2012 : Happy New Year

Impact of Cloud on IT

I chanced upon a recent report on ‘Impact of Cloud on IT’ from Freeform Dynamics. Here are few highlights.

• Cloud is complementary to existing IT infrastructure and service delivery concepts
  • Few are contemplating a wholesale move into the Cloud, with the result that when Cloud is adopted it needs to integrate and interoperate with the existing IT infrastructure.
• External Cloud services will co-exist with existing third party services in the market
  • Traditional hosting and managed services providers are already starting to work Cloud options into their service portfolios, and the market will increasingly be defined by players who adopt an inclusive approach.
• Cloud will change the skills required to deliver IT services
  • From an IT skills perspective, this increases the demand for IT professionals that are comfortable working across traditional operational silos and domains of expertise.
• Cloud may make life easier in some areas, but also creates challenges elsewhere
  • Improvements in provisioning and operating services are countered by the challenges of implementing security and information management across in-house and (often multiple) service provider environments, and making sure the network communications are up to the task.
• Without integration, Cloud is more plug-and-pray than plug-and-play
  • Once Cloud becomes a core part of the business then architectural challenges arise that need time, planning and investment to solve. This negates the “easy on ramp” advantage claimed for Cloud over traditional IT applications and services, and essentially places Cloud on a level footing with the rest of IT.

http://www.freeformdynamics.com/

Cloud vs Enterprise IT : Competition View

Few days back I blogged about a trend where Cloud is posing an entirely different kind of challenge for Enterprise IT, which is Competition .

Cloud and Enterprise IT : Partners or Competitors

I posted the same thought on Forrester community forum and here are few thoughts from there :

“The trend you are seeing may be related to the fact that IT may already have established outsourcing relationships with consultancies that do not have cloud capability. In this scenario, it is more efficient if the business does an end run around IT to avoid previously sane SLAs but now seem archaic.”

“I've certainly spoken with some firms that regard cloud service providers as competitors to their established way of doing things. In fact, at least a few want to stay away from a "pay by the drink" chargeback model because it put them in direct competition with various infrastructure as a service alternatives.”

“I think this thinking has been going on long before cloud came along, it's just another in a line of approaches that have potential for reducing the headcount in a corporate IT department.  In my opinion, any enterprise IT department that is seeing IaaS or PaaS providers as competition wasn't a partner with the rest of the business to begin with.”

You can read complete set of thoughts here http://community.forrester.com/thread/5875?

So what are your thoughts on this ?

Consumerization of IT : CITE conference and expo

Few days back I blogged about it CIO vs Millennials : Blurring Corporate IT firewalls

Key Topics on the CITE agenda include:

• Cost-effective, business-smart mobile application strategies
• Mobile device procurement, management and policies
• The latest strategies and policies for Bring Your Own Technology to work
• Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)
• Cloud services and governance
• Where unified communications with video offers business benefits
• User interface/gamification
• Data Access and integration
• Organizational, skill and role shift
• Managing service providers, contracts and SLAs

http://www.citeconference.com

Free eBook : Claims based Identity and Access Control

Here is an interesting free eBook released by Microsoft’s patterns & practices team which covers the topic of claims based identity in detail.

With ever increasing mobility scenarios and focus on user experience, the need for SSO also increases.

It starts with discussing basics of Claims based identity and moves to Claims based architectures.

It also discuss the topic around various Microsoft technologies and mainly around cloud and Windows Azure.

Following industry standards are also discussed :

• Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)
• Security Association Management Protocol (SAMP)
  and Internet Security Association
  and Key Management Protocol (ISAKMP)
• WS-Federation
• WS-Federation: Passive Requestor Profile
• WS-Security
• WS-SecureConversation
• WS-Trust

Download the eBook

CSC Cloud Usage Survey Report

Here are the highlights from recent CSC Cloud Usage Index:

• Cloud-Adoption Drivers: Connecting Employees Through Multiple Devices
• Accelerated Results: Upgrading IT Performance
• Cost Savings: Reducing IT Costs — Modestly
• Workforce Strategies: Preparing Employees for the Cloud
• Another workforce finding is that few organizations downsize IT after cloud adoption. In fact, only 14 percent of companies downsize their IT departments after adopting cloud while 20 percent of organizations hire more cloud experts. 
• Emerging Areas: Tracking Sustainability, Government Clouds
• Future Outlook: Committing to Cloud for the Long Term

Full Report

CIO vs Millennials : Blurring Corporate IT firewalls

I was going through Accenture’s research report on Millennials and the challenges they are bringing to CIOs. Its an interesting research which highlights some challenges which can be considered as one of the drivers for cloud adoption and mobility. Overall the trend it shows is called Consumerization of IT (CoIT).

