Azure Thoughts, EAI Challenges

Momentarily I am recovering from a bad flu, which kept me from doing work for more than week, and I came across some interesting notes from myself and some colleagues from Inter Access. These notes were written during LEAP 2008 at Kim Cameron’s session “Digital Identity - Why claims will Change Everything”, Clemens Vasters session “Internet Service Bus Overview” and Norm Judah’s talk about “The last architectural mile”. I was thinking of sharing them with you blog readers, so here they are. Digital Identity - Why claims will Change Everything Kim Cameron, Architect of Identity, Microsoft In this session about Digital Identity Kim showed his vision in the (near) future on identities, authorization and authentication: Claims Based Authentication. After describing problems with current mechanisms for establishing identity, authorizations and authentication he gave an overview on developments in the area of claims based authentication. His session ended with an demo of CardSpace and a Mac ...

LEAP 2008 has ended and I am back home. Dik Bijl and all people involved in organizing this event have done an excellent job. It was an exciting trip to Redmond and great environment to extend my network and learn new interesting things like Volta, hear from concepts like ‘New World of Work’ and today’s technology like OBA’s. I brought home some interesting literature like: A whole new mind from Daniel Pink We are smarter than Me from Barry Libert, Jon Spector and a lot of contributers And I ordered some more: The world is flat by Thomas Friedman The Change Function by Pip Coburn Wikinomics by Don Tapscott So now I have something to read and a chance to sharpen my views on web 2.0 concepts/technology, future, and way to do business. The Last day before I went home some of LEAP goers and I went for a trip to Snoqualmie Falls and Mt Rainier. We (I, Michel, Victor, Ronald, Willem and Linma) had a lot of fun and drove around in a big white SUV Chevrolet Tahoe. LEAP 2008 was a tremendo...

Last day at LEAP 2008 in Redmond I first enjoyed breakfirst and then went to workshop Software Factories done by Jack Greenfield . He is author of the book Software Factories. The workshop goes into the theory of Software Factories. If you are new to this subject or do not exactly where to start I suggest you go to Edward Bakker blog site. He recently did a post about where to start with Software Factories. So go check it out. Technorati: LEAP 2008

Afternoon sessions were Office Business Applications Overview with demo's. Overview can be downloaded from Microsoft. Demo's can be found at codeplex. Last session was one by Pat Helland 'The irresistible Forces Meet the Movable Objects'. This was similar to one given at Teched in Barcelona. Technorati: LEAP 2008

Second day LEAP 2008 in Redmond on Microsoft Campus inside their Conference Center. It kicked off with Dan Rasmus, director of Information Work Vision about 'The new World of Work'. He is a futurist and you will information about his on windows live. His session went into four central themes; One world of business, Always on, always connected, transparent organizations, and workforce evolution. Book one might like read around the subject is Daniel Pink's 'A whole new mind'. I am not going to delve into the themes here, because that will lead to a very lengthy post. So there I suggest to visit Dan's live space or get Daniel pink's book. Another thing to look at is people ready info at Microsoft. Next session Kim Cameron Architect of Identity with 'Why claims will change everything'. He is an authority on identity at Microsoft and in the world. His talk about identity is comparable of one I found on the internet. Kim did a inspiring talk and makes ...

Y esterday I arrived at Redmond in the afternoon together with lots of other LEAP 2008 participants. A couple of them joined together and went to Seattle Needle and downtown. We had a nice meal at P F Changs and did some shopping. Today here in Redmond LEAP started with a look into the future. A couple of sessions are setup ranging from architecture to technology. Most information is classified so I am not able to divulge that information. What I can tell is that most session are around new evolving technologies like DSP (automation of deploying server product like SQL Server and so on), Volta or Internet Service Bus. Latter one is already present as preview on http://labs.biztalk.net/ and presented during SOA & BPM Conference last November 2007 or have a look at this webcast on channel 9. Tonight will have a nice evening with food, drink and playing billiards at House of Billiards in Bellevue. Technorati: Internet Service Bus LEAP 2008

Coming week I am going to Redmond for final of LEAP program. Together with over a hundred fellow Dutch architects or soon to be architects we are going to do a four day program of sessions, workshops, fun tour, evening programs and leisure. The sessions will be held in Microsoft Conference Center on their campus in Kodak and Cascade rooms. Subjects will be (I will mention a few): The Architectural Last Mile by Norm Judah Software + Services: The Next Operational Challenge by Ulrich Homann Internet Service Bus by Clemens Vasters New World of Work by Dan Rasmus Digital Identity by Kim Cameron Irresistible Forces Meet the Movable Objects by Pat Helland All in all good sessions I think with interesting speakers. Something to look forward too. Technorati: LEAP 2008

