September 2006 - Posts
I have recently published an article in the Israeli Public Sector Newsletter.
The main idea I was interviewed about was the current hot trend of SOA.
Today SOA is discussed not only by IT mangaers, but also by the CxO level of organizations. Organizations are now realizing that they need to have a flexible IT infrastructure in order to enable changes in the organzations and become more agile. The reason that becoming agile is of interest to CxOs is that it means reducing costs and answering market needs faster or in other words increasing revenue.
In order to make a tranisition to SOA, an organization needs the following: (1) Appointing architects with a wide systematic view and long term vision (2) Guidance and Commitment of senior management (3) Map the organizational needs and aim for alignment between them and the services provided by the IT systems.
In the rest of the article, I discuss the benefits of realizing SOA with Microsoft where the important emphasis is put on the business architecture methodology called Motion on which I blogged in a previous post.
To make a short story long, you can read the interview here.
However, be warned, yet again this is in Hebrew....
Ever wondered why you should migrate to Visual Studio 2005?
Ever thought what else can Microsoft develop to help you become more productive?
Well, you can find the answer or better say 400 answers here.
Thank you Alik for letting me know of this site.
It might be worth taking a second look
Check out the new sections that have recently been added, including:
Software as a Service
Business Capabilities
Office 2007 for Architects
Software Factories
Industry Centers (Finance, Retail, and Manufacturing)
…and a series of pages covering Foundations of Solutions Architecture – including topics for each of the areas in the Connected Systems model.
Great news.
Following Windows Vista RC1, we are now also releasing the .NET Framework 3.0 RC1 bits.
To get the bits, go to this link.
.NET Framework 3.0 includes foundations used by Windows Vista developers, although it can be applied for Windows XP and Windows 2003 servers too. Let's examine the main new foundations added:
.NET 3.0 includes WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) which allows you to build applications that look like advanced games. If in the past, we bought the new graphic cards just if we use games, now those cards can be used for the next generation of applications developed with WPF. It introduces a managed API to DirectX and will present XAML, a new declarative markup languages that will bridge between designers and developers.
.NET 3.0 also introduces WCF (Windows Communications Foundation) which is the merge of all MS communication technologies of Remoting, Web Services, WSE, Enterprise Services (.NET generation of COM+) and System.Messaging (.NET generation of MSMQ). Although, I can't show you cool 3D graphics with this, as opposed to WPF, you can rest assure that this is one of the most important innovations Microsoft is releasing in this decade. This will allow a much easier foundation for all future SOA based systems. You just have to look at .NET code that uses it to grab our head and understand that we've all worked too hard in the past around those issues.
The last piece is called WF (Workflow Foundation). We changed its name from WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation), probably because of the connotation of the World Wide Wrestling, just kidding.... Actually, this foundation allows building workflow inside applications (as opposed to BizTalk that allows workflow between application). It includes modeling framework for state diagrams, sequence diagrams and rule based diagrams.
I expect that these new foundations will present the next generation of software systems and I'm really anxious to see the systems that will include them. If you feel that it affected the architecture of your applications or if you've come up with new patterns or best practices that use these technologies, feel free to comment here or send me your insights.