Most of the new workforce entering corporate firewall belongs to Millennials generations and CIOs belong to one prior to that. Clearly, there is a generation gap. CIOs have mandate to protect the enterprise data and comply to regulatory and audit requirements while workforce wants following:

• While entering into workplace, they do want to feel as if they are entering a prison and still want full view to outside world. They want technology at workplace which is latest and unrestricted.
• While leaving workplace, they want to take it with them. They want flexibility to work from anywhere using any device.

Here are some interesting infographics from the report:

They feel technology is must to perform at workplace.

Here is the shocker .. technology available plays an important role in selection of employer.

CIOs must be prepared for all of this. While the above points highlight only internal challenges, soon similar kind of expectation will start coming from customer, partners, etc as they are also overtaken by Millennials.

Next is Strategies for Embracing Consumerization.

The Outlook for Energy – A view to 2040

Apart from discussing topics related to Enterprise Architecture, Industry specific outlooks and architecture is also something which every CIO or EA should be aware of.

ExxonMobil has recently released their outlook on Energy – a view to 2040. Here are some interesting details:

• Global energy demand will be about 30 percent higher in 2040 compared to 2010.
• In the countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – including countries in North America and Europe – we see energy use remaining essentially flat, even as these countries achieve economic growth and even higher living standards.
• The need for energy to make electricity will remain the single biggest driver of demand. By 2040, electricity generation will account for more than 40 percent of global energy consumption.
• Oil, gas and coal continue to be the most widely used fuels, and have the scale needed to meet global demand, making up about 80 percent of total energy consumption in 2040.
• Gains in efficiency through energy-saving practices and technologies – such as hybrid vehicles and new, high efficiency natural gas power plants – will temper demand growth and curb emissions.
• Global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will grow slowly, then level off around 2030.
• Read full report : http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_outlook.aspx
• Read IEA (International Energy Agency) Energy Outlook here : http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/

Learn Windows Azure - Free, Live Online event

On Tuesday December 13th Microsoft will be holding a special Windows Azure event for developers. Join us LIVE from the Microsoft Redmond Campus to learn how to get started building applications for the cloud from Microsoft technical leaders Scott Guthrie, Dave Campbell, and Mark Russinovich. All of the sessions will be broadcast live thanks to your friends from Channel9.

The Learn Windows Azure Event will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST on Tuesday December 13th. Add this time to your calendar and come back to Channel9 on December 13^th to watch the live stream. We also have a limited number of seats available for the in-person studio audience. Register now if you would like to reserve a seat to attend the Learn Windows Azure event for free at the Microsoft Redmond Campus.

Open Group Conference, San Francisco

Gain the tools and knowledge you need to introduce meaningful Enterprise Transformation....

The Open Group Conference in San Francisco will focus on the role played by IT and EA within Enterprise Transformation. Through practical learning opportunities based on real-life experiences and case studies, attendees at the Conference will have the opportunity to gain a valuable insight into:

• The differences between EA and Enterprise Transformation, and how they relate to one another
• The use of EA to facilitate Enterprise Transformation
• How EA can be used to create a foundation for Enterprise Transformation that the board and business-line managers can understand and use to their advantage
• How EA facilitates transformation within IT, and how does such transformation support the transformation of the enterprise as whole
• How EA can help the enterprise successfully adapt to ‘disruptive technologies’ like Cloud Computing and ubiquitous mobile access.

These and other questions about Enterprise Transformation will be answered at The Open Group Conference in San Francisco.

http://www3.opengroup.org/sanfrancisco2012

Is Enterprise Architecture losing interest ?

Google Trends is an interesting tool to measure general interest in any topic based on the number of search queries made for that topic. So, today I decided to try for ‘Enterprise Architecture’ and was surprised seeing the results.

The interest in Enterprise Architecture as a topic has been constantly decreasing over a period of last few years based on queries submitted. Though the news published related to EA has increased.

So what this signifies ?

To understand the above trend I tried correlating it with Gartner’s Hype Cycle on EA and things were much clearer.

