I am in Redmond this week. I am sharing a farily small room that is filled with 16 other architects. We are spending this week learning from each other and coming up with a repeatable approach to leading a transformation in the way we engage with and deliver “uber” opportunities. Quite exciting opportunity to be part of this effort and be the tip of the spear representing Microsoft and engaging with customers in discussing with customers how to realize business value. Our slogan is: “Your potential. Our Passion”, we are looking forward to help our customers materialize that potential.

David Wheeler (computer scientist) once said: “Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection”.    This is often mis-quoted with “abstraction” substituted for “indirection”.  I think the main idea remains untouched.  We in computer science use this pattern all the time.  Most of widely used patterns are based in creating abstraction layers that hide the complexity of working with the overall system or architecture.  These abstraction layers can be represented as generalized models or algorithms that hide the complexity of the specific implementations. 

Well, that is exactly what we have done with the Managed Services Engine(MSE).  A model was designed to represent useful business logic via endpoints which abstract (hide the complexity of implementation) business services available on the wire to the enterprise.  Hiding the complexity of bindings, protocols, security, technology, etc… is priceless.  In this model the model components can be managed centrally and introduce to a level of management that is consistent across the myriad of services.  But representing today’s cloud of services is not enough, turning around and exposing these implementations in a totally new way with new attributes and behaviors is key to  any enterprise to successfully adopt SOA and enable core business functions in a way that remains under control.

The MSE uses the intermediary pattern to achieve the decoupling of the client and the service implementation.  This pattern has proven very successful for our service virtualization strategy to SOA.  The components of this pattern are:

• Service Client – These are the consumers of the services
• Service Implementation – Specific service implementation.  could be a Database, mainframe, web service (SOAP, REST, POX, etc…)
• Service Intermediary – This is our “Runtime Server”.  This is the heart of the service virtualization strategy.  Virtual Services are expose their Address, Binding and Contracts (ABC) thru the “Runtime Server”.  
• Service Catalog – The metadata that describes the virtual and service implementations must be stored in catalog.  there are two key components here: the Catalog database and the “Catalog Server”.
• Design Tools – An administration tool to help you manage the metadata would make everyone’s life easier.  A WPF based tool that provides visibility across the whole model and exposes features that allow administrators to import metadata for various service implementations makes your life even easier.

Service Intermediary

The MSE’s Service intermediary implementation allows us to host virtual services by reading the metadata that describes what these services Address, Binding and Contracts (ABC).  This intermediary sits between the Client and Service Implementations, thus providing a centrally available interception capabilities such as: Operation Versioning, protocol mapping, monitoring, routing, run-time policy enforcement and custom behaviors.   The value add here is that neither the client or the Service Implementation needed to be touched in order to enable these capabilities.

If you are looking to adopt an Enterprise Service Layering approach a Service Oriented Infrastructure will provide a good framework for centralizing control, improved manageability and visibility.

The Microsoft Global SOA Practice is happy to announce that our new release of the Managed Services Engine is available now at CodePlex. (here)

This new version is a huge departure from the Management Console snap-in. We now have a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) administration tool that simplifies management of the various old and new Service Model Components introduced in this version.

As you probably know by now. I joined Microsoft at the beginning of December 2008. I have been in ramp up mode while trying to contribue as much as possible on sales calls, QA for one of our solutions, and of course all that HR required training.

Today we are less than a week away from Microsoft’s internal technology conference for folks in the field, people just like me!
I am excited about attending my first TechReady. I’ve heard about this conference, kind of like a TechEd but with no marketing.  Highly technical awareness & training.  It was a challenge building my schedule of sessions that I want to attend.  And in more than one time slot I have 2 or 3 sessions that I still have not made up my mind on which one I will be attending.   The tool even syncs up with my Calendar.  That Schedule builder tool was pretty neat and simple to use. I only wish it had to option to automatically suggest a schedule based on topics of interest in combination with my “Track”, in my case Architecture Delivery in SOA.

I will also help one of my colleagues, Chris Madrid, in a Hands On Lab. I will be a proctor during this lab and I am looking forward to answer questions on the SOAInfrastructure solution that the team has put together.  I kind of remember  when I was a Sybase & PowerBuilder instructor back in the day….  those days spent teaching RDBMS design, Sybase administration and deployment, PowerBuilder Basic and Advanced courses in Monterrey, Torreon and Merida.

