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Bogota, Columbia - Architects in Motion

2010-08-24T18:39:04Z

I was honored to get to present at the grand opening of our Bogota, Columbia Chapter at the Universidad de Lost Andes. I want to congratulate the chapter on being our first Latin America chapter!

The president of the university, Carlos Angulo who is just a fabulous human being, kicked off the event (he's the one on my right). Our chapter president Dario Correal, really put together an amazing event. There were over 350 people there and some real excitement about what architecture represents.

One the best aspects of my job is the opportunity to hear what architecture is like in the daily lives of people all over the world. What I heard in Columbia was very interesting. A good number of the companies I spoke to are dealing with understanding what architecture is at it's core. These companies have been treating architecture as either abstract or mostly cost oriented, yet I found that once we started talking about how architecture could drive profitability they just flared up and got passionate. I heard ideas about reducing product delivery times, increasing supplier reliability and reducing risk. These kinds of business first ideas just really ignite the imagination of the architects. I also got some great time to see the beautiful country and sample some of their wonderful food (you have to try the Buchero when you go).

Review - TOGAF The Open Group Architecture Framework 100 Success Secrets

2010-08-22T06:46:37Z

When you read a book where do you start? I always start at the back, the back cover to be precise. There was a certain familiar ring to what I read on this occasion. See if you can pick it? "There has never been a TOGAF Guide like this. 100 Success Secrets is not about the ins and outs of TOGAF. Instead, it answers the top 100 questions that we were asked and those we came across in forums, ..."

Almost instantly I dived for my copy of Enterprise Architecture 100 Success Secrets, and there on the back cover it was. "There has never been an Enterprise Architecture manual like this. 100 Success Secrets is not about the ins and outs of Enterprise Architecture." At this point they removed a blank line to make it a little less obvious and continued. "Instead, it answers the top 100 questions that we were asked and those we came across in forums, ..."

Same author I thought, Gerard Blokdijk and Boyce Raynard, apparently not. Same publisher I thought, hard to tell, I couldn't find the accreditation. I'd suggest that one of these gentlemen should be acknowledging the other or that possibly they are the same person. Interestingly, page 11 in both volumes is blank, same manuscript perhaps?

I've had my say about EA 100 Success Secrets and it applies equally to this con job. With one addition, typically I don't criticize the quality of language in a book, after all many works are translated and many of the best EA writers are not native English speakers. Besides its banal content, this is without doubt the most appallingly written EA book I have come across. I'm left with the distinct impression that it was written by someone whose command of English leaves something to be desired, like someone else to do the writing. Grammatically challenged and logically incoherent. I suspect each topic is restricted to about a page to limit the amount of damage it can do.

I could go on and on about why one would have a section on Enterprise Architect version 6.1, 6.5 and 7.0 as well as sections about downloading it? Or ask why there is a section dedicated to the difference between a CV and a Resume? But, I can't be bothered shredding this rubbish. But, that's just my opinion.

At this point I usually give the ISBN and publisher details, but it's really not worth the effort.

Review -The Economic Benefits of Enterprise Architecture

2010-08-22T06:32:41Z

This book could be described as useful without being particularly interesting. If you are in to accounting you'll love this book and if you're not you should love this book. Because it gives you all the ammunition you need to fight those "what's the value of EA" battles.

The book starts off with a basic introduction to EA that will be familiar to those who have already read one of Schekkerman's books. It proceeds quite quickly to deal with the big questions of business IT alignment, stakeholder viewpoints and data collection all explained in fairly simple, but effective terms.

From here the book starts to get into the ditty gritty with chapters on cost benefit analysis, return on investment and net present value, the usual set of techniques that few organizations seem able to rise above. And the it really starts to get serious. There are chapters on activity based cost management, benchmarking, capital asset planning and business cases and IT investment management. And then it pours it on, more and more and more. Innovation benefits management, Six Sigma and a dose of applied information economics. But that's still not enough, there's architectural trade off analysis methods and enterprise value management. Then around about page 240 the book turns it's attention to the US government's EA and accounting standards and you almost feel sorry for them.

