Migrating

Been migrating to a new MBP and its taking a surprising amount of time to move data off the old laptop and to find the apps that I want to install and use. It's been a while since I've been on the Mac platform and it's good to be back.

Some of the apps that I've been working with so far (and having some fun with) include:
- Tweetdeck
- Dropbox (pleased that I can synch across Mac and Win boxes, even virtual images)
- VirtualBox
- Skitch
- Keychain

and just getting started with Blogo and Curio. The other surprise so far is how quickly the harddrive is filling up. Apparently been getting a little sloppy with downloading various disk images and need to do some cleanup.

Lee.

Clouds, SOA and Aging

Well, I haven’t quite reached the stage of yelling at kids to get off my lawn – but I might be getting close.

I attended a session at Impact titled: “Delivering Strong Services: SOA to the Cloud” – delivered by Daryl Plummer from Gartner. Was the first time that I’ve had the chance to see Daryl in person and enjoyed his presenting and the ideas he discussed.

If you attended Impact, you can log in and download the slides – look for session 3097 (or search by the title).

I don’t plan on regurgitating the entire presentation, but did want to discuss a couple of ideas that were a part of the session.

The first is the idea of scalability versus elasticity. I’ve seen this discussed in a number of places and presentations related to Cloud solutions. When I see the reference to elasticity I think in terms of being to scale up or down as needed. I.e. the solution is able to stretch to meet the needs related to the current (and changing)workload. So I find it odd to see discussions of cloud where it is mentioned that cloud provides scalability and elasticity – seems redundant to me. Have I misinterpreted the meaning of elasticity?

More specific to the session at Impact, there was a discussion on the idea of Cloud Service Brokerages that provide service intermediation or service aggregation (for example). As I listened to the presentation my thoughts wandered to the idea of an ESB and viewing these brokerages as essentially providing ESB like services to a number of customers. The would be an EESB – an extra-ESB – and following on that line of thinking starting to see myself thinking in terms of inter, intra and extra cloud based solutions and drawing parallels to how we saw focus on internet use and capabilities evolve over the years.

And hence the aging comment – seems that after you’ve spent enough years in IT you start to relate everything back to what you’ve seen previously. So here I am, in my advanced years thinking – this cloud stuff is just repeating the cycle of thinking that we experienced in inter/intra/extra-net roll-outs. Back in my day…

Lee.

Future of Writing in a Digital World?

Came across “Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading in a Digital World” in the June issue of Wired and wanted to capture a few thoughts about the article.

As mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been working on a book on Patterns-Based Engineering for some time now. In discussions with the publisher regarding timelines, production efforts, etc – I’m hoping that the finished product sees the light of day before the end of the year. So I’m living in the current of producing a book – and wondering - how will this future view of reading change how the book gets released and then read?

Looking at the stories listed in the article, as well as other successes out there such as Cory Doctorow or even the open source movement, its fascinating/appealing/scary to think of putting a book out there digitally with no restrictions. So much effort and time goes into the writing – it’s a challenge to think of just opening it up and letting it go.

I’ve not looked at the system yet, but CommentPress sounds quite interesting as it allows a book to become much more interactive – allowing the readers to start conversations on the content of the book – with very fine grained starting points – right down to the paragraph level. (As an aside, it would be interesting to look at comparing this to the capabilities of Google Wave)

We’ll be having some discussions with our publisher about how digital copies will be made available and their plans for interactivity. At a minimum, we’re looking at setting up a site along with an associated wiki for the EPF practice that we are producing in association with the book. In the meantime, we’ve been talking to many people about the book and looking to incorporate as much feedback as possible.

I’d be interested in any comments/suggestions anyone has on how they’ve changed their authoring efforts based on the “future” of reading and some of the new offerings out there such as CommentPress.

Lee.

RSC 2009: PBE: Principles, Practice and Patterns

Here’s the ppt that Celso and I delivered at the 2009 Rational Software Conference. The content is derived from the book we are producing which will be coming out later this year. Its a brief view into the content allowing us to share the work and gather some feedback.

NSDP02d

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Books Non-fiction PBE software development

GM, Smart Cars and Smart

Attended a session today discussing software development in a smarter planet. The presenter was discussing all of the software that now ships in cars – essentially how we now have smart cars – and speculated that perhaps this was a reason GM was in its current situation. That is, they’ve struggled in production of cars that are smart - and that’s the factor behind the bankruptcy.

