Thoughts from the raised floor. Lewis Curtis Blog site

Ent Arch Impact analysis for SharePoint/BPOS-D/Office365 Engagement

2010-11-21T18:56:00Z

I’m participating on a good team doing the Enterprise Architecture Impact for large customer for a SharePoint/BPOs-D/Office 365 strategy. At this point, we’re seeing some critical areas to examine current and future forecasted architectural strategies. The Enterprise Architecture analysis document is separate for the SharePoint/BPOS-D/Office 365 platform architecture plan. It’s important to separate platform architecture from the Gap & Impact Enterprise Analysis...(read more)

when architects worship the model and methodology

2010-04-29T17:36:39Z

In the last 4 years of IT architecture, I’ve seen a movement to promote modeling and taxonomy discipline into the profession. This has promoted consistency where more and more IT architects can model systems with less confusion with peers and stakeholders. This has been a good thing. However, it’s been saddening to see upcoming architects academically focus so much on modeling and language taxonomy that they loose sight of the primary reasons IT architects...(read more)

looking at 2010

2010-01-03T22:19:16Z

The Job Market for IT Architects 2009 has been a crazy year for most of us in the industry. Many are looking or found new jobs as annual reviews became survivalist experiences as working in fear became the new norm. Of course, if you have a job, you want work to keep it in 2010. (and network like crazy to help you get the next one) But as these experiences have been incredibly difficult, they have also awakened many in the IT community. I have seen multiple...(read more)

Silicon Architecture will change the way we work

2009-02-26T21:10:00Z

I've been exposed recently to some incredible developments in the silicon world. Some that I cannot mention. However, I do want to share with you an opinion about how this world will impact our world. Over the years, servers, storage and network systems have become faster and been repackaged into more interesting components. Yet, for the most part it hasn't changed various n-tier architectural patterns. However, that's about to change. Comprehensive multicore systems on a chip with extreme...(read more)

Green IT Predictions for 2009

2008-12-15T11:30:58Z

It is that time of the year when we forecast environmental issues for the New Year. There have been some important new developments that happened in 2008. · A new U.S. Presidential Administration was elected that is passionate about the Environment · Environmental regulations are increasing from many countries · The economic health of the world is in significant crisis 2009 and 2010 will see the start of IT organizations investigating Environmental Regulation strategies and increase environmental...(read more)

interviewing Michael Manos about Datacenter Leadership

2008-10-27T22:12:30Z

At the last TechEd in Orlando. I interviewed Michael Manos about Datacenter Leadership and energy issues for IT. Michael is leading Microsoft’s transformation into massive scale data center environments for Web 2.0 and online services. See the interview below: ARCast.TV - Michael Manos on Datacenter Leadership...(read more)

The Trojan Horse of Server Virtualization

2008-10-22T01:49:14Z

Server Virtualization for commodity systems has become a pervasive answer in the enterprise datacenter for good reason: it is an opportunity to consolidate systems thereby reducing the number of servers in the datacenter, increase efficiency on each physical server, reduce energy consumption in the datacenter and hopefully, reduce operational deployment time for new systems. There is no doubt that the initial virtualization effort can lead to all of these promises and many more. However, there...(read more)

Heros will always ruin your it organization

2008-07-28T08:58:00Z

Working in an IT organization can be challenging. There are exhausting late night emergencies and deadlines, unpredictable technical complexities as well as executive management commonly suffering from extreme ADD. As this leads to countless hours away from family, friends and your own precious solitude, you find those few who stand out willing to sacrifice everything to accomplish success. "We're saved" you utter to yourself as disaster is averted once again or that cool project suddenly comes...(read more)

Datacenter Leadership

2008-07-24T20:16:04Z

At TechEd Orlando, I had an opportunity to interview Michael Manos (who is in charge of all the datacenters for Microsoft) about Leadership in the modern datacenter today. Datacenter Leadership Interview....(read more)

Enterprise ARCHITECTURE TEAMS FINALLY RECOGNIZING THE VALUE OF infrastructure ARCHITECTURE LEADERSHIP

2008-07-17T16:59:24Z

Forrester recently published a report: Infrastructure Architects Link Technology Strategy With Long-Term EA and Business Goals It’s a decent article. For far too long many enterprise teams have viewed infrastructure architects as too low level not impacting or as close to the business. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve always promoted that many times, infrastructure architects can make a more substantial business impact on an organization than...(read more)