This is not a book to start your library with. If you are starting out in EA and are not an accountant I'd suggest you wait about five years before you even take a look at this book, make that seven. This is @ 300 pages of fairly hard core economic reasoning and modeling, not for the faint hearted or artistically inclined. Innocent souls will be crushed by this work! But is it good? Yes, very.

The only other book I can think of that covers these topics is Grigoriu who covers business cases, ROI and similar topics in a limited but competent way. If Grigoriu is a 5 on this stuff then Schekkerman is a 50. This is a book for the CEO, CFO and senior architect only.

Schekkerman, Jaap (2005), The Economic Benefits of Enterprise Architecture, Trafford Publishing, Victoria, British Columbia.

ISBN 141206729-4

The Ancient Mariner Enterprise Architect

2010-08-20T16:17:13Z

When I started in IT about 35 years ago, the US Navy didn’t have enough Data Processing Technicians to go around. The IT guys were DP’s in those days – a Navy rating, or job classification. The DP’s were mainframe-oriented.

The fleet didn’t have a lot of stand-alone computers, unless you want to count the IBM Mag Card Typewriters as primordial word processors. Yes, I operated one of those in 1974-75 while on Guam in the Marianas Islands during my assignment with the Commodore’s Staff of Submarine Squadron 15.

I got off of Guam, right after Operation New Life, the evacuation of Viet Nam. I picked up the USS MOBILE (LKA-115) at Inchon, Korea after some temporary duty with the Republic of Korea (R.O.K.) Navy.

As a Yeoman, I knew what to do with a keyboard. When Hewlett-Packard implemented their computerized Maintenance and Matériel Management System in a 64k micro-computer onboard the MOBILE, it seemed logical that I should be assigned to work with the system. After all, I could type, right?

As luck would have it, the HP machine was very simple (remember – this was a 64k unit). I learned the system very fast. The most complicated part of the architecture was interfacing with the Computer Support Facility, U. S. Pacific Fleet, in San Diego, CA. We had a data cartridge that made 8-tracks seem puny, but worked on the same principle as the audio tapes.

The interface was mind-boggling. When we were out at sea, we had a flight deck. Helicopters brought in data cartridges from San Diego and took our cartridges, full of the current matériel and repair status of the ship back to San Diego. This was definitely not broadband or even satellite.

The laborious system shaved at least a week’s time off of the lag of hand-generated chits (chit is the Navy term for a form). The hand system had carbon copies (the real thing, not the email “Cc”). You had to press down hard with a pen for all copies to be legible. With the hand system, I kept a copy in the Engineering Office, another was kept by the originating division, the Captain got one, and another copy would go to San Diego where a data entry clerk would load it into their computer system. Knowing the Navy of the mid-1970’s, I can visualize rows of wooden file cabinets where the chits would be filed in case they were needed again.

If we put the same information into our Hewlett-Packard machine on our ship, you can see the time savings. But, it was still a disconnected design. Maybe because I got to work such an arrangement, it helped me to fundamentally understand the nature of the modular building blocks of an IT system. It also helped me to understand what a tremendous amount of savings was available with a well-organized architecture. To make things more efficient, it seemed like the system designers could do more than coders. It definitely influenced what I wanted to do with my G.I. Bill once I got to college.

Now, where is my green IBM flowcharting template? Ahh…it’s in my drawer. I can’t throw anything away. It still has the 20 cents sticker on it. Hmmm…

Evolution of the most successful Chip maker? Buy an antivirus company

2010-08-19T17:31:41Z

So where do you go from the position of being the most successful chip maker in the industry? What do you do to evolve your business and revenue model? Well how about buying an antivirus company (sorry! security technology company)? Sounds bizarre? Well join the queue of people who are rubbing their eyes...

