Saturday, February 28, 2009

2009-02-28 Saturday - CloudCamp Seattle 2.28.2009

I just got back from spending the day in Seattle at Amazon's HQ building attending Seattle CloudCamp 2.28.2009

This unconference kicked-off just shortly after 12pm, with opening introduction from Dave Nielson, of Platform D (he's also the Cofounder of the CloudCamp conference event).

Local Organizers
- Crystal Williams, VP Professional Services, WorkHabit
- D. James Nahikian
- Bob Marcus
- Dave Nielsen

CloudCamp Seattle 2.28.2009 Sponsors:
MOSSO - the rackspace cloud
Microsoft - Windows Azure
RightScale
IOActive
Amazon Web Services
Skytap
Fenwick West USA
Seattle 2.0
Sun Microsystems
prgrammableweb
workhabit


This was the 14th CloudCamp...and 20 more events are scheduled in the future. Today there were about 200 attendees for the Seattle event. The 1st CloudCamp event was held at Microsoft, San Francisco, and had 350 attendees.

The Lightning Talks foll wed (5 minute presentations by representatives of a few of the sponsors):

Jeff Barr
Senior Manager, Cloud Computing Solutions
Amazon Web services


James Conard
Sr. Director, Azure Services Platform
Developer & Platform Evangelism
Microsoft Corporation


Matt Tanase
Slicehost Cofounder
(now part of Rackspace)


Dan Kaminsky
Director of Penetration Testing
IOActive, Inc.


Dean Derrickx
RightScale




Dave Nielsen's talk: What is Cloud Computing?

What is cloud computing session #cloudcamp on TwitPic




Impressions & Thoughts:

- There is obviously a strong interest in Cloud Computing among the attendees.

- Suggestion: Perhaps it would be better if the conference agenda post-it schedule was hung outside of the main meeting room - so that it is available for viewing at all times - without interrupting a meeting in the main room.

- Jam-packing the conference with vendor demos would actually be very, very, very nice...perhaps at least until the attendees / community have enough Cloud Computing experience to share actual implementation experiences (for the break-out session topics that I attended, just a very few of the attendees had Cloud Computing stories / experiences to share).

- In lieu of vendor demos - perhap just a few detailed case studies to review and discuss would be very helpful to facilitate discussions. (AWS Case Studies)

- great food

- good venue

- sound system was good

- having everything streaming live over the internet is going to take some getting used to...




Even though there may be valid business concerns about the risks associated with performance or business continuity by moving core infrastructure to a Cloud vendor platform - the alternative for most organizations - of continuing to struggle to barely meet their IT objectives with increasingly constrained budgets for resources, hardware, and software - is untenable.

There are very compelling arguments for every organization to initiate a Cloud Computing pilot project this year.

  • IT Budgets are getting compressed, slashed, decimated

  • IT Resources are getting cut, or being asked to do more with less

  • IT Departments are going to have to do more, with less - and they'll be asked to do it faster.

  • IT Operation staff's will be even more challenged to keep up with the manaing, supporting, and deploying newer technologies



Leveraging the investments of a Cloud vendor's platform / infrastructure / technology is the only logical way to meet these challenges...by off-loading and sharing that burden across a subscriber base.




A few links that I think might be of interest to others interested in Cloud Computing:

Wikipedia article on Globus Alliance

GlobusConsortium.org

Globus Toolkit

Open Grid Forum (ogf.org)

IBM Grid computing

Towards a lightweight generic computational grid framework for biological research

Above the
Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing
Michael Armbrust
Armando Fox
Rean Griffith
Anthony D. Joseph
Randy H. Katz
Andrew Konwinski
Gunho Lee
David A. Patterson
Ariel Rabkin
Ion Stoica
Matei Zaharia

Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
University of California at Berkeley

Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2009-28
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-28.html
February 10, 2009

Amazon AWS Public Data Sets

Friday, February 27, 2009

2009-02-27 Friday - CloudCamp Seattle (Feb 28th)

I will attend CloudCamp Seattle 2.28.2009 tomrrow:
"CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions. At CloudCamp, you are encouraged you to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing. End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to participate."

register

CloudCamp Seattle Wiki

Saturday, February 21, 2009

2009-02-21 Saturday - Cloud Architecture Articles

A recent Infoq article: Cloud Architectures Are Not Fully Thought Out Yet

Todd Hoff's articles on highscalability.com


Developer.AmazonWebServices.com:

2009-02-21 Saturday - Architecture Frameworks

Wikipedia has a nice summary of the Zachman Framework

Scott Ambler has some interesting articles:





TOGAF

TOGAF™ Version 9 -- The Open Group Architecture Framework

The OpenGroup.org web site has an interesting article: TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM) to the Zachman Framework (from TOGAF 8)




Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF)

wikipedia: The Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF)

Assistant Secretary of Defense (Networks & Information Integration), DoD Chief Informaiton Officer


DoD Architecture Framework Version 1.5:


Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA)


Department of Defense Enterprise Architecture Transition Strategy Version 2.0, 29 February 2008 Prepared by the DoD CIO Enterprise Architecture Congruence Community of Practice

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

2009-02-17 Tuesday - Craftsmanship and Ethics

Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) gave a presentation at JAOO (European developer conference on software technology): Craftsmanship and Ethics

Excellent presentation.

