Application Licensing Location…
The final and perhaps all encompassing characteristic of SaaS is described in terms of reach or rather the size of the new global markets into which these products instantly play. This is an obvious draw but with significant side effects. The fact that…
Another common characteristic of SaaS at present is the emergence of the online SaaS developer communities that typically surround a particular application often extending the platform capabilities, providing integration solutions etc. These often arise…
SaaS applications are characteristically completely managed by the vendor . The implementation of management tasks and responsibilities is opaque to the subscriber and Service-level agreements (SLAs) govern the quality, availability, and support commitments…
In terms of location a SaaS Application is most readily associated with that of an internet hosted web application (and hence hosting may have been a better description in hindsight). However, in reality this only represents one of many location (hosting…
One of the most defining characteristics of SaaS is probably that of licensing provided as a subscription-based model rather than the single up-front license fee sold for perpetual use as described by traditional software “products”. This subscription…
Today a SaaS application is most readily recognised and associated with user interactive web applications accessed directly over the internet (eg. the web application). Already synonymous with the SaaS phenomena is the likes of the infamous Salesforce…
The world of IT doesn’t stand still and never has this been truer than it is today. SOA and related concepts are still riding strong on the wave but a new contender is starting to make its way through into the mainstream; this being the concept of Software…
I had the very great pleasure of chair a conference on Implementing SOA in the Banking Industry in Vienna last week as the European Regional Chair of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA). It was a truly excellent quality conference…
Architects and the Environment
I held the latest meeting of the UK Microsoft Architect Council this week and this was a meeting with a difference entitled “The Council and the Environment”. This time round the aim was to discuss our role in relation to the UK Industry. First off Jon…
Following on from the Strategic Architect Forum (SAF) held at then end of November which covered the topic of Software + Services. The teams have been busy delivering a hub for those interested in developing SaaS applications on the Microsoft Stack. http…
The first set of pictures from wax can be found here !
The following table shows the detailed drivers output from the group I was a member of, thanks in particular to the ideas of Tom Steinberg from MySociety . Original picture can be found here . t of changes do we need to make in order to respond to: Need…
The following diagram provides a view of the user significant business drivers that were identified during WAX . The power of ‘ME’ when measured in millions is an extremely significant force …. welcome to the “World of Me”!
On Tuesday I ran WAX ; a Workshop to discuss the intersection of existing and emerging architectures including SOA, Web 2.0, SaaS etc. with 24 guys from a diverse set of backgrounds including Analysts, Vendors, Enterprises and Web 2.0 companies (see the..
Copycat services and value chains
I’ve wanted to mention copycat services since the last IASA meeting and the chat some of us had over Pizza afterwards. We were talking about web services and I was on one about value chains and how these could drive standards. In the case of successful…
It’s been an interesting month, been talking a lots of interesting people. One guy, Alexis Richardson was talking about a range of SaaS models, such as the internally managed Service and the external thrid-party Service. But in between we talked about..
Self promotion never hurts but where’s all the Web 2.0 in the UK then? http://www.fourio.com/web20map/
I’ve had a few comments about my throw away comment about life on the outside in a recent post and what I meant by this. To me this is Web 2.0 country. The interest for me lies in the line between this and the Enterprise where SOA lives (or thinks it…
Not that many will know and I am sure much less care but a few years back I was Technical Director of Sunbather a new media design agency that merged with Razorfish just prior to the dotcom meltdown. So its with avid interest that I have been following…
I’m particularly excited about the recent delivery from the Microsoft Patterns & Practices team on Web Service Security patterns as I helped out in reviewing their work and even got a mention in the credits[;)]!
I went along to the recent IBM SOA event in London to get an update on the WebSphere platform and to see what all the fuss was about their SOA Launch … all was looking as expected; this was predominantly a re-branding of the platform (with some updates…
Open Enterprise Architecture and Models
In the next UK IASA event we will be looking at the Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF). Update : If you would like to attend then please send an email to UKArchitects@yahoogroups.com UK IASA Meeting Agenda 14 th November 2005 Microsoft Offices…
It’s been a busy week for me, starting with the Enterprise Architect Conference in London, closely followed by the first UK IASA meeting on Wednesday and concluding with the Microsoft Architect Forum on Thursday. I’ve met a load of great people and been…
The PAG team have just delivered guidance on an approach to threat modelling for Web applications with integration into MSF Agile. It helps you model your security design so that you can expose potential security design flaws and vulnerabilities before…
Service Oriented Architectural Layers
I mentioned in an earlier blog that I’d talk about SO layers at some point. Well, given that they featured in my presentation the other day I guess that now is as good a time as any to do so. SOA as I’ve said previously is more than just a distributed…
The Enterprise Service Bus – product or architecture?
There’s a bit of a buzz going around at the moment relating to ESB; probably the result of someone shaking a “marketing tree” somewhere! The problem with the world of TLAs is that they are easy to invent, but it is a completely different matter to then…
Service Oriented Anti-patterns; a road map for Service Oriented Anarchy
I’ve had bloggers block (or is it bloggers droop?) for a while now. I’ve wanted to write something about SOA, but the thoughts just wouldn’t coalesce into anything I could relay in any legible form. That is until know I guess, unless I get a response…
Architecture, Gaps and Dark Matter!
Yesterday I listened to a talk about the operational architect and was struck by the parallels with that of enterprise architecture. An interesting point was made on the topic of gap analysis that got me to thinking… When investigating a problem we are…
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