Key Note NYC ITARC 2009

2010-08-18T20:28:21Z

**Architecture is the Business**
Presented by Angela Yochem, Dell

What would you do if you were CEO for a month? What if you suddenly had to answer directly to your customers, your stockholders, your board, your employees – what would you do first, then what would you do next? If you are an IT architect and several major business initiatives and various impact scenarios didn’t just run through your mind, then perhaps you should consider broadening your perspective. Forward-thinking companies hold architects accountable for business progress and impact well outside of the IT domain. Because the practice of architecture crosses organizational and functional boundaries, architects are uniquely positioned to drive investment strategy, identify revenue opportunities, and reduce cost/risk for the enterprise. In this session we’ll explore a model designed to help IT architects expand their role to optimally drive business and technology strategy, describe the steps architects need to take to jump-start business transformation, and provide lessons-learned along the way.

ANGELA YOCHEM is an executive in a multinational technology company, a thought leader in architecture practices and large-scale technology management, and the author of “Event Driven Architecture – How SOA Enables the Real-Time Enterprise”. Angela has held senior leadership roles in Fortune 50 companies where she drove technology transformation based on business objectives. Prior to her executive roles, Angela specialized in design and delivery of large-scale distributed systems and solutions to complex integration and convergence challenges. She has extensive B2B and B2C commerce implementation experience, with a foundation in systems design and network design and management of multicampus networks. Angela is the author of J2EE and WebLogic Server, 2nd Edition and is an IASA Fellow and an US Patent holder. Angela serves on executive boards and is a regular speaker at events and forums in the United States and abroad.

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Denver 2010 ITARC Key Note

2010-08-18T19:17:38Z

Don’t Call It EA if It Isn’t EA!: Moving from IT Architecture to Enterprise Architecture
George Paras, Managing Director, EAdirections

Most organizations that claim to be practicing "enterprise" architecture are really just doing "IT" architecture (ITA). As vocal advocates for EA and coaches to EA teams, what leads us to make such a statement? Our research and client observations reveal that most organizations have limited their scope to IT elements like infrastructure, data and applications. That's OK in and of itself and it is a step up for many organizations, but that's not EA. Most currently accepted definitions of EA define it to be about creating a business strategy driven future state for the enterprise. EA must include Business Architecture to achieve that goal. Is your EA practice really doing "enterprise" architecture? If not, what's missing? Join George Paras and Tim Westbrock for a gripping discussion on the dynamics of Enterprise Architecture as it evolves from an IT-oriented discipline into a necessary part of a compelling and successful business transformation effort. Topics will include:

Moving from the Traditional to the Transformational View of EA to lead true business transformation
Evolving an EA practice from ITA to EA
- Leveraging your ITA work to move up to full EA – preparing yourself for your next leap
- Improving business skills to strengthen the EA group's visibility and its impact on the enterprise
Getting Started with Business Architecture
- What CEOs and Boards Want and Don't Want to Hear - This is the Language of Business Architecture at the Highest Level!
- Capabilities – The Language of BA at the Next Level
How true EA contributes to Innovation and understanding the transformational aspect of technology leverage by the business

George S. Paras is a widely recognized speaker, writer, coach and thought leader in Enterprise Architecture (EA), Strategy and Planning, Portfolio Management and IT Governance with more than 26 years of information technology and business experience. He has coached hundreds of IT leaders in the practical aspects of creating effective and successful EA, governance, portfolio management and IT transformation programs. His insights and perspectives have advanced the EA discipline through his positions as Chairman, featured speaker and EAC Thought Leadership Council member for the Enterprise Architectures Conferences (EAC) and as Editor-in-Chief of Architecture & Governance Magazine. Mr. Paras has also held positions as Vice President and Service Director of the Enterprise Planning and Architecture Strategies group at META Group, Vice President of Strategy at Troux Technologies, Senior Enterprise Architect at a major airline, and with IBM and several start-up technology companies.

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Summer full of clouds...or?

2010-08-09T23:28:22Z

The Cloud offering space is getting rather busy as we expected this summer. My handpicked relevant news from the world of cloud compiting

Enterprise Architecture: From Business to Infrastructure

2010-08-09T18:46:06Z

Enterprise architecture has been called a profession, a discipline, and an architecture specialty both within Information Technology (IT) and adjunct to it. In reality, it’s none of these; enterprise architecture is a practice that draws upon the skills of four main specialties: Business architecture, software architecture, information architecture, and infrastructure architecture. Each specialty brings to the table a number of unique models, tools, and skills. Enterprise architecture accepts all of these and makes good use of them, but adds nothing of its own. A competent enterprise architect is competent in all four specialties, and good at one or two. A very good enterprise architect is expert in at least two specialties and very good at the others. An expert enterprise architect is probably an entrepreneur.

