Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, Developing Teams and everything in between

Mike Walker's Blog: Gartner 2010 Hype Cycle for Enterprise Architecture

2010-08-14T09:14:00.001+10:00

Gartner 2010 Hype Cycle for Enterprise Architecture Recently Gartner released the 2010 Hype Cycle for Enterprise Architecture (EA). It's an interesting report. I'm not sure if there are really any surprises here but it worth looking at the macro themes of the report. You can find additional resources here: Full Article: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=

48 best free software downloads from Microsoft | News | TechRadar UK

2010-07-27T08:53:00.001+10:00

48 best free software downloads from Microsoft | News | TechRadar UK

An Introduction to User-Centric Enterprise Architecture

2010-05-17T16:55:00.000+10:00

An Introduction to User-Centric Enterprise ArchitectureInteresting Article I came accross when looking for what others are doing in this space.

Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for Back-End Application Integration Projects

2009-01-06T15:10:00.000+11:00

Looks like Microsoft BizTalk has finally made it into the leader quadrant; and leads by a hefty margin as well. What is interesting the Gartner commentary on the vendors who were dropped as it certaily reflects consolidation in the market as smaller players were acquired by bigger ones. BEA Systems: The company was acquired on 1 July 2008 by Oracle (see "Oracle's Post-BEA Middleware Road Map:

The Rise of the Machines - NYTimes.com

2008-10-21T20:17:00.000+11:00

Op-Ed Contributor - The Rise of the Machines - NYTimes.com: "Somehow the genius quants — the best and brightest geeks Wall Street firms could buy — fed $1 trillion in subprime mortgage debt into their supercomputers, added some derivatives, massaged the arrangements with computer algorithms and — poof! — created $62 trillion in imaginary wealth. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that all of

Business Process Modelling Tool Selection

2008-04-07T21:05:00.000+10:00

Ever struggled to come up with requirements when doing process modelling tool selection? Sometime back I put together a mind map showing all the criterions I would consider when doing so. You can access the map at this URL: http://www.mindomo.com/view?m=197f252e5a3e39290c55a0c81cafbe4c

Who is interested in What..

2008-02-24T13:53:00.001+11:00

Recently I was looking at the stats for this blog from 23rd January to 22nd February and looks like most people are interested in SOA and a post where I was venting my frustration on WSE & MTOM has hit a sweet spot (must be a common problem).

Scenario Planning

2008-02-24T13:33:00.001+11:00

Interestingly the very day I blogged about lack of skills when it comes to Financial Modelling, Chris Potts over at CIO.com blogged about the importance of Scenario Planning; for those who are interested following are the links to that post. http://advice.cio.com/chris_potts/enterprise_architect_scenario_planner http://cloudcomputing.blogspot.com/2008/02/

What language does your business speak?

2008-02-19T11:22:00.001+11:00

In my work often I am asked to go in and setup Enterprise Architecture within organisation or help existing Architecture function. The sponsors of these projects tend to be CIO or Managers of Strategy and Architecture. In most of these engagements over past few years I have seen a consistent message being repeated over and over again. "We need Enterprise Architecture and there is no need for you

Being Inspired

2007-11-09T19:39:00.001+11:00

Sometime back one of my ex-colleagues Arjan Dewan recommended a book titled "Inspiration" by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. I not a great fan of self help books, hence approached the book with some trepidation. Reading the book I came across following passage from an ancient Vedantic text by Patanjali penned around 2000 years back; it describes is almost the same as what most programmers experience as being

SOA Security

2007-10-21T10:13:00.000+10:00

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a 128-page guide to help organizations understand the security challenges of Web services in service-oriented architecture. Download link http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-95/SP800-95.pdfIssues addressed in the publication include:Confidentiality and integrity of data transmitted via Web services protocols. Functional

Unifying Process Framework

2007-08-19T12:18:00.001+10:00

The UPF is a business framework that is generic to businesses and applies across all sectors commercial and public. It is naturally used by IT where it is part of a business, or by IT if it operates in a market where it is servicing a number of businesses on a commercial basis. http://www.bita-center.com/upf2Article 1 - 'The IT Management Status Quo and 5 Year Challenge'Article 2 - 'Concepts of a

Business Model or Operating Model

2007-08-19T10:33:00.001+10:00

Recently on one of EA online discussions the concept of Business Model vs Operating Model was explored. I just wanted to use this post as a way to summaries the thinking for my own use. Chris Potts view on components of operating model Key operational performance ratio(s) - usually only one or two primary ones from which everything else cascades Core financial structure - P&L, new investments

