As with my other posts these are just some thoughts.
Flexibility comes from having modules/systems/solution that have a limited set of dependencies. Where there are dependencies they are abstracted and well understood.
One of the huge challenges that face infrastructures is that the number of dependencies is increasing all the time. It’s one thing to talk about this issue in the application space, it’s another to talk about it down into the infrastructure. The challenge is that the infrastructure is probably changing more frequently that the applications in most businesses.
Do we have strategies for correctly sized components in the infrastructure.
The premise for this session is that as architects we are building the infrastructure for the information revolution that the generations that follow us will have to live with. This is in much the same way as we are dealing with the consequences of the decisions made by the Victorian engineers.
Good fun abstracting Victorian technology innovations and IT innovations to create a parallel – parallels that are a bit too close for comfort sometimes.
Nice session to end the day with, a session to make you think about the long-term rather than all of the short-term pressures we face every day.
One of the examples that really made sense to me was a parallel of the Tay Bridge Disaster. Basically the design was poor because they guessed a lot of things and didn’t do the maths. The build was poor and didn’t even follow the design and the maintenance was poor. Nothing like IT projects then .
Interesting session with some key thoughts about projects and teams.
Main point for me was the highlight of the role given to ‘End User Experience’. It’s something myself and Steve Richards have been talking about for a while. Nice to see it coming through so strongly in other people’s thinking.
The post-lunch sleep effect was very strong though.
Met up with Owen Simpson in the break.
We are going to be looking at some of the concepts developed by Kim Cameron.
It’s Steve Plank. Steve’ s a good presenter so this should be good.
Some thoughts:
7 Laws of Identity:
Sometimes in IT you look at things and know they are wrong, later on someone explains to you why they were wrong. This list really helps me to see why a number of identity initiatives have failed. Hopefully it will also help people to build successful ones.
This session is looking at the Service Definition Model initiative that Microsoft have been working on and starting to bring to fruition in Longhorn Server.
The Service Definition Model describes a services. Once described, this description can be applied to a server via the Longhorn role configuration infrastructure. These descriptions are also made available to MOM and SMS to finish off the story.
In conceptual terms it looks like Microsoft are finally finishing off the Windows Infrastructure configuration, management and monitoring story and moving towards towards dynamic systems.
Given that they are doing this in the infrastructure are others going to be able to compete? Will all of that expenditure in management frameworks look like a wasted investment?
Steve comments on and points to an article by Joel Spolsky.
In summary “Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected”
It links to my pieces on Intuitive Software and Common Sense. You’ll also notice that this issue appears in my post on Outlook and Notes and specifically why people struggle with the Notes client.
Notes definitely does not fit into the category of software that “behave exactly as expected” – when I double-click an attachment I want it to “Open” as an example (but apparently that’s fixed in the latest version).
But don’t get me wrong Notes is only one of many pieces of software that don’t work how I expect them to.
Why do people only use 10% of the capabilities of a piece of software – because it’s because they can’t find the other 90% .
Michael Sampon has an interesting post today on IBM’s place in the market and Notes/Domino – “IBM Needs to Get the Gloves Off”.
I agree wholeheartedly with everything that is said, but it actually demonstrates the IBM problem.
Michael makes a number of statements and asks a few questions. Let’s start with “Is Quickplace good enough and flexible enough to take on SharePoint?” That’s an interesting question because the problem with that question is that IBM has at least two answer for users who might want to move to their technology away from SharePoint.
Lack of clarity is clear when you consider Michael’s request to “Enable SharePoint sites to migrate to Notes/Domino”, well actually in a the IBM portfolio Notes/Domino might not be the right answer, it depends on what they are doing with SharePoint. The answer could be Notes/Domino; it could also be QuickPlace; it could even be any one of the multitude of WebSphere components.
The conclusion is spot on: “C’mon IBM … you’ve said that you have yellow gloves and you’re willing to take the gloves off, but … I don’t see you doing it yet.”
Tags: Notes,Domino,Quickplace,IBM,Websphere
Microsoft announces its marketing strategy to business for the 2006/2007 wave of products and it all comes under the banner of “People-Ready”.
Lots of comment on it today from others: Beta News, Microsoft Watch, Clive Watson. It’s been reasonably popular on technorati too.
For some time Microsoft have been using the phrase “People-Driven Process” in the collaboration space. So what is being a “People-Ready” Business about. Well apparently it’s about:
“The company’s [Microsoft’s] People-Ready vision is based on the belief that people are the ultimate drivers of a business’ success. A business that is People-Ready gives its people software tools that enable them to collaborate and work together globally, to contact and serve customers instantly, and to streamline and reinvent processes intuitively.”
And Microsoft is aiming to “apply its product portfolio and provide differentiated offerings to a much broader set of customer needs in the following categories”:
Which seems to me to be a list of business issues that people are constantly talking about. Whether they are all relevant to every business, I doubt.
I’ve not had chance to read all of the stuff that’s out there so I’m not in a position to talk about the technology but the marketing strikes me as both interesting and puzzling.
What does the tag line of “Inside your company is a powerful force – your people. Are they ready?” actually mean. Yes, I know these people spend millions on creating these things and that they don’t always want to answer their own question, but this one strikes me as particularly obtuse. “Are they ready?” Ready for what? Ready to go home? Ready to join a competitor? Or perhaps they really mean: Ready to do their job? Ready to work smarter?
I think the problem I have is the word “Ready”, “Ready” implies “prepared and available” and “willing”; technology can help with the “prepared and available” bit but has little at all to do with the “willing” bit. Being “willing” needs a business culture the fosters a willingness to go into action. I suppose all I am saying is everything I have said before about business process, but this time I’m going further than that into business culture.
Tags: “People-Ready”,Microsoft
The XBox team took some stick for not including HD-DVD (or Blu-ray ) in the specification of the XBox 360. It now looks like Sony is regretting not making the same decision.
The Sony PS3 is delayed by 6 months a period in which half the world (roughly) will have a birthday and the XBox 360 envy increases. OK, they manage to make the important ‘holiday season’ but they manage to give Microsoft a whole year to establish the XBox 360 as the device to own with little competition from the PS2. More than that, all of those XBox 360’s continue to get embedded into the Windows Media Center and Windows Live eco-systems. Eco-systems that some people are finding even more compelling than the ‘games’.
It’s going to be very difficult for Sony to drag all of the XBox 360 fans back.
Helps me make my mind up anyway, all I need now is the XBox 360 prices to come down a shade.
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