Enterprise architecture is about business architecture and how it can be supported by information technology. A business or enterprise starts out as a vision and a business model. The vision describes what the business is to do, and the business model describes how the enterprise will make money doing it. The business model becomes the basis for the enterprise strategy. Tactics come out of these, which lead to structure. Tactics are functions that have to be done in order for the enterprise to achieve its strategy. These functions are allocated to structural units, much like responsibilities are allocated to objects in a design. The tactics morph into business processes, which are orchestrations of organizational capability.

This is business architecture, from vision and business model through tactics, organizational units, to business processes. The IT function provides support as business processes are automated, or supported by automation.

It is not enough to simply automate individual business processes; this leads to the silos that are found so often in corporations today. The enterprise architect must think about common aspects of automation support across the enterprise. Common technical functions become major platforms, such as an Identity and Access Management (IAM) suite or a presentation framework (portals). Process automation must often share data and primitive operations, which often leads to service oriented architectures (SOA) and data management via transaction hubs.

The IT infrastructure, as whole, needs to be designed to meet the changing needs of a business. The skills required to do this are derived mostly from software architecture. The models, the tools, the techniques, and the principles of software architecture apply to an enterprise IT infrastructure; it’s application design on a grand scale.

Each business process presents an opportunity to do some problem domain design. The goal is to identify the data and process objects that occupy the domain. The enterprise (or information) architect combines the data objects from all domain models to form the enterprise data model. In a SOA setting, these entities become the hubs around which data services are formed. The information architect works within the data layer to determine how to arrange and manage the data services and hubs.

The combined processes and functions become the full set of high level operations. These are broken down into their primitive operations of one step each, which become the lowest layer of process services. In between are the operations that form individual atomic transactions.

Presentation and user interfaces present somewhat of a departure to this continuous process. The business will define a number of channels through which people or outside systems interact with the core processes. The enterprise (or software) architect must allow for inter-channel variation, but must also push common functions as close to the interfaces as possible. The presentation framework is the boundaries of the cloud, with the services and data in the center.

The whole package must manifest in physical form and run on real hardware. The infrastructure architect figures out the best place to run, whether in an in-house data center or in some form of cloud. He or she must also configure the network, servers, and storage appliances to meet the operational needs of the business. The infrastructure architect is also responsible for the design and implementation of operations procedures including backup, disaster recovery, work management, provisioning, and everything else required to keep things running smoothly.

Note: The above is a summary of a presentation for the IASA World Summit, to be held in New York City September 22-24, 2010. The purpose of this presentation is to begin debate on the topic of enterprise architecture towards the development of an official IASA position. It is by no means the final word. Feel free to comment, disagree, and suggest alternative views. The author is currently the Vice Chair of the IASA Board of Education and serves on the Curriculum Committee.

Austin ITARC 2010: CCS Architecture: A Prescriptive Take On Line-Of-Business Web Application Structure

2010-08-02T20:25:19Z

CCS Architecture: A Prescriptive Take On Line-Of-Business Web Application Structure
Presented by Jeffrey Palermo, CTO, Headspring

Most architecture guidance is very high-level and abstract. It attempts to accommodate all contexts. CCS Architecture is a prescriptive architecture geared for medium-sized (50-100 screens) web Line-of-Business applications using relational databases and off-line processing jobs. While providing patterns and concrete examples for implementing common records-management functionality, CCS Architecture provides proven patterns for:

Build automation
Database migration
Automated testing
Deployment automation
Leveraging Onion Architecture
Commoditized data access
Workflow patterns
Object-oriented UI