Yes, EA as topic has moved from Peak of Inflated Expectations to Trough of Disillusionment. People know that it is not a magic wand and requires lot of hard work to get value out of it. It is important and so it is getting institutionalized instead of just being a buzzword. I am sure from here we will only see rising interest in it in coming years.

Is Cloud ready to hold your money ?

Here are few excerpts from web which shows how Financial Industry is approaching the Cloud computing. It includes Financial Institutions, Cloud Providers & Banking software providers.

Financial Institutions

“Boston branch of the Wall Street Technology Association remain wary of public cloud infrastructure, such as Amazon's EC2, but some have started building out the private cloud.”

“It's understood in Boston financial circles that State Street Bank was ahead of the curve in adopting virtualization and was about 72% virtualized by the time the topic of cloud computing became popular two years ago. State Street now operates seven racks of virtualized servers as its private cloud, with users able to provision servers for themselves.”

“startups are skipping the data center investment .. directly going to cloud”

“Robert Hegarty, global head of market structure-enterprise for Thomson Reuters, said the biggest challenge for IT staffs in financial services is the changing regulatory climate”

http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/articles/231902472?printer_friendly=this-page

Cloud Providers

“Data intensive processing is a common early uses case for financial services customers, including risk analysis, algorithm and model testing and financial simulations. Web and mobile applications and storage and content distribution are also common use cases.”

“Security is top of mind for many customers”

http://www.informationweek.com/news/cloud-computing/infrastructure/231901838

Banking Software Provider

“PaaS is where the future and true value in cloud lies for the financial services industry. PaaS is about the use of intelligent software infrastructure and programming capabilities to enable the convergence of applications, structured and unstructured data, dynamic processing power, and connectivity with intelligent devices.”

http://www.temenos.com/temenos-online/Function/Technology/Moving-To-The-Cloud/

Online Workshop on Enterprise Architecture

EACOE is conducting Enterprise Architect Certification workshops which includes distance learning workshop too.

Catch all the details here : http://eacoe.org/workshop_outline.shtml

Architecture Description confirming to ISO Standard

This is the third post of the series discussing the recently released ISO standard for Architecture Description.

Post 1 : Understanding ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011 : Standard for Architecture description

Post 2 : Communicating Architecture : Key Terms of 42010

While the standard defines various elements of Architecture Description and their relationships, it also specifies requirements which should be complied with for conformance.

The Standard defines four cases of conformance:

1. architecture description (AD)
2. architecture framework
3. architecture description language (ADL)
4. architecture viewpoint

Here are the primary requirements for each component:

Architecture Description (AD)

1. AD Identification & Overview
2. Identify stakeholders and their concerns
3. Include Viewpoints addressing those concerns
4. Create views satisfying those viewpoints
5. Connect views with conformance
6. Putting down decisions and rationale behind them

Architecture Viewpoint

1. Identification of stakeholders and their concerns
2. Model kinds used
3. Details for model kinds like languages, notations, modelling techniques, etc.
4. references to its sources

Architecture Description Language

1. Identification of stakeholders and their concerns
2. Model kinds implemented
3. Viewpoints & correspondence rules related to above model kinds

Architecture Framework

1. Identification of stakeholders and their concerns
2. Architecture viewpoints that frame those concerns
3. Correspondence rules integrating those viewpoints

Communicating Architecture : Key Terms of 42010

This is in continuation to my earlier post Understanding ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011 : Standard for Architecture description. If you have landed directly to this post, I recommend to read the earlier post first.

Reposting the conceptual model of the Standard for easy reading.

In this I will discuss the key terms of the Standard.

Architecting :  contributes to the development, operation and maintenance of a system from its initial conception through its retirement from use and disposal. It is performed throughout the system life cycle.

AD Element : Architecture Description Element. The  most  primitive  construct in AD. Every stakeholder, concern, architecture viewpoint, architecture view, model kind, architecture model, architecture decision and rationale is considered an AD element.

Stakeholders : anyone who has interest in the system. e.g.

• users
• operators
• owners
• suppliers
• developers
• maintainers

Concerns : interest in a system relevant to one or more of its stakeholders. e,g, technological, business, operational, performance, resource utilization, etc.

Viewpoint : establishes the conventions for the construction, interpretation and use of architecture views for specific concern(s). A concern can be framed by more than one viewpoint. Viewpoint conventions can include
languages, notations, model kinds, design rules, and/or modelling methods, analysis techniques and other
operations on views.

