The social network browser. The skin has buttons for facebook, twitter et al. What about mobile devices?
Converged Compute Platforms
Recently I had an opportunity to visit Forsythe Technology Evaluation Center in Skokie, IL. A fabulous facility, a technologist's playground. Equipment from who's who of IT space, which Forsythe maintains and allows its clients to assess before making a decision. I belive the model is neat - companies evaluating technology options can come to the data center, present their test matrix to Forsythe, which configures the test lab, and runs the test. No waiting for the equipment to show up at your own lab, commissioning, configuration, and decommissioning. Think about cost of opportunity savings in reaching a quick decision. Forsythe can help companies with storage, servers, security, network, backup and recovery applications etc.
Strong User Authentication on the Web
A great article addressing authentication challenges on web and especially cloud.
Enterprise Information Architecture
Information is the asset that enterprises harness for creating competitive differentiation.
The development of an EIA should be managed as a formal program by an Enterprise Information Architecture Department with strong participation of business users and clear accountability measures for its success. The EIA must provide the flexibility to accommodate the changes that result from the changing business environment in the organization; consequently, the enterprise information architect plays a key role as an agent of change.
- The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture: A Systems-Based Approach for Unlocking Business Insight
The development of an EIA should be managed as a formal program by an Enterprise Information Architecture Department with strong participation of business users and clear accountability measures for its success. The EIA must provide the flexibility to accommodate the changes that result from the changing business environment in the organization; consequently, the enterprise information architect plays a key role as an agent of change.
- The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture: A Systems-Based Approach for Unlocking Business Insight
Enterprise Architecture Imperatives
Recently I read "The art of enterprise information architecture: A systems based approach for unlocking business insight". There is a trend that most progressive companies are going through for defining their strategies for enterprise architecture. Enterprise architecture is tossed around so much, that it makes sense that before getting into a meaningful conversation to settle on a common meaning of what is this role and what are its competencies. IT focus though correct but as can be imagined is not complete. Earlier focus of architecture was typically make IT efficient, and standardized which are good goals but mean very little to business. IT doesn't define complete enterprise.
Rule of 80 / 20
Pareto's popular theory holds true.
80 percent time spent on 20 percent problems
20 percent time spent on things that would generate 80 percent problems
20 percent employees would produce 80 percent results
80 percent time would be spent with 20 percent of employees who need attention
80 percent time would be spent on things that generate 20 percent results
It is not a bad thing, it is just a statistical reality. What it misses though is the dimension of quality. In organizations that are working on continuous improvement Pareto the "causes" and address them. Once addressed they seek the next top issues.
So don't get disheartened by this number - act on it.
80 percent time spent on 20 percent problems
20 percent time spent on things that would generate 80 percent problems
20 percent employees would produce 80 percent results
80 percent time would be spent with 20 percent of employees who need attention
80 percent time would be spent on things that generate 20 percent results
It is not a bad thing, it is just a statistical reality. What it misses though is the dimension of quality. In organizations that are working on continuous improvement Pareto the "causes" and address them. Once addressed they seek the next top issues.
So don't get disheartened by this number - act on it.
Cloud Computing
Companies can have private clouds if they can provide elasticity, accountability and economies of scale. The challenge is not technical as much as it is financial. Companies can choose to invest in large scale infrastructure deployments to create an infinitely elastic environment - but wait before you do that, what is the cost of doing that? Servers are getting cheapers, hard disks are getting cheaper too, but to deliver a robust compute environment infrastructure one can't ignore the performance and availability attributes. There is where the cost of $ / CPU gets multiplied and $ / GBytes plays a smaller role than $ / IOPS (in a strict infrastructure sense). NetApp, EMC, IBM XIV, 3PAR, HP, provide great solutions for cloud computing, and I would recommending checking their offerings. VMWare has definitely given the organizations the capabilities to think about private clouds. I developed the roadmap for taking a compute infrastructure to private cloud (Infrastructure as a service) in 12 months (post a comment if interested).
Infrastructure is but just one component of the architecture, to implement an application in the cloud, all architecture layers have to be in congruence, starting from enterprise layer all the way to the infrastructure layer. The supporting services need to glue the stack. Risk, compliance, data migration need to be addressed as well. The good (or bad for some) thing is that these issues are addressable at technically, 2010 has seen several technologies that are addressing these quite cheaply also.
The application development groups should adopt practices that would enable applications for the cloud using SOA architecture, office productivity applications like email are easy to move to the cloud (gmail anyone? per seat cost for gmail is way too affordable to pass up). Windows live and google docs, are great examples where companies can move several functions to the cloud, diverting resources to other higher value add tasks.
Infrastructure is but just one component of the architecture, to implement an application in the cloud, all architecture layers have to be in congruence, starting from enterprise layer all the way to the infrastructure layer. The supporting services need to glue the stack. Risk, compliance, data migration need to be addressed as well. The good (or bad for some) thing is that these issues are addressable at technically, 2010 has seen several technologies that are addressing these quite cheaply also.
The application development groups should adopt practices that would enable applications for the cloud using SOA architecture, office productivity applications like email are easy to move to the cloud (gmail anyone? per seat cost for gmail is way too affordable to pass up). Windows live and google docs, are great examples where companies can move several functions to the cloud, diverting resources to other higher value add tasks.
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