Y esterday LEAP 2008 Master classes in Holland ended. Next stop will be Redmond in January 2008. I liked this last master class around the knowledge worker, new way of work and collaboration. I heard some new terminology like enterprise 2.0. So I wondered what that is. So I used a web 2.0 technology like wiki, in this case Wikipedia to look it up. So I found this: Enterprise 2.0 is a new enterprising environment which can be differentiated from traditional Enterprise (say, enterprise 1.0). The new enterprising environment use social software in "enterprise" (business) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to company intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, this generation of software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure. Aha social software to let people like you and me interact and share data wi...

This week the last LEAP master class in Holland, before all LEAP attendees will go to Microsoft campus in Redmond for the final master classes. Coming master class is about the knowledge worker, hot topic. People Ready Business From day one Microsoft has put the user, the people at the center of IT. More specifically software is supposed to support people in garner insight, make decisions, close deals, invent new products or services and find new efficiencies. It is people, not systems that do these things within companies. Information around Microsoft’s vision can be found at their site and in this whitepaper . New World of Work Microsoft translates upcoming trends that influence the way we conduct our work – the vision part – into software strategies that help people cope with these trends – the strategy part. In the new world of work two subjects will become apparent: Enterprise Information Management and Unified Communication . Related subjects like collaboration , enterprise c...

Yesterday I attended the third LEAP master class. I was a bit tired, because the evening before I went to a RUSH concert in Rotterdam. It’s very good, but loud performance by these old geezers. Ok back to LEAP stuff; this master class was all about infrastructure. Documentation material and so, you can find in my previous post . It started off with a presentation from Martin Sih, a Technology Solution Specialist from Microsoft. His talked about two things in general: How do I built Infrastructure and do I manage it. To build Infrastructure he went into topics like Infrastructure Optimization, Architectural Guidance (WSSRA), Virtualization (yes Microsoft is building its own VMWare ESX kind of product) and high availability. To manage it all he talked about Dynamic Systems Initiative, Infrastructure management (Complete new System Center software Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Data Protection Manager, Virtual Machine Manager), Technology, People & Process (MOF, ITIL). Af...

Yesterday evening witnessed one of the best performances of Dream Theater. If I had to summarize the show in one word it would be amazing. Now back to reality, LEAP master class 3 is coming up next Thursday I there is allot of reading to be done for preparation. The first session was focused on the (de)coupling of information systems something Microsoft calls “Connected Systems”, which is in there view the practical realization and implementation of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), see previous post . The second session was about provisioning enterprise information and services to the end user. Now the focus is on building the infrastructure needed to support all of this. This article presents a solid overview of the essence and importance of infrastructure architecture. Micosoft view of infrastructure architecture is to realize a platform that allows controllability, combined with a low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and high level of security. This is what Microsoft describes a...

Right now I am listening to the new Alter Bridge album blackbird. While listening I am reviewing a whitepaper created by our architect team (I’m one of them) at Inter Access about SOA. In a previous post I mentioned that we are busy creating a SOA Framework. In this whitepaper we start with what we think SOA is by means of a definition. This definition will be explained in the paper and SOA principles and characteristics are outlined. A principle is a working entity, which is expressed as characteristic through design and realization. This is what we see as a principle so SOA characteristics like layering, autonomous, service based authority, vendor independent, versioning, auditablility, standard compliant and legacy friendly. These are some of characteristics we think apply to SOA and come forth from principles used during design of SOA and can be noticed when SOA is realized. When reviewing each characteristic I stopped at the last one in the paper: legacy friendly. SOA is legacy...

After surviving the ‘Oktoberfest’ in Munich I yesterday attended the second master class of LEAP, see previous post . I was not really excited about this master class, since I not very keen on user interface or experience. After the master class was finished I had a different feeling, I was actually excited having gained more insight in user experience. The master class was around Enterprise Information Provisioning. What is the best way to provide information through services to its users; what is the best way users can interact with information. Well, Microsoft offers different platforms for ‘experiencing’ (presenting, consuming, acting upon) enterprise services and information. These platforms are: Windows platform Mobile platform Office platform Web platform. Nico Copier a Microsoft Technology Architect held a presentation about User Experience. He first went into the layers of SOA and where to place user experience technology like smart clients , sharepoint , silverlight and w...