Web Services Security and Federated Identity Authentication

2007-06-18T20:11:00.001+10:00

Sometime back [circa 2004] I had written a paper on the above topic the link is attached. It is more for my benefit than anyone else, such that I can find the file quickly :-). Any comments welcome. Web service security

Business Architecture Kick Start

2007-06-15T20:45:00.001+10:00

Ever wanted to get a quick overview of business functions in an organisation SAP have done a great job with their Business Maps; worth checking out http://www.sap.com/solutions/businessmaps/index.epx

Service Oriented Network Architecture (SONA)

2007-06-10T14:15:00.001+10:00

Not that we did not have enough acronyms to confuse us CISCO goes ahead and creates another one. I was doing some background research on an article published by the CIO magazine "The Rise of Service-Oriented IT and the Birth of Infrastructure as a Service", when I came across SONA. Quick search on CISCO website showed standard marketing hype and nothing more CISCO SONA Stuff . What I was looking

Business Process Architecture and SOA

2007-05-27T19:08:00.001+10:00

Recently I had the pleasure of presenting at the BTELL Conference on Business Process Management on the topic of Business Process Architecture and SOA. Fortunately the talk was well received and did raise interesting point. Subsequently the organizers have asked me to come back and give a similar talk with more architectural focus at their upcoming Enterprise Architecture Conference. For those of

Changing of the guard

2007-01-31T21:45:00.001+11:00

For the past couple of years everyone from Gartner to Harvard Business Review has been talking about corporate agility, where lack of the same can kill organisations. Following In the IT press SOA has been promised at the panacea for all the ills and somehow delivering the ultimate agility to the organisations. All this hype got me thinking about why there is so much demand for agile

Architects

2006-12-30T19:26:00.000+11:00

Not having blogged for sometime it feels a bit strange to do so again. Last few months has been hectic between the birth of our second son, and a few projects coming off the boil simultaneously (one of sensitive nature restricting what I can blog about). Someone recently asked me what do I look for if I am hiring architect, the question caught me off guard as I had never given it much thought. In

VS2005 and SOAPExtensions

2006-10-08T19:04:00.000+10:00

For the last couple of days I have been concentrating on creating some SOAP extensions that will allow me to Log messages, validate messages and monitor performance counters in my web services. I got stumped the other day when I was trying to debug the extension by adding them to a dummy web service. It turns out in VS 2005 when using the default documentation page to send soap to the web service

Companies get the systems they deserve

2006-09-07T09:16:00.000+10:00

Over the past couple of years working with various clients in Australia, Eurpoe and US I often came accross organisations whose applications were siloed and in total mess. During these times I did often wonder how did they get there, understanding that is partly the way to help them get out of it. Recently I came accross following quote and I think in few lines it aptly sums up the issue.

Just when you thought VB6 was dead

2006-08-29T12:33:00.000+10:00

I recently came across this while reading Australian IT and could not resist the urge to blog about it. Sun and Microsoft have teamed together and released Semplice. You might be wondering what is Semplice. Project Semplice - Visual Basic for the Java Platform, yes indeed. It will allow you to compile your program to Java platform and run it on any platform that JVM supports. You never thought

Business architecture

2006-08-06T13:38:00.000+10:00

When doing Enterprise Architecture for any organisation, most people tend to start from bottom up. They would map out the infrastructure architecture (more or less what assets they have), application architecture and may be their information architecture. What often gets left behind is the business architecture, fundamentally what is the organisation trying to achieve and does all its assets

My first Word 2007 Blog post

2006-08-06T12:57:00.000+10:00

This is a test blog to see if I can publish from right inside Word 2007 Beta.