I have trouble with this line of reasoning – and while I’d agree that its an issue in terms of being smart – its not just the cars themselves. Instead I see it as being an issue of smarter business processes (and manufacturing, distribution, etc) – that is being a dynamic business. As we look back over the past couple of years (18 months?) the amazing volatility and changes in terms of gas prices, consumer preferences (SUVs, gas efficient models, back to SUVs?) and overall economy/finances – these all place incredible pressures on the business.

As an automobile manufacturer:Which models should be sold? How many to produce? How to deliver the innovations that customers demand? Scale up? Scale down? How could elasticity be inserted into the production process? And how do you act on these decisions in real time and with agility?

Lee.

Updates – Impact, PBE, and RSC

A quick post with some updates on a few topics. Returned from Impact about a week ago, conference went very well. Attended some very good sessions (favorite was a session on Cloud), had some time to reconnect with some friends and past acquaintances, met some new folks, and had a chance to connect with some folks that I’d only previously met over the phone.

My reward upon returning from the conference was a deadline for the PBE book that I’ve been writing. Draft of the manuscript was due on Friday – and we managed to hit the date (although it was a long day). The rough draft of the manuscript is now with the publisher and should be sent out to our review panel shortly. Anxious to hear the feedback and comments from the reviewers. In the meantime, we have some supporting artifacts (case study model, codes, patterns) and the PBE practice that need further development. So won’t be sitting about waiting on feedback – too much to do.

We will be delivering a session at the upcoming Rational Software Conference that will provide a sneak peek on content from the book. If you are attending the conference, I hope to see you at the session – and please ask questions and let us know what you think of the material. I’ll be posting the ppt from the conference here after it has been delivered.

I’m also organizing a delivery of a SOA Architect Summit at the Rational conference. We’ll be delivering the session all day on Sunday, May 31st. I’ve arranged for a great roster of speakers – and am looking forward to the delivery and networking. Should be a great educational day – and will be the first delivery with updated materials. If you’ve already registered for the conference, there is no additional charge for the summit, it is being sponsored by the WebSphere team. A note has been sent out to conference attendees with details on how to sign up – if you run into any issues, please let me know.

Lee.

Impact 2009

Impact 2009 is fast approaching, just a few weeks away at this point. The complete list of sessions is posted along with details about all of the customers that will be presenting. Customer list is amazing – with over 300 customers sharing details on their successes. I’ve been to quite a few conferences, don’t recall ever seeing so many customers presenting. Provides all of us with a great opportunity to hear about the many ways in which people have leveraged SOA to solve real world problems – along with the challenges they had to overcome along the way. What worked well? What didn’t? What unique and interesting problems did that tackle with SOA? What innovative ideas did they bring to bear? Its amazing the solutions that we come up with as real world constraints are put in place and we need to find solutions that no else has yet come up with. And what better way for us to figure out our next solution, than to learn from the experiences of others?

In this economy, having such large customer participation speaks volumes to the success that people are achieving with SOA.

In regards to the sessions, whether looking for bleeding edge, leading edge or mainstream solutions – the list of topics covered is impressive. Best practices, experts, real world experiences – covering the range of topics – SOA, Cloud, BPM, Web2.0, Mashups, REST, Governance, Reuse, Connectivity, Integration, Patterns, and the list goes on.

Also, the Tech Zones, sound like a great way to dig into the details behind SOA, CICS, Java-Web 2.0, Messaging, and Business Process Management. Meet some of the product managers, architects and other tech leaders in these areas. If you get a chance to spend some time with one of the STSMs, DEs or other technical leaders – grab it. To earn these designations within IBM, the criteria are stringent and the people that achieve these ranks are not only impressive in terms of background, but usually great people in general.

The other big attraction for me is the networking. Meeting up with some of the Tech leaders from IBM is something that I look forward to. As mentioned, they usually all not only have great insights and experiences to share, but are great people as well. And of course, I’m looking forward to meeting more of our customers. Sitting in on the customer sessions will be interesting – but it’s always a better to be able to have informal chats about what’s going on and where things are headed.

I look forward to bumping into many at the conference. At a minimum, I’ll be working the Smart Work pedestal at the Solution Center during the week. If you get a chance, stop by and say hello.

If you haven’t yet registered, better hurry, time’s running out.