View : expresses the architecture of a system from the perspective of specific system concern(s) in accordance to its Viewpoint.

Model Kinds : conventions for a type of modelling. e.g. class diagrams, data flow diagrams, etc.

Architecture Model : An architecture model uses modelling conventions appropriate to the concerns to be addressed. These conventions are specified by the model kind governing that model. Within an architecture description,  an architecture model can be a part of more than one architecture view.

Rationale : Architecture rationale records explanation, justification or reasoning about architecture decisions that have been made. The rationale for a decision  can  include the basis for a decision, alternatives and trade-offs considered, potential consequences of the decision and citations to sources of additional information.

Decision : something which affect the architecture in context of a concern.

Correspondence Rules : Correspondences are governed by Correspondence Rules.

Correspondences : defines a relation between AD elements. Correspondences and correspondence rules are used to express and enforce architecture relations such as composition, refinement, consistency, traceability, dependency, constraint and obligation.

Architecture Framework :  conventions, principles and practices for the description of architectures established within a specific domain of application and/or community of stakeholder. Uses of architecture frameworks include, but are not limited to: creating architecture descriptions; developing architecture modelling tools and architecting methods; and establishing processes to facilitate communication, commitments and interoperation across multiple projects and/or organization. e.g.

• Zachman’s information systems architecture framework
• UK Ministry of Defence Architecture Framework
• The Open Group’s Architecture Framework (TOGAF)
• Kruchten’s “4+1” view model
• Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP)

Architecture Description Language (ADL) :  An ADL provides one or more model kinds as  a means to frame some concerns for its audience of stakeholders. An ADL can be narrowly focused, defining a single model kind, or widely focused to provide several model kinds, optionally organized into viewpoints. Often an ADL is supported by automated tools to aid the creation, use and analysis of its models. e.g.

• Rapide
• Wright
• SysML
• ArchiMate

Understanding ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011 : Standard for Architecture description

Approved on 10 Nov 2011, ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011, Systems and software engineering — Architecture description, is the latest edition of the original IEEE Std 1471:2000, Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-intensive Systems.

This standard replaces IEEE 1471:2000. It is identical to the ISO standard approved in July. The new standard, designated ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011, Systems and software engineering — Architecture description, is available from IEEE and ISO.

In March 2006, IEEE 1471 was adopted as an ISO standard. It was published in July 2007 as ISO/IEC 42010:2007. Its text was identical to IEEE 1471:2000.ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011 replaces both ISO/IEC 42010:2007 and IEEE Std 1471:2000.

Here is the composite and simplified view of Architecture and its ecosystem.

The storyboard for reading this diagram goes like this:

1. System which belongs to an environment addresses concerns of its stakeholders.
2. Every system has architecture
3. Architecture is described using Architecture Description(AD)
4. Stakeholders use AD to understand architecture
5. AD is created using Architecture Frameworks (AF) and Architecture Description Languages (ADL)
6. AD includes following:
   • Stakeholders and their concerns
   • Architecture Viewpoints & Views
   • Architecture Model kinds & Models
   • Architecture Rationale & Decisions
   • Correspondence Rules and Correspondences
7. Architecture Viewpoints include Model Kinds
8. Architecture Views include Architecture Models
9. Views are governed by Viewpoints
10. Models are governed by Model Kinds
11. Architecture Rationale justifies Decisions
12. Correspondence Rules specify Correspondences

So, what does this Standard contains ?
This Standard defines & specifies conformance requirements on contents of following:

• Architecture Descriptions of systems
• Architecture Frameworks
• Architecture Description Languages
• Architecture Viewpoints

The Standard defines architecture this way:
fundamental concepts or properties of a system in its environment embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the principles of its design and evolution.
This post is first in the series where I will try to explain this standard. In next post I will try to go into details of various AD elements.

Part 2 : Communicating Architecture : Key Terms of 42010

Part 3 : Architecture Description confirming to ISO Standard

Pillars of Agile Development

Businesses & CIOs across the world see lot of value in going Agile for Software Development. Development teams also have been quick enough in adopting the Agile methodologies. But in majority of cases, teams have failed to capitalize on the value of Agile development and in fact reduced their efficiencies by going Agile. There is also a trend where teams have started reverting back to the old way of software development.