JEFFREY PALERMO is an author, speaker, and the CTO of Headspring Systems. Jeffrey is instrumental in the Austin software community as a member of AgileAustin and a director of the Austin .NET User Group. Jeffrey has been recognized by Microsoft as a “Microsoft Most Valuable Professional” (MVP) in Solutions Architecture for five years and participates in the ASPInsiders group, which advises the ASP. NET team on future releases. He is also certified as a MCSD.NET and ScrumMaster. Jeffrey has spoken and facilitated at industry conferences such as VSLive, DevTeach, the Microsoft MVP Summit, various ALT.NET conferences, and Microsoft Tech Ed. He also speaks to user groups around the country as part of the INETA Speakers’ Bureau. His web sites are headspringsystems.com and jeffreypalermo.com. He is a graduate of Texas A&M University, an Eagle Scout, and an Iraq war veteran. Jeffrey is the founder of the CodeCampServer open-source project and a cofounder of the MvcContrib project. His most recent book is ASP.NET MVC in Action by Manning Publications.

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Austin ITARC 2010: A Case Study: The Development and Application of an Architecture Framework at Dell

2010-08-02T20:22:11Z

A Case Study: The Development and Application of an Architecture Framework at Dell
Presented by Thomas Philbin, Sr Enterprise Architect | IT Enterprise Architecture, Dell

Describes Dell’s EA Framework (description, benefits, challenges), how it maps to IASA pillars and specializations, and how it integrates the architecture specializations.

Tom Philbin has over 15 years experience as an IT developer, strategist and leader. Tom has transformed businesses using Information Technology to significantly reduce costs and improve business capability, primarily at Honeywell International and Dell Inc. He has history of success leading people, generating value, establishing strategic goals and executing multiple complex programs. Most recently, Tom has played key roles in IT organization development, Architecting Dell’s next-generation Supply Chain systems, developing Dell’s Enterprise Architecture Framework, and rationalizing IT application portfolios at Dell and Honeywell. Tom’s solutions have received industry awards (including the RealWare Award from InformationWeek’s Intelligent Enterprise organization). Tom has been a featured speaker at industry conferences for his novel use of technology to solve business problems (including conferences sponsored by Dell, Honeywell, IBM and the National Security Administration). Tom graduated with honors from the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a Masters degree in Business administration, respectively.

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In The News: IASA Kansas City Brings Global Profession to Missouri and Kansas

2010-08-02T19:12:08Z

Kansas City, MO, July 2010--The Kansas City Association of IT Architects announced that it had completed the process to formalize as an IASA Chapter and will become part of the world’s largest IT Architecture professional association. Aligned with the global profession, the new IASA Kansas City Chapter (IASAKC) will bring together the growing community of IT Architects in Kansas and Missouri to provide an open, collaborative and neutral environment for exchanging ideas and sharing best practices.

Patrick Liekhus, local IT trainer, analyst, developer and new President of KCIASA, has organized the chapter leadership from the community and worked with IASA Global over the past few months to complete the chapter agreement. “We are extremely excited to bring the ideas of IASA to the local market here in Kansas City. We have seen an enormous interest in the IASA career path model and supporting training and certification programs from the local government and businesses, as well as individual practicing architects.”

Anthony Grandle is Vice President of the IASAKC, and is currently pursuing his Certified IT Architect-Professional (CITA-P) with IASA. “We are eager to have an open platform for sharing best practices across the greater Kansas City area. By bringing localized education courses and pushing for stronger advocacy for the value proposition of the IT Architect profession, we can help make the IT industry in Kansas City a hotbed to attract more businesses and help existing organizations grow.”

The chapter will hold an inaugural meeting at the Johnson Count Library in Overland Park, KS, on September 8^th. The free event will take place from 6:00 to 8:00 pm, and will introduce the community to the IASA mission, and offerings. To register for the event please visit www.iasa982010.eventbrite.com. For more information on IASA, please visit www.iasahome.org; for information on KCIASA visit www.iasakc.org

About Kansas City Association of IT Architects (IASA Kansas City)

The Kansas City Association of IT Architects is a not-for-profit in the states of Kansas and Missouri that represents the IASA Kansas City chapter to become the premier association of IT architects through education, training and advocacy. We work towards these goals by working with our local members through the states of Kansas and Missouri to provide a common, neutral platform with which to exchange ideas, trade lessons learned and build the social network of IT professionals.

