Cloud computing is definitely starting to grow up. There is already a very competitive market, and vendors are continually refining both the technology and business aspects of their offering. Most vendors are trying to convince their customers that everything must move to the cloud, and that the local datacenter is either dead, or relegated to managing local print servers and bandwidth. I agree that... Read more...

When is the last time you intentionally unplugged a live, production server? Better still, when is the last time you intentionally unplugged a rack of live, production servers? I can think of a couple of reasons why the answer might be "never." Your installation has no redundancy or very low redundancy. This is a legitimate decision whenlow prices are considered more important than high availability... Read more...

This quarter Microsoft's ArcReady events will be on "Architecting for the Cloud." March 5, 2009 - St Louis, MO - Register March 9, 2009 - Downers Grove, IL - Register March 10, 2009 - Austin, TX - Register March 10, 2009 - Knoxville, TN - Register March 10, 2009 - Overland Park, KS - Register March 12, 2009 - Indianapolis, IN - Register March 13, 2009 - Nashville, TN - Register March 19,... Read more...

In my previous article , we discussed the opportunities for Smart Client development in the enterprise, enabled by the registry-less run style of managed code. In this article, we will flush out the details necessary to successfully deploy a managed Smart Client application. Click Once Deployment One choice for deploying Smart Client applications is Click Once Deployment. This enables your entire application... Read more...

As the economic downturn begins to have tangible consequences, IT executives have turned their eyes towards reducing costs within their organizations. Whenever there is an attempt at the executive level to control costs, the primary targets tend to be hardware replacement projects, non-strategic business projects and IT specific discretionary spending. Enterprise Architecture initiatives typically... Read more...

Philippe Destoop (Architect MSFT) reviews the Forrester report: Inquiry Spotlight: Developing Architects, Q2 2009

"Whether you're an architect yourself or you have architects reporting to you, you've probably wondered: What does it take to be an architect? We analyzed more than 60 inquiry questions from Forrester clients related to the topic of the architect's role and found..."

http://blogs.msdn.com/architectsrule/archive/2009/07/01/the-architect-profession-according-to-forrester.aspx

 

Two students from Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis are performing a research study focusing on the usage of Design Patterns as they relate to multiple language usage in software development.  It's a simple eight question survey that will take less than two minutes of your time and will help these students in their research.

Please take the survey.

http://vimeo.com/5022174

 

Udi Dahan brings real-world experiences to this discussion on SOA

 

"Microsoft's Strategy and Architecture Council recently presented a three-part series called Pragmatic Patterns for Architects:

Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz again takes on the topic of CRUD and REST

"In one of my previous posts (Rest: good, bad and ugly), I made a passing comment, about how I think using CRUD in RESTful service  is a bad practice. I received a few comments / questions asking why do I say that – so what’s wrong with CRUD and REST?

On the surface, it seems like a very good fit (both technically and architecturally), however scratch that surface, and you’d see  that it isn’t a good fit for either."

http://www.rgoarchitects.com/nblog/2009/06/23/CRUDIsBadForREST.aspx

 

nPlus1.org is hosting its fourth Architecture Summit on July 31st at the Microsoft office in Detroit, MI (Southfield). The topic of this summit will be Patterns and Principles.

Session One: Software Patterns
Patterns are an important tool to use as architects and developers. They provide a common vocabulary for us to design with, as well as a common approach to a common problem. Come learn about useful patterns, and how to use them in your everyday code.
 

Session Two: How I Learned To Love Dependency Injection
Dependency Injection is one of those scary topics that most developers avoid. It sounds all ‘high-falootin’ and complex. It’s not. Really. We wouldn’t lie. It’s a great way to manage complexity in your system, and a great way to make your system so much more testable. And isn’t that what we all want?

Each session will be followed by open discussions periods.

A catered lunch will be provided starting at noon when the welcome time begins.

Register at: https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=139245