The primary reason for this failure is that teams have failed to understand what it takes to get value out of Agile. Just by doing SCRUM or hiring a Scrum master doesn’t make you agile. In fact it creates chaos. Going Agile is a multi-dimensional approach and is based on three foundation pillars. If the team is not matured enough in even one of these, they will fail to get value out of going Agile. Higher the maturity in these pillars, more effective the agile approach will be.

The foundation pillars of Agile Development are:

1. Test Driven Development. It is about coding against tests instead of requirements. Requirements are translated into test cases and developers code to satisfy those test cases. This considerably reduces the testing cycle but increases focus on writing right test cases.

2. Agile Project Management. This is about correctly prioritizing the requirements and right sizing the iterations. I am sure everyone must have heard stories about Google having a sprint cycle of 2 days and Facebook having it of less than a day. Start with a sprint size with which the team is comfortable, even if it is 30 days. As you mature in other 2 pillars, you can start reducing your sprint duration.

3. Continuous Integration & Deployment. This is the last leg of an iteration and requires lot of support from tools. It involves building & integrating the code frequently, running automated tests and moving it to production. Some of the tools like Microsoft TFS, Cruise Control and others can help in this.

So, if you are planning to go agile for your development make sure you address it from all sides.

Compare Clouds : Microsoft vs VMware

Microsoft has recently released an interesting white paper comparing its private cloud offering with that of VMware. As expected the focus is mainly on cost & licensing.

Apart from comparing its solution with VMware, the whitepaper provides some excellent details into its own offering which can be a nice read for understanding Private Cloud architecture & ecosystem.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/private-cloud/default.aspx

This is called Customer Experience

Most of the companies today irrespective of which industry they are in, are focusing a lot on customer experience. But some companies take it real seriously and even do not hesitate to break the long running traditions.

Recently I was answering a feedback survey of an airline and was amazed to see by the simplicity of the options of the survey. While most of the surveys will have numbers (1 to 5)  or (excellent to poor) to rate satisfaction, this survey actually tried capturing the emotions of the customer by giving options as real as actual emotions.

Though they forgot to provide the same experience with ‘N.A.’ which an average customer may not be able to decipher.

Cloud and Enterprise IT : Partners or Competitors

Businesses across the world have been long frustrated with the slow response times of their IT departments in terms of provisioning new infrastructure. Now that Cloud Computing is available, IT teams have been slow in adopting it too.

There has been a recent trend which I am seeing ( I am sure you too ) where businesses have directly started dealing with public cloud providers and get the infra quickly. Though business teams have to take ownership of associated risks in this case but for them agility is more important to survive.

So, how are things going to turn up in future. Are we going to see downsizing of Enterprise IT teams ?

London Olympics 2012 CIO : Cloud computing not yet ready to host Olympics

London Olympics 2012 CIO Gerry Pennell has an interesting take on Cloud Computing & its ability to host mission control systems.

Even CIOs of most of the financial institutions think that Cloud Computing needs more time to build the trust required for mission critical systems.

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/11/08/248401/Gartner-ITxpo-Gerry-Pennell-explains-why-the-cloud-won39t-make-the-Olympics.htm

UK : How Government plans to spend less on IT

UK Cabinet Office’s recent ICT Strategy & Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) highlights how it plans save money or spend less money on IT with the right spending.

Here are few of the things government plans to do:

• Creation of Public Services Network (PSN)
• Move to the Cloud
• Datacenter Consolidation
• Preference to Open Source
• Adopting Agile way of delivering Projects instead of Big ones
• Consolidate Application Portfolio

This seems to be a decent list which even most of the enterprises plan to execute to control their IT spending.

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/

CIOs : Same Vision but Different Goals

IBM’s recent CIO study brings out a very important fact about the diversity in mandate which CIOs worldwide face.

The mandate spectrum spans from as legacy as digitization/computerization to IT being expected of radically innovating.

The report categorizes it into four following zones:

Leverage : Streamline Operations and increase organizational effectiveness

Expand : Refines business processes and enhance collaboration

Transform : Change the industry value chain through improved relationships

Pioneer : Radically innovate products, markets, business models

Every organization’s priority lies in one of these zones and so it becomes very important for CIOs and their teams to operate according to their organization and not just focus on ‘Pioneer’.

But still with all these different expectations with regards to goal, the Vision remains same and that is of creating value for business.

Another fact which report highlights is the industry distribution across these zones. The figure below shows distribution of industries in Pioneer zone.

It clearly shows how Financial industry is pioneering in terms of using IT to their advantage in terms of innovating.