Contact: Patrick Liekhus, President, (913) 667-4272, patrick.liekhus@iasakc.org

In the News: IASA Announces Creation of its First University Chapter in Columbia

2010-08-02T18:39:30Z

For immediate release

Austin, TX, July, 2010—IASA, the world’s largest IT Architecture professional association, announced the formalization of a new chapter in Columbia this week. The Columbia chapter is the third IASA chapter in South America, the 37^th chapter globally, and is the first IASA chapter to be affiliated at the University level rather than an incorporated association.

Paul Preiss, CEO and founder of IASA, said that the university chapter model is important to the future growth of the profession. “As the architecture profession matures, IASA will help to support the entire lifespan of an individual’s career, starting with the university system, and moving to internship and professional certification, as in all other successful professions.” “It is exciting to have the Columbia Universidad de los Andes allied with IASA in this movement to educate and certify the next generation of professional architects.”

Damaris Bode, global chapter director for IASA, worked with the founding members over the last few months to develop a business plan and formalize the chapter status under the global standards of the organization. According to Damaris, the Columbia chapter leadership is motivated to grow the profession locally, and contribute to the global association. “They are accomplished in their field, well connected with universities, the government and business sectors, and are eager to make a difference—the Columbia Chapter will be valued members of our leadership community.”

Dario Correal is a professor of software architecture at the University of Los Andes, and was instrumental in the foundation of the local chapter. Dario, who will act as the chapter’s first president, stated, “There is a growing number of international businesses looking to work with Columbia, due in large part to our growing IT Architect community.” “Through IASA, we have a mechanism to train and certify architects locally at level commensurate with the global profession.”

Roberto Pardo, Vice President of the chapter “our vision is to become the single voice representing IT architects in Columbia, and work with the Colombian government, educational institutions and enterprise companies to establish the necessary conditions to enable the empowerment of this new profession.”

IASA Columbia will hold an inaugural kick-off event at Universidad de los Andes, Engineering Faculty (Mario Laserna Building), on August 19. The event, will run from 4:00pm to 7:00pm will include speakers from the business community, alumni from the university, and from the local IASA board. For more information on IASA, or the inauguration event, visit www.isasahome.org.

About IASA

The IASA is the premier association focused on the IT architecture profession through the advancement of best practices, education and certification. Established in 2002, IASA delivers programs and services to IT architects of all levels around the world. A non-profit business association, IASA is dedicated to the advancement and sharing of issues related to software, infrastructure, Information, and business architecture in the enterprise, product, education and government sectors.

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, the association is committed to improving the quality of the IT architecture industry by developing and delivering standards, education and accredited certification programs and services that optimize the development of the architecture profession. IASA has 30 Chapters in more than 40 countries, and has a member base and readership of 35,000 worldwide. For more information, visit www.iasahome.org.

Contact: Colin Cairns, 512-909-9855 [ccairns@iasahome.org]

Webinar Series: Urban and Information Architectures: A Cross Disciplinary Approach to Complexity

2010-07-19T16:05:53Z

Roger Sessions and Nikos Salingaros

How do you manage the complexity of large systems? Complexity management is a common problem for both large urban architectures and large information architectures. Architectural complexity in both disciplines is driven by similar mathematical principles which define the relationship between complex systems (which are difficult to manage and understand) and simpler systems (which are easily graspable.) IT architects can learn to design much better and simpler IT systems by studying the basic design principles of urban architecture.

In this Webinar, Roger Sessions (IT Complexity Expert) and Nikos Salingaros (Urban Complexity Expert) explore the common problem of complexity as it impacts both IT and urban architectures and discuss the critical lessons each discipline can learn from the other.

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Elevating the profession

2010-07-16T07:02:16Z

I recently came across this article - where Paul Preiss introduces the IASA and himself and gives an overview of the organisation. It was this article that prompted me to join and support the IASA originally, as his comments summed up my own perspective and thoughts toward the architecture profession. However, I am very often tempted to leave the IT industry altogether; the result of its seemingly unbridled unprofessionalism and inability to take itself seriously. It's usually at this point that another presentation appears and reignites my passion. Good timing.