I was happy with 6mbps but you can never have enough.  I just upgraded my AT&T Internet service to the MAX! 

My downlowad/upload speed test

I am loving the speed and not to mention how happy I have been with the TV service.  IPTV Rocks!  way to go AT&T Uverse.

More than once I’ve heard technologists complaint about the business and how they don’t understand the issues the IT faces to provide appropriate Service Levels to the business, on the other hand, I also hear the complaints of the “Business” on how IT and the solutions intended to provide functional services are not flexible and take too long to implement.

Who is right?  BOTH!

Until recent times, we had not been able to provide better alignment between IT and Business.  Yes, I know that we have preached about it for years if not decades, but reality is that the internal IT department is no longer the preferred IT Services provider and that many of the core IT solutions (e.g. ERP, messaging, etc…) are an impediment to agility in the business.

So, how are we to solve this intricate and complex problem? The answer seems simple at first.  Technologists will propose Service Oriented Architecture principles to be adopted, the Business will demand Agile, nimble solutions. But more than one enterprise will lose sight of the greater goal before they are done implementing something that works.

It is absolutely critical to have a good plan for this enterprise transformation, a plan that includes details for sourcing options (cloud computing, SaaS, etc…), organizational (IT and business), technology, security, and operations among others.  My point is that this is not only a technology solution and any plan that does not include more than technology is destined to fail.

I will be sharing more thought on future blog posts about what things should be considered in order to implement a successful Service Oriented Strategy that will enable business agility.  Keep in mind that not all companies face the same issues and that IT /Business dynamics are different from company to company.  Nevertheless, the same principles might apply and the detail implementation plans should be customized for each organization.

Working with the Energy and Utilities vertical at nGenera we are seriously considering hosting a new product offering on the cloud using Amazon’s EC2 web service.

My experience so far is very positive.  Easy to sign up, easy to use, easy to administer (even with the command-line tools) and the price…  can’t beat that!  at $0.10 / instance hour it beats the typical hosting agreements.

even for a 24/7 site at an average of $73 / month plus the data transfer it looks like a very good option.

Everyday I see more and more of the “wikinomics” concepts being applied in real business scenarios.  One of the latest is Starbucks.  they have been loosing steam and they are now brewing a social media project in order to find their ”lost soul”. http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/home/home.jsp

Interesting to mention that this is build on force.com.

Recently I have been working with our y own Agile and Collaborative Technology group and with customers on the very topic of this post.

There is so much to lean and unlearn about the Innovation Process that I recommend reading the following two books:

ThinkerToys by Michael Michalko and Wikinomics by Don Tappscot/Anthony Williams (by the way Don and the company he founded, New Paradigm, are now part of the BSG Alliance.)

These two books will provide some specific techniques and fresh ideas on transforming your company’s talent into Next Generation Talent. 

Speaking of innovation, I also wanted to share my experiences and interesting finding while briefing with customers.

One thing in common that I hear time and time again is that the customers are pretty sure where they want to go (NGE), but they are not sure how to get there.  This is where BSG Alliance comes into the picture.  We are creating a platform to assist these companies with the journey into the Next Generation Enterprise (NGE) space.  This is a comprehensive platform composed of services, offerings, tools, education, methods, On Demand apps, etc… that will enable customers and guide them throughout the transformation.

Such platform is innovative in nature and it will be an NGE enabler for the Enterprise.

 keep tuned as I intend to share more on this last topic.

I recently saw a similar product to MS Surface on TV.  Can’t recall the name, but while googling for it instead I found what appears to be the mother of all touch-screens.   This is a multi-touch, collaborative interactive media wall. 

Just think about the collaboration possibilities!

If you are interested you can get your own Intearctive Media Wall for $100K.  Available only in Neiman Marcus’ Catalog.   (http://tinyurl.com/2f6842)

Now that I think about it, where else could I get such a gift?  Only at Neiman Marcus, the same catalog where I could get a Galactic Charter to Space.

 http://www.perceptivepixel.com/

 I will keep looking for that other interactive collaboration table, but after seeing this one not sure if I should look for that other skimpy table model.