Disaster Recovery, BCP and Cloud

Few days back I blogged about the spirit with which BCP or DR should be planned. Continuing on that here are two recent whitepapers published by Amazon and Microsoft on utilizing cloud as DR environment.

Amazon

This paper talks about how Amazon’s AWS can be used as a DR environment and how various AWS services can play role in that including S3 and EC2.

It also includes backup and restore.

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/10/new-whitepaper-use-aws-for-disaster-recovery.html

Microsoft

Microsoft’s paper takes more holistic approach which includes how Windows Phone can participate in an event of DR.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Outlines-Disaster-Preparedness-Strategy-for-SMBs-232210.shtml

IBM Cloud : The Smart Cloud

Here comes the public cloud from IBM called SmartCloud. It is actually both public and private but I am covering only public in this post.

SmartCloud offers full range of public cloud capabilities IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Here is the summary:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

• Provides hardware, software and storage as Virtual Machines
• Option of reserving a VM or ‘Pay as you go’
• Choose either a public cloud solution (IBM SmartCloud Enterprise) or a managed service (IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+)
• Operating Systems available : Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server & Microsoft Windows Server
• Other Software available for Application dev environments (WebSphere), Application lifecycle(Rational), Application Server (WebSphere), Business Intelligence (Cognos), Database (DB2 only) etc.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

• Provides an environment for application development, deployment, management and integration in the cloud
• Development  : Rational Tools
• Deployment   : Workload Deployer, WebSphere
• Management : Systems Director, Smart Analytics, Hosted Application Security Management
• Integration     : WebSphere Cast Iron Cloud Integration

Software as a Service (SaaS)

• Provides solutions for following categories:
• Social Collaboration : LotusLive
• Business Process Management : Blueworks Live
• Web Analytics : Coremetrics
• Enterprise Marketing Management : Unica on Demand
• B2B Integration : Sterling
• Supply Chain Management : Sterling
• Governance Risk Compliance : AppScan
• Business Service Management : Tivoli Live

Enterprise Architecture : 2011 Forrester Reports on Trends

Forrester has released two very important reports related to Enterprise Architecture featuring trends to watch for 2012 to 2014. Not free and so you need to purchase to read them.

The Top 10 Business Technology Trends EA Should Watch: 2012 To 2014

The Top 10 Technology Trends EA Should Watch: 2012 To 2014

Here is a sneak peak on what it may contain as published by Brian Hopkins few days back.

Here are a few trends of interest:

• Business Technology Trends -

  • BPM embraces rules, events, and empowered technologies.

  • The need for deeper customer engagement drives more Social Computing.

  • The cloud applies pressure to IT economics

• Technology Trends

  • Platform-as-a-service crosses the chasm.

  • Social technology becomes enterprise plumbing.

  • Improved virtualization sets the stage for private cloud.

DART : Overview of Google’s new web programming language

So finally, the technology has started moving on the client side of web too, faster than we expected. After many years of using HTML, JavaScript, ActiveX, Flash & Silverlight came the big innovations like HTML5 & CSS3.

Here comes the latest from Google, called DART – Structured Web programming language. Personally I have never been happy with JavaScript due to readability, maintainability & lack of support of good developer tools.

So what is DART ? Here are few highlights:

• Open source project
• Class-based programming language (not mentioned as object-oriented language) 
• Moving to more structured environment. It supports classes & libraries. This is what JavaScript lacked though supported in unstructured way.
• Optional types. This is interesting as this will allow you to start prototyping your application quickly using JavaScript style programming with simple and untyped code and then as you progress in application lifecycle convert the code from untyped to typed style which is easy to debug, understand and maintain.

Google promises to provide the right tooling support to leverage the enhancements done over javascript in Dart.

Design goals of Dart as mentioned by Google :

• structured yet flexible
• familiar & natural
• high performance & fast application startup
• full range of devices on the web – phones, tablets, laptops & servers
• support across all major modern browsers – the current test environment does not support IE.

Deployment/Execution Models

• Translate Dart code to JavaScript and run it in browsers today except IE.
• Execute Dart code in a virtual machine on server side
• Use Dartboard to write and execute code snippets in browser window except IE
• Proposes a new MIME type called ‘application/dart’ so that it can be embedded or imported into HTML pages.

Dart & HTML5 – Dart will have HTML5 Dom library to interact with HTML elements

I feel Dart will help in making the web richer without compromising the developer productivity. JQuery is helping a lot currently in this aspect on top of JavaScript. Based on the acceptance of Dart, JavaScript may continue to remain popular.