I myself am not actively involved in the association, but would like to hear from the IASA (Paul) on a few topics:

How do members (who don't have chapters) get involved/provide input
Does promotional material exist that I can provide to my employer/other organisations
I regularly hear statements from IASA such as 'the profession needs to define itself', what avenues is the IASA providing to support this?
How do we (can we) promote certified architects over non-certified architects?
How can members actively influence the direction of the IASA?

And many others...but this is a start.

Congratulations to the IASA Team, thank you and keep up the great work.

IASA Italy June Recap

2010-07-06T16:14:32Z

June 9, 2010 IASA Italy had a FULL DAY in Bologna. In the morning were invited by Telecom Italia to talk about IASA during their conference (in Bologna) dedicated to start-ups, IT Consultants and architects.

They had the opportunity to talk in front of more than 400 people about our mission and the importance to define the IT architecture profession in Italy with a WW coherent vision.

In the afternoon, they held their first Italian chapter meeting.

They found an incredible interest in IASA and its activities (for example, 30 minutes before opening the
registration they had 30 people already in the room that wanted to meet them…)

They started describing the IASA Global organization and the Italian chapter. Then moved to ITABOK and the role of the architect in the WW market and Italian market. The hope to have foundation courses in Italy is very high and chapter leaders are very confident to plan a course before the end of the year with a IASA Global teacher!
Then they moved to more architectural sessions with Andrea and Roberto.

View Presentation

Then the meeting closed out with a social event with pizza, beer and soft drinks. Overall feedback was very good.

What attendees said:

“Fantastic event, great content!! I will follow you!”
“ITABOK rocks”
“Fantastic! but… is it real?”
“Thank you guys… today I saw the light for my career”
“It’s very important to have this kind of offline events… thanks”

and…

“I am too hungry…Can I eat pizza BEFORE the meeting ??”

Results

(1 very low – 9 High)

Overall quality	8.3
Location	7
The importance of information	8.2
The will to subscribe to IASA	YES 95% Maybe 5% NO 0%

What’s next?

We plan to re-deliver the same content and format in Milan (September) and Rome (October) extending the social moments to 9.30 pm.

We are looking forward to great things from IASA Italy!

(from left : Aldo Schiavina, Paolo Pialorsi, Mario Fontana, Andrea Provaglio, Roberto Brunetti, Renato Gabriele Ucci)

Building Metrics Into Enterprise Systems Models

2010-07-06T15:44:20Z

Building Metrics Into Enterprise Systems Models
Dirk A. Zwemer, InterCAX LLC

Parametrics , a key component of SysML (Systems Engineering Modeling Language), offers the ability to build performance metrics into enterprise systems models. Simulation, trade studies, and requirements verification can be performed by direct calculation or by orchestration of existing software tools. Examples from logistics, finance, healthcare and infrastructure are presented.

Dr. Dirk Zwemer is President of InterCAX LLC, an Atlanta-based company that has pioneered knowledge-based methods for modeling & simulation, standards-based product lifecycle management (PLM) frameworks, and knowledge representations that enable complex system interoperability. He has over thirty years industry experience with Bell Labs, Exxon, ITT, and SRI Consulting. Prior to joining InterCAX, he held positions as VP Technology, VP Operations, and President of AkroMetrix LLC, a leader in mechanical test equipment and services for the global electronics industry. He received a PhD in Chemical Physics from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

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Total Service Cost - A Metric for Comparing Cloud Computing Alternatives

2010-07-06T15:39:13Z

Total Service Cost - A Metric for Comparing Cloud Computing Alternatives,

J.P. Morgenthal, QinetiQ North America

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), Return on Investment (ROI) and CapEx/OpEx calculations are inferior methods of calculating the value of a Cloud investment. Regardless of the reason for your interest in Cloud Computing, identifying the cost and value of the decision is an important element for any business. TSC provides the means of helping businesses understand the value of different alternatives by exploiting a foundation of service orientation.