Excellent Enterprise Architecture Books

2006-07-03T10:23:00.000+10:00

For past few weeks I have had the pleasure of working with Adrian (he is a Principle in Architecture and Strategy Team), during this time we have had numerous discussions about what should make an Enterprise Architecture. Surprisingly we have been in violent agreement all the time. He shares the same view as me EA is more that IT it should encompass all aspects of an organisation including manual

Some changes for good in my life

2006-07-02T15:32:00.000+10:00

I have been silent for a long time on this blog and it has been due to some personal reasons. Most of you who knew me professionally were aware that I was working as National Lead Architect for Volante Software Solutions in Sydney. Volante became target of a hostile takeover by Commander Communications and they won after a protracted period. At this point I thought it may not be a bad idea to

Agile dev end of life, Waterfall is back

2006-02-13T06:13:00.000+11:00

For all the SCRUM and Agile people out there, Waterfall is back have a look at this conf and meet all like minded people. http://www.waterfall2006.com/One of the guys at work sent me the link after I had been pestering everyone why Agile is so cool....:-)I found the following really funny and will resonate with all Architects."If designs are ruined by execution details, then we should divorce

Every thought what would happen if Amazon and Google were to merge

2006-01-28T15:11:00.000+11:00

This is an old movie but a classic it looks at how we bloggers are changing the world, what would happen if Google and Amazon were to merge and become one company how will Microsoft respond. What will happen to all of us the bloggers......in 2014.Have a look at this http://mccd.udc.es/orihuela/epic/ might change your perspective at things.I remember at the last Code Camp in Wagga Wagga someone (

Ever wondered how much your blog is worth

2006-01-25T18:31:00.000+11:00

This one is worth B$1,297.49 there is a web site which calculates what blogs are worth. Mine is way lower than Frank's which is worth a princely amount of B$19,216.04. You can check your blog rating out on this page http://www.blogshares.com/ . This is the trading history of Franks bloghttp://www.blogshares.com/newgraph.php?type=price&large=true&blog=http://blogs.msdn.com/frankarr/

Future Shock and our daily lives

2006-01-15T12:57:00.000+11:00

<>For those who know me, will know my fascination for the book Future Shock written by Alvin Toffler. He was recently in Sydney Australia and said the following in his interview with Australian Financial Review."The issue is not jobs but creating value, creating something that someone else needs," he says. "Whether you get that through a regular, paid job, whether you do that as a freelancer, or

Chatty or Chunky Interfaces

2006-01-14T16:34:00.000+11:00

I came across this article sometime back and thought to share it around. I have often discussed this during interviews and architectural reviews and was really surprised to find how many developers and solutions architects fail to comprehend the performance hits between chatty interfaces and chunky interfaces. This is especially true for web services, I can give more examples of bad Web Services

Found a solution architect

2006-01-07T11:06:00.000+11:00

Remember sometime back I had blogged about the fact I was looking for a Solutions Architect, well after a long and hard search finally found someone, it came as a pleasant surprise to find out he blogs as well ( Out of personal experience I can tell you this it is quite hard to find the right person you just have to keep your standards up and persevere). Check out Arons blog http://

CTP of Enterprise Library and download issues

2005-12-16T08:35:00.000+11:00

I have two rants.Start RANT1. I have been desperately trying to download the CTP version of Enterprise Library and for some reason it keeps on asking me to join the Project. I don't want to join the project just give me the library such that I can get on with it. (BTW if any one has ideas on how I can get my hands on the CTP it would be appreciated).2. I have been looking around for the ODP.NET (

WSE 3.0 and MTOM

2005-12-14T07:59:00.000+11:00

Over my holidays I started playing with WSE 3.0 and VS 2005. As part of the exercise built a simple web service that would allow people to send pictures and view pictures. All worked well till I enabled MTOM on the services. Since then everything the client tries to connect to the service it gets the following message "The request failed with HTTP status 415: Unsupported Media Type.". I have

Looking for a Solutions Architect

2005-09-26T20:22:00.000+10:00

This may not be the right forum to post this advert but I am trying anyway :-)The company I work for Volante (http://www.volante.com.au ) is looking for a Software Solutions Architect based in Sydney Australia reporting to me (NSW Software Solutions Manager). It is an exiting role and quite challenging, will involve giving presentations to CIO and COO level executives including tender bid

IFPUG Function Point Counting http://www.ifpug.org/

2005-08-09T20:00:00.000+10:00

Today I started working on a tender response to a client which required Function Point Counting to be used as a basis for estimating the size and cost of the project. To be honest I had never heard of Function Point Counting before now, so I did what all of us in Software Development do. Went and searched Amazon and bought the book most users recommended http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/

Should we abandon WSDL?

