I commented briefly yesterday about how the same things come up time after time with different names. One of the best examples of this is Transactions; that is distributed 2 phase commit type transactions. I was first told about transactions in 1972 sitting...

One of the advantages of being old is that you get to see the same mistakes time and time again which means that you don’t have to think so hard, you just have to remember what happened last time! In my case I normally remember my mistakes fairly...

Following on from my first law (see http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_platt/archive/2004/02/03/66690.aspx ) I have been thinking about what other general purpose architectural principles I use and have come up with a Platt’s Second Architectural Law...

So this is a rather off topic (architecture, software engineering or indeed computing) but is something I have been thinking about for a while and so wanted to blog about. I enjoy architecture and find its disciplines very useful in all sorts of different...

One of the biggest problems I have with designing SOA systems is the area of data services or entity services as Microsoft calls them. The snag is that in many cases the data has to used by multiple services and so you really want to share the data between...

Following onfrom my blog yesterday I have collated all the feedback I got (Thanks!) and came up with these major levels and elements in the levels: Hardware 1. Hardware (routers, servers, client devices, wireless, storage (SANS / NAS)) Network 2. Networks...

A couple of weeks ago I put up a quiz on some of the latest technologies to see how cutting edge people were. I thought I would share the results with everyone as they are quite interesting. Firstly the test was used 348 times, some 270 times in the first...

I am at the UK OT 2004 conference this week near Cambridge (England!) so will be blogging about what is going on here. First of all this isn’t a standard presentation style conference, it’s very much about participation and interaction so...

So how leading edge are you? Do you know all the latest TLA's? Have you spent hours on the phone to a vendor trying to get the latest alpha code to work? Have you been up all night chasing that bug only to be told by the support line that it's a "known...

I’m not much of a Language sort of guy (either real or computer, I failed French 3 times at school) so when I was asked to participate in a workshop at the upcoming OT2004 conference on generics I said 'no way'. I always have problems in translating...

Well the end of day one of Spark, the first half day anyway. Its great to meet up with a bunch of smart people who are really energized about Web 2.0, SOA and what is happening in the architecture space. The first half day was about understanding the...

Inside Microsoft we have a twice yearly set of technical training for the people in the field called Tech Ready. I have just signed up to do a session and was looking through the list of other session to see what else was being covered. I noticed that...

Architecture is great because it is so easy to look like a hero. I talked about earlier in this blog about looking like a hero with a poorly architected application but there are lots of other ways that bad architectural decisions can make you look like...

So a quick intro. I'm an architect in the UK, moved back from Redmond six months ago. I have been with MS 10 years in technical / architectural roles and 20 years with IBM in R&D (Hursley) before that. My interests are in Enterprise Architecture...

A customer who wanted to discuss mainframe interop phoned up one of the MS Business Managers yesterday and the query got routed through to me. Most of the technical people in Microsoft are nervous about mainframes but I love them which is I guess why...

Thinking more on the customer lifecycle management as opposed to product lifecycle management I realize that in focusing exclusively on the revenue side of things I am missing a very important point about customer satisfaction. Most enterprises realize...

So January is interop month at Microsoft: https://www.interopmonth.com/home/ HIS 2005 are doing a number of webcasts as part of that: TechNet Webcast: HIS Bi-directional Transaction and Data Inter-op Between Windows and IBM Mainframe Systems (Level 200...

I have been thinking more on the topic of the customer lifecycle and its interrelationship with the product (or business) lifecycle. This diagram shows how these two connect today at the sales and shipping touch points. The main elements in...

Keith Short has started a blog and has some comments about modelling . This is worth watching because: 1 Keith is very smart. 2 Keith and his team are defining what MS is doing in this space and they really understand modelling better than...

If you have read my blog before you will probably know that I am very keen to improve the level and standard of architectural expertise through courses, training, examination and certification. Whilst there are a number of pretty good architectural courses...

So I am working on a virtualisation whitepaper and presentation. There is an interesting definition on wikipedia which I am not sure I agree with and also a useful overview at http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/virtualization . So my definition...

Last week I attended and presented at Devweek in the UK as part of their architect track on Models and Languages . It was pretty much my standard presentation on models, Frameworks, SOA, Languages, tools and process. There were about 50 people in the...

Physical phenomenon can not only be used as a valuable architectural training aid but they are also useful for management training, especially handy when trying to free up budgets! I was talking yesterday about designing power supplies for TV monitors...

Andrew McAfee has been talking to industrialists about Enterprise 2.0 and getting the same reaction that I have been getting . I also totally agree with his conclusion: Enterprise 2.0, in other words, is about new communities, not communities' new...

WOW! Microsoft are buying Groove: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/mar05/03-10GrooveQA.asp and http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+buy+Groove+Networks/2100-1014_3-5608063.html?part=rss&tag=5606366&subj=news I have used Groove in the...