A very entertaining speaker - and a very motivating talk.

There was a recent exchange between Spolsky vs Uncle Bob. For the record - I agree with Bob's perspective. The sentiment that resonates with me is that the intent is to strive for continuous improvement.

Friday, February 13, 2009

2009-02-13 Friday - SOA - Minimum Hardware & Software Requirements?

A question was asked on it.toolbox.com recently


"SOA - Minimum Hardware & Software Requirements?"


That's sort of like telling an architect "Build me a house".

Here's my response, by way of analogy, framing the response from the perspective of an architect being asked to build a house:

Do you need a 1-story, 2-story, or are you looking for something along the lines of Trump Towers?

Do you want a dirt drive-way, gravel, paved, or do you need a parking garage for all of your cars?

If more than 1-story, do you want to use a ladder, stairs, or an elevator?

Of course, when someone says "house" - they may have failed to mention that they also wanted parking for an RV, a garage, a fenced back yard for the dog, and a storage building.

How many bedrooms?

How many bathrooms?

How many doors?

How many windows?

Does the home have frequent guests? Do they need a small, or large, dining room? Or is it for a single bachelor that just stays home and plays WoW?

How much water / sewage will the plumbing need to handle?

Will this house need to have an alternate power supply?

Is there a requirement for alternate forms of heating / cooling to ensure they don't freeze / bake in the winter / summer?

Are there any ordinances that govern what can be built, how it must be built? Are these ordinances covered by multiple jurisdictions? (home owners association, city, county, state, federal)?

What materials should be used to build the house?

Does it need to be aesthetically pleasing? Or does the buyer think an ugly mud hut on the corner would be just fine?

Your Friendly Architect...

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

2009-02-11 Wednesday - LDAP Integration Research

I'm wearing multiple hats on a current client engagement - one of which includes integrating several Open Source tools that are used by the Enterprise Architecture team I'm mentoring.

One of those tools is FlySpray - which as of the current release (0.9.9.5.1) does not support integration with LDAP.

A user of FlySpray submitted a bit of PHP code to the FlySpray development team that appears to provide LDAP integration capabilities...however, my client's environment appears to have some subtle difference that may require some tweaking of the code.

Here are a few useful LDAP references and tutorials:

Rutgers University lecture: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

An LDAP Roadmap & FAQ

bind9.net LDAP Howto, LDAP Links, LDAP Whitepapers

Sun JNDI Tutorial: Tips for LDAP Users

OpenESB LDAP Tutorial





OpenLDAP Resources

OpenLDAP.org

OpenLDAP Software 2.3 Administrator's Guide

YoLinux LDAP Tutorial: Deploying OpenLDAP




tutorialpoint.com Ruby/LDAP Tutorial





codehaus.org AcegiSecurity Plugin - LDAP Tutorial

grails.org AcegiSecurity Plugin - LDAP Tutorial




mozzila.org RFC Standards and Documents

LDAPman.org RFC Page

Graham Barr > perl-ldap > Net::LDAP::RFC

RFC 2251

Saturday, February 07, 2009

2009-02-07 Saturday - Eclipse Financial Platform

A new Eclipse project has been proposed: Financial Platform.

Given my previous experience leading the design and development of commercial software in the banking and financial services sector, I am intrigued by their vision / goals.

Monday, February 02, 2009

2009-02-02 Monday - Univ. WA Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

http://bschool.washington.edu/cie/springboard.shtml
Foster School of Business

On March 2, 2009 the UW’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship will host Springboard, an annual evening networking event designed to bring the founders/CEOs of Seattle’s dynamic early-stage companies together with entrepreneurial students at the University of Washington. Springboard brings these two groups together in an informal setting to network, talk, and gather information.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

2009-02-01 Sunday - Reading New SOA Governance Book

I received a copy of the new IBM Press book from Pearson Education over the weekend: SOA Governance, Achieving and Sustaining Business and IT Agility, by William A. Brown, Robert G. Laird, Clive Gee, Tilak Mitra.





I will publish a review of this book in the near future...



Here's the chapter outline:

Introduction: A Services Approach

Chapter 1: Introduction to Governance

Chapter 2: SOA Governance Assessment and Planning

Chapter 3: Building the Service Factory

Chapter 4: Governing the Service Factory

Chapter 5: Implementing the SOA Governance Model

Chapter 6: Managing the Service Lifecycle

Chapter 7: Governance Vitality

Chapter 8: SOA Governance Case Study

Appendix A: Glossary

Appendix B: References

As I did a quick read through the book, I was interested in learning about the background of the authors, and came across the following links that may be of interest:

books.google.com has a preview avaialble of Executing SOA, A Practical Guide for the Service-Oriented Architect, by Norbert Bieberstein, Robert G. Laird, Dr. Keith Jones, and Tilak Mitra.

Executing SOA: An Interview with Robert Laird and Tilak Mitra




While I have not yet read Todd Biske's book on SOA Governance, I have been an avid reader of his blog writing, and I would say that his thoughts on SOA Governance are more in line with what seems practical to my way of thinking.

Todd's book has two additional points of merit that should be given weight:

1) The publisher is Packt Publishing - known for producing some excellent titles in recent years.

2) David Linthicum's review of the book on Amazon.com



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