2005-06-19T11:28:00.000+10:00

I came across this write up recently. http://www.webservices.org/ws/content/view/full/62161 "Philosophically contract-first is a good idea because it elevates the exchange of business documents to be the primary artefact around which systems are built. Modelling such exchanges leads to integration at a high level and should in turn lead to solutions which are suitably loosely coupled. However,

Cisco Readies XML Devices, Software AON (Application-Oriented Networking)

2005-06-19T10:53:00.000+10:00

CISCO is coming out with new XML Router, the reason this excites me is due to this factor. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1826721,00.asp "Cisco is using Tarari's programmable chip to perform low-level tasks such as checking XML signatures and verifying XML schemas. But Cisco's AON developers have also created a substantial amount of technology, including agents that work with the chip and

Face Recognition and everything in between

2005-05-21T18:17:00.000+10:00

In the past few days I have been playing around with face recognition software trying to build my own identification. I have tried a few dll from various vendors and have not had much luck. Has anyone out there played around with this stuff, if so any pointers would be appreciated. While trolling through the net found following snippet "A study by the government's National Institute of

Creating a cohesive view out of multiple application

2005-05-08T15:17:00.000+10:00

In the past couple of days (8 days to be precise working 15hrs per day) I had to lead a team of developers to create a unified application out of using Captaris Workflow, Microsoft CRM, Hummingbird Document Management and Records Management System, Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft Exchange 2003 and Microsoft Mappoint. At the start of the project I had no idea how Microsoft CRM and Microsoft

SOA Presentation

2005-04-26T21:38:00.000+10:00

Recently I had the opertunity to give a presentation on SOA to mycompanies clients. The presentation can be downloaded from the linkbelow. First and foremost I must thank Niles from Microsoft for hisvaluable comments which I later incorporated into the presentation.Feel free to contact me in case you need more info.http://www.volante.com.au/events/symposium3/presentations/download/

Off to Wagga Wagga

2005-04-22T08:18:00.000+10:00

I am off to Wagga Wagga to nerd heaven and spending the whole weekendat the code camp. If any of the fellow bloggers are there please lookme up.

Microsoft Buys Groove Networks

2005-03-14T08:54:00.000+11:00

WOW Sharepoint is going to get some major enhancements.http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1774878,00.aspThe software giant will integrate Groove's collaboration platform intoLive Meeting, Office Communicator and SharePoint.

Microsoft Regional Architect’s Forum

2005-03-13T14:57:00.000+11:00

Keynote Presentation by Martin Fowler Patterns for Enterprise ArchitectureMartin started off his talk in his usual flamboyant style declaringPowerPoint's are outdated and he planned to wing this presentation.The talk started by explaining where the whole concept of Patternsoriginated from with emphasis on the seminal work by Eric Gamma andhis book on Patterns. Martin has created a web site

See you at Microsoft Asia Pacific Regional Architect Forum 2005

2005-02-19T18:56:00.000+11:00

I am off to sunny QLD next week to the Microsoft Asia Pacific RegionalArchitect Forum 2005. If i get internet connection will be bloggingfrom there. If any of the Ausie OPML readers are contributors arethere then please look me up. For those who cant go I will blog aboutit to keep you guys updated and if you want info on any specific topicpost a comment to the site. Following is the agenda for

Book - Real World XML Web Services

2004-12-07T22:01:00.000+11:00

Book - Real World XML Web Services Hmm yet another good book on XML web Services. and it is free writen by none other than Yasser Shohoud

WsContractFirst Development

2004-12-07T21:23:00.000+11:00

thinktecture - WsContractFirst If you have been developing web services and not used this tool then I must say you are missing something in the arsenal.

Web services security and federated identity authentication

2004-11-28T11:54:00.000+11:00

Recently I had an opportunity to do an extensive Literature review of the whole federated authentication space within web services. The literature review is attached and the abstract for the same is shown below. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Abstract Over the past few years as web services technology has matured, so has its use in complex line of

SOA and the confusion

2004-11-20T12:57:00.000+11:00

Recently I had an opportunity to talk to some one about SOA. Duringthis time I asked the person what they understood about SOA and wasquite surprised at the confusing answer. Mind you the person isquestion is very bright and has been active in the web services worldfor a long time. At that point I thought to myself if such aknowledgeable person is struggling with the concepts what hope do therest

Sorry about no blogs

2004-11-16T15:19:00.000+11:00

I had gone away on holiday to India for 3 weeks and now for next 2 weeks I have to complete a report on Federated Identity in Web Services for Uni as part of my final year Msc Project. Once that is over there will be a bit more time to blog and post some cool stuff.