JP Morgenthal works as a senior principal architect with QinetiQ North America's Mission Systems Group providing enterprise and SOA architecture guidance for federal civilian agencies and an independent analyst for jpmorgenthal.com. Prior to joining QinetiQ NA, JP founded Avorcor where he developed a SOA-based Enterprise retail/manufacturing Platform as a service PaaS that has been the foundation of three award-winning industry solutions for customers. Morgenthal is also author of Enterprise Information Integration: A Pragmatic Approach, which defines a methodology for using SOA and semantics to simplify integration.

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Now that is architecture

2010-07-01T12:53:01Z

Like everybody, from time to time, we order pizza for a friday night movie. We were in the habit of ordering from pizza hut because my wife likes the crust and I like the chicken wings. But one night we decided to try something new. Yes I am aware that going to another major pizza chain does not constitute 'new' per se. Anyway we got on the dominos website. As we were ordering we were reasonably impressed with the pizza ordering features which were easy to use and clear. There were a lot of cool gizmos and having created dozens of online stores in my career I was impressed with things like the upsell capability and the coupon integration (those are tremendously hard to keep track of and current).

And while all of that was a reasonable sound and good technology strategy, it wasnt until we got to the order status component that the Domino's architects really hit it out of the park. Take a look.

What you have here is an order tracking UI component. But there are some subtle pieces that litterally have my family going back for more pizza (just to watch it move). First it updates in real time with no page refreshes which allows you to sit back and watch your order come to you. That alone is a refreshing change given that on Friday nights some chains take over an hour to reach you. But most important is the very small line of text right at the bottom. If you cant read it, it says,"Jennifer double-checked your order for perfection at 8:30 pm."

Wow. My 10 year old thought this was so cool she wanted to order another pizza immediately just to see if somebody else was going to cook it. It was like watch sushi chefs make your sushi right in front of you somehow. Of course being a natural skeptic (not really as Im generally very gullible, but technology is a special case for me) I figured Jennifer was like one of those computer answering systems with a name. Or maybe some programmer liked to call the system Jennifer or some such to remind him of his girlfriend. But when the name changed to the name of the delivery guy I started to wonder. So when the delivery person brought the pizza I quizzed him a bit. "So who's Jennifer?" and being maybe 17 years old he just answered, "Oh Jen? She works in the store. I dunno maybe 8 mo now."

Needless to say we've tried this system numerous times now. I've quizzed the drivers and others on how it works. The staff click buttons as an order progresses using their staff id (also very hard to maintain given the seasonal worker community and the transience of pizzeria staff). The system uses these phases and pumps a very small amount of info up to the corp servers. Still need to find out if they use regional shards to handle geographical load or if the packets are small enough to be served out of corporate data centers.

Anyway, geek stuff aside, why is this todays winning architecture? Because my family now orders almost exclusively from Domino's and this little piece of technology is responsible. Think about that. We call marketing the business. We call finance the business. We call sales the business. But when did you last change brand providers because of a commercial or because a company had strong financials? Yet this one little piece of technology is responsible for what I can only assume is a lot of people becoming customers (at least this family).

When technology functions as a profit center can it be called anything but 'the business'? So today's Preiss Technology Architecture Award goes toooooooooo..... drum roll...... The Domino's online commerce and order management system.

Yeh! Take a bow Domino's IT!

Principles of Software Architecture and Design.

2010-06-30T19:38:24Z

Principles of Software Architecture and Design.
Presented by Len Bass, SEI

The presentation will begin with a discussion of business or mission goals, and Len will trace these goals through quality attribute description and realization, through to a brief discussion of the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method, the Attribute Driven Design method, and the ArchE (Architecture Expert) design assistant tool.

LEN BASS is a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). He has written two award winning books in software architecture as well as several other books and numerous papers in a wide variety of areas of computer science and software engineering. He has been a keynote speaker or a distinguished lecturer on six continents. He is currently working on techniques for the methodical design of software architectures, to understand how to support usability through software architecture, to understand the relationship between software architecture and global software development practices, and to understand what it means for an organization to be architecturally competent. He has been involved in the development of numerous different production or research software systems ranging from operating systems to database management systems to automotive systems.

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