It would have been better if instead of releasing a new language, Google had advocated such advances in JavaScript itself.

With Google Chrome making big advances and may soon become second most popular browser, it could dare to take such a bold step.

http://www.dartlang.org/

ITIL and Service Lifecycle Stages

ITIL identifies five stages in a service lifecycle.

Here they are :

1. Service Strategy (SS)
2. Service Design (SD)
3. Service Transition (ST)
4. Service Operation (SO)
5. Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

Visually these stages can be stacked like this:

Strategy forms the core part of service lifecycle and is all about making the informed decisions on what kind of value we expect from service. Design, Transition & Operation bring the vision to reality. Design is all about creating blueprint and how it should look like once operational. Transition addresses the challenges of handover from development to operations team. Operations provides guidance on how to ensure that service keeps delivering value without interruption. Continual Service Improvement is kind of feedback loop to ensure that there is continuous focus on improving every part of service lifecycle.

We will deep dive into each of these stages in next few posts.

ITIL Overview

This is the first post of the series were I will be covering ITILv3 and its applications to the real world.

ITIL or IT Infrastructure Library is approximately 20 years old best practice, guidance or framework for doing IT Service Management (ITSM). The current version of ITIL is third major version and hence called ITILv3.

ITIL defines service as following:

A service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks.

ITIL Library has the following two components:

1. ITIL Core : Generic set of best practice applicable to all types of organization (internal or external) which provide services to business.

2. ITIL Complementary Guidance : specific to industry sectors, organization types, technology, etc.

ITIL v3 addresses the complete service lifecycle and has following lifecycle stages defined:

1. Service Strategy

2. Service Design

3. Service Transition

4. Service Operation

5. Continual Service Improvement

For each stage it also describes various key processes which should be focused on and also various roles and their responsibilities.

In future posts, we will go through in detail these lifecycle stages and various processes. We will also cover how it compares to other frameworks available and how they can be used together.

ITIL Official Site : http://www.itil-officialsite.com/

Business Continuity Planning or Disaster Recovery–The ‘Deep Impact’ way

The other day I was watching the ‘Deep Impact’ movie and realized that there is so much to learn for Enterprise Architects from it in the area of Business Continuity Planning (BCP) or Disaster Recovery (DR).

Just to mention here, BCP is a very broad term which influences both business and IT. While DR is mostly used by IT and refers to bringing the IT systems back after natural disaster or catastrophe failure.

The two most important lessons learnt are:

1. Diversity – For enterprise to run normal at some capacity, most important systems of every business function needs to be running.

2. Dependency – The interdependency amongst systems should be known and should be used while planning the recovery.

So while preparing your DR plan, it is important that you do not plan for ‘all systems need to be brought up as soon as possible’ kind of stuff. Instead in conjunction with business, have the priority of systems clearly identified so that you can sequence the recovery while keeping in mind the interdependencies of systems.

Also make sure you do not have circular dependencies amongst your systems.

Oracle Public cloud is PaaS and SaaS

Recently Oracle joined the list of Public Cloud providers. Simply put Oracle’s public cloud is combination of:

- PaaS : Platform as a service – allows you to run java code/application with Oracle database engine in the cloud and weblogic as app engine

- SaaS : Software as a service – Hosts few of the Oracle’s popular enterprise apps like Fusion CRM & HCM. Also introduces Social Network – an enterprise wide communication and collaboration platform with a connect to customers and partners

The main components include :

1. Oracle Fusion CRM Cloud Service

2. Oracle Fusion HCM Cloud Service

3. Oracle Social Network

4. Oracle Java Cloud Service

5. Oracle Database Cloud Service

Other highlights include monthly subscription service, against multi-tenancy, self-service.

This is surely going to be hit with teams developing java apps.

Here is how the Oracle Cloud architecture looks like

http://cloud.oracle.com/mycloud/f?p=service:home:0

IASA : Architect Career Map

IASA – International Association of Software Architects has published a career roadmap for aspiring and experienced IT architects. They provide training and certification too.

Check out the details at http://www.iasaglobal.org/iasa/default.asp

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.iasaglobal.org/iasa/Career_Path.asp

Steve Jobs : A Tribute

To the person for whom Customer and Customer Experience comes first. Rest all second and nothing beyond that.

We will miss you.

Welcome

…. lets get started