Angus Logan's Blog : Brisbane, Australia Developer : MCMS/SPS/WSS/.NET/SQL

2004-11-16T15:14:00.000+11:00

Angus Logan's Blog : Brisbane, Australia Developer : MCMS/SPS/WSS/.NET/SQL Great site for share point stuff.

.NET Architecture Center: Identity and Access Management

2004-10-13T20:19:00.000+10:00

.NET Architecture Center: Identity and Access Management Some good stuff on Identity Management within SOA.

331501 - HOW TO: Create an IAuthenticationModule by Using Visual Basic .NET

2004-10-05T08:35:00.000+10:00

331501 - HOW TO: Create an IAuthenticationModule by Using Visual Basic .NET Worth further investigation looks good.

Web Services Developer Center: Web Services Interoperability and Integration

2004-10-03T19:14:00.000+10:00

Web Services Developer Center: Web Services Interoperability and Integration A must for anyone serious about web service development. It is a great pleasure to see a Vendor taking interoperability so seriously.

Ever wanted a simple SQL Query tool which connects to MSSQL Server and Oracle.

2004-09-28T14:57:00.000+10:00

AquaFold, Inc - Aqua Data Studio - Database Query Tool (Oracle, DB2, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, Informix, Postgres, Postgresql, MySQL)Often I have to connect to Oracle database and hate installing the full blown Oracle Client on my machine. So I was looking for something which will allow me to run SQL Queries against Oracle with out the bloated Oracle client till I came accross this tool. That

Federated Security in Web Services

2004-09-25T10:39:00.000+10:00

This weekend I have to get into the thick and thin of Federated Security. So far it does not look like it will be fun.

Steve's Blog

2004-09-23T09:23:00.000+10:00

Check this out http://steverodgers.blogspot.com This e-mail, including all attachments, may be confidential or privileged. Confidentiality or privilege is not waived or lost because this email has been sent to you in error. If you are not the intended recipient any use, disclosure or copying of this email is prohibited. If you have received it in error please notify the sender

GM's Cure for Complexity - Architecture - CIO Magazine Sep 1,2004

2004-09-23T09:07:00.000+10:00

GM's Cure for Complexity - Architecture - CIO Magazine Sep 1,2004 Enterprise Architecture with a different name. Sometime you wonder why dont more people do the same.

XML includes and getting data from external source.

2004-08-27T14:09:00.000+10:00

When using XMLTextReader ever wondered how to read the include files. Recently I was stuck with a similar problem after much head scratching finally resolved it. Here is the code. Ok I was trying to read an xsd schema and every time it included schemalocation I would get stuck so I decided to resolve it using getEnity method. Dim vreader As New XIncludingReader(" the url where the

Enterprise Architecture and Big Mac's

2004-08-24T17:33:00.000+10:00

Last night lying in bed I had a thought...is Enterprise Architecture like a Big Mac, what is it we are really trying to do when we define an architecture. Create a set of rules and methods such that we don't re-invent the wheel every time we pick up a project but have an underlying framework that we can work with which will define consistent results. Now to that effect one company that has

Tracing Web Service calls

2004-08-24T16:31:00.000+10:00

Got back from Germany yesterday and still getting over the jet lag. Saw a good post on Christians ( http://weblogs.asp.net/cweyer/archive/2004/08/19/217441.aspx ) web site on tools to trace web service calls, most of these were using WSE 2.0 to achieve this functionality. For the past year or so I have been using Fiddler http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/ and must say I have not had any

Visiting Germany

2004-08-17T00:28:00.000+10:00

I am in Germany (Neuss near DÃ¼sseldorf) this week and flying back to Sydney on the weekend. Firstly I must say Lufthansa know how to take care of their frequent travellers and really go out of their way to may the trip nice. On my flight between Singapore to Frankfurt they bumped me up to business class I was not complaining :-) So it pays to travel with one airline all the time.

Focus on Problems vs. Focus on Solutions

2004-08-14T15:26:00.000+10:00

I came across this story recently...how often are we the enterprise architects guilty of the same.....:-) When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity (Ink won't flow down to the writing surface). In order to solve this problem, it took them one decade and $12 million. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity,

Enterprise Application Development in .NET

2004-08-14T15:00:00.000+10:00

I had recently posted the following comments on how well .NET or more specifically Visual Studio.NET supports enterprise space. Recently in one of the discussions on Object Space I had posted regarding issues with .NET while developing Apps for the Enterprise. http://channel9.msdn.com/AddPost.aspx?PostID=