So looking through my calendar for the next couple of weeks I have a ton of presentations to give and events to attend. First of all tomorrow at 2pm BST I am giving my Integration and Interop presentation, latest version, as a webcast which should be...

and is available from http://www.microsoft.com/hiserver/downloads/2000.asp . All the fixes rolled up into one! Cant wait to see if some of the bugs that have been irritating me have been fixed.

Last week I spoke at the Architect forum on Operations and management here in reading on DSI and SDM. There was a lot of interest and discussion on the whole area of metadata for organizing IT architectures which was fun. As well as SDM DCML and some...

I read this really interesting article about architects in the CIO magazine http://www.cio.com/archive/030105/blueprint.html I also had a long discussion with the CIO of a major investment bank in the city about his perception of architecture. It is...

I noticed an interesting conference by The Open Group on architecture (the IT Practitioners Architecture Conference ) on the 25-27 th April in Dublin. It says that they will be focusing on the role of the IT Architect and the IT Architecture as a profession...

I am holding a tutorial on Architectural Failures at SPA 2005 in the UK the week after next (see http://www.spaconference.org/content.html ) and am looking for any examples that I can use. I have a couple where bad application distribution or poor...

There is an interesting discussion with Steve Cook on software factories in this month’s DNJ online. I understood most of it, the bit I didn’t get was about how patterns are a modeless software factory. I have always been puzzled about the relationship...

Nearly a year ago I blogged about Hijacking and things have certainly moved on with the aquisition of Giant and subsequent realease of the beta of the Microsoft Windows Anti spyware software . Now there is a whitepaper out which describes the whole area...

The day before yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited to a Security discussion with some very senior security people in the UK . I introduced myself as an architect which led to some fairly “interesting” views of the role of the architect. There was...

Keith Pleas et al are running another patterns and practises summit this year in both the US and in Oslo following on from the very successful events last year. They have very kindly asked me to keynote again however I am doing the UK technet Roadshow...

So last Thursday I did my first Technet evening interop event based on Simon Guests Interop slides . It was a small and select audience and went reasonably well (I hardly ever feel things go very well). As always I was worried about not enough material...

A month or so ago I blogged about an area of infrastructure architecture I feel is very important; mapping of organisations to infrastructure . The snag is that you have to understand a lot about both the organisation and the infrastructure support. Whilst...

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...

There has been a huge amount of controversy over the whole REST vs SOA debate which seems to have settled down to the conclusion that REST is base for outside the firewall and SOA inside (whilst I realise this would be violently disputed by both camps...

A funny story I have heard many times is that of a helicopter pilot who was lost in the fog. He saw an office block in the gloom and a person at the window. He shouted out “Where am I?” and the person in the office block shouted back “In a helicopter...

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...

Mapping the levels of the Interoperability architecture to MS products: Mapping the levels of the Interoperability architecture to MS products: HIS SFU SFN SQLS Win NET WS* MIIS MOM Network X X X X Directory X X X X Security X X X X X File and Print X...

The areas of infrastructure that we need to understand interoperability around are: Network 1. Networks (Protocols, DNS / Bind, Wireless) 2. Directory (LDAP, AD, iplanet, NDS, edirectory) 3. Security (Standards, Kerberos, Certificates, SSO, IRM, Identity...

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...

I am writing a mega scenario to use as a test for infrastructure architecture. This implies that it covers all the technical aspects of infrastructure. The elements or layers that I have are: 1. Hardware (routers, servers, client devices, storage (SANS...

On Thursday next week I am presenting at a Technet Evening on Interop and so am putting the talk together. I don’t particularly want to go into a huge amount of detail on each Microsoft Interop product but want to give a structure or architecture for...

So now I have had the operation and am a manager I need a way of managing my time and also of giving direction to the people who work for me. As I have said before in my blog I have a very poor memory and attention span (typically 3 items and 30 seconds...

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...

A couple of weeks ago I had to do a week of interviews of very senior architects and it was a very interesting experience. I came into it with a fair amount of cynicism but actually it worked remarkable well. The format was that people applied and sent...

Simon has just published an article about mainframe interop using Screen logic Integration (SLI). In it he very clearly describes the various ways of interfacing to a mainframe before drilling down into SLI. I am a big Business Logic Interface (BLI) fan...