In this issue...

Watch Previous Presentations

Upcoming Webinar

Blogs

Chapter News

The IASA Insider

July 6, 2010

Dear SoCal IASA Chapter Members,

Many new and exciting things have been happening at IASA this year. We have already held 3 successful ITARCs, Launched 4 new chapters, and had Microsoft's MCA migrate to IASA's very own CITA-P. Check out some of what we have been up to below!

Paul T. Preiss

Webinar

Urban and Information Architectures: A Cross Disciplinary Approach to Complexity

July 15, 2010
10:00 -11:30 AM CST
Register Now

IASA World Summit 2010
New York

22-24 September 2010

View Agenda

Register Now

Join Our Mailing List!

Total Service Cost- A Metric for Comparing Cloud Computing Alternatives
J.P. Morgenthal, QinetiQ North America

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), Return on Investment (ROI) and CapEx/OpEx calculations are inferior methods of calculating the value of a Cloud investment. Regardless of the reason for your interest in Cloud Computing, identifying the cost and value of the decision is an important element for any business. TSC provides the means of helping businesses understand the value of different alternatives by exploiting a foundation of service orientation.

JP Morgenthal works as a senior principal architect with QinetiQ North America's Mission Systems Group providing enterprise and SOA architecture guidance for federal civilian agencies and an independent analyst for jpmorgenthal.com. Prior to joining QinetiQ NA, JP founded Avorcor where he developed a SOA-based Enterprise retail/manufacturing Platform as a service PaaS that has been the foundation of three award-winning industry solutions for customers. Morgenthal is also author of Enterprise Information Integration: A Pragmatic Approach, which defines a methodology for using SOA and semantics to simplify integration.

View Now

Building Metrics Into Enterprise Systems Models
Dirk A. Zwemer, InterCAX LLC

Parametrics , a key component of SysML (Systems Engineering Modeling Language), offers the ability to build performance metrics into enterprise systems models. Simulation, trade studies, and requirements verification can be performed by direct calculation or by orchestration of existing software tools. Examples from logistics, finance, healthcare and infrastructure are presented.

Dr. Dirk Zwemer is President of InterCAX LLC, an Atlanta-based company that has pioneered knowledge-based methods for modeling & simulation, standards-based product lifecycle management (PLM) frameworks, and knowledge representations that enable complex system interoperability. He has over thirty years industry experience with Bell Labs, Exxon, ITT, and SRI Consulting. Prior to joining InterCAX, he held positions as VP Technology, VP Operations, and President of AkroMetrix LLC, a leader in mechanical test equipment and services for the global electronics industry. He received a PhD in Chemical Physics from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

View Now

Previous Webinar:
Education Series: Education, Certification and Why They Matter
Webinar from Paul Preiss, IASA Founder and CEO

Are you wondering what certifications exist and how they relate to one another? Do you think it's possible to certify architects at all? Are you considering the possible impact of certification to your career? Or maybe you are just wondering how to improve your skills as an architect. Ever wonder what a Business Architect and a Software Architect have in common?

In this webinar IASA will review the nature and positioning of certification for architects. We will cover the existing certifications and their structure as well as describe the research that led up to the IASA recommended education program. We will cover Foundation, Associate, Internships and Board Certification alongside the skill set and specialization for the profession.

View Now



Want to view more webinars? Full IASA Members can find more in our Webcast Archives.

Upcoming Webinar:
Urban and Information Architectures: A Cross Disciplinary Approach to Complexity
Roger Sessions and Nikos Salingaros

Thursday, July 15
10 am CST

How do you manage the complexity of large systems? Complexity management is a common problem for both large urban architectures and large information architectures. Architectural complexity in both disciplines is driven by similar mathematical principles which define the relationship between complex systems (which are difficult to manage and understand) and simpler systems (which are easily graspable.) IT architects can learn to design much better and simpler IT systems by studying the basic design principles of urban architecture.

In this Webinar, Roger Sessions (IT Complexity Expert) and Nikos Salingaros (Urban Complexity Expert) explore the common problem of complexity as it impacts both IT and urban architectures and discuss the critical lessons each discipline can learn from the other.

Register Now

Now That Is Architecture
Today's Preiss Technology Award

Like everybody, from time to time, we order pizza for a Friday night movie. We were in the habit of ordering from pizza hut because my wife likes the crust and I like the chicken wings. But one night we decided to try something new. Yes I am aware that going to another major pizza chain does not constitute 'new' per se. Anyway we got on the Domino's website. As we were ordering we were reasonably impressed with the pizza ordering features which were easy to use and clear. There were a lot of cool gizmos and having created dozens of online stores in my career I was impressed with things like the up-sell capability and the coupon integration (those are tremendously hard to keep track of and current).

And while all of that was a reasonable sound and good technology strategy, it wasn't until we got to the order status component that the Domino's architects really hit it out of the park. Take a look.




What you have here is an order tracking UI component. But there are some subtle pieces that litterally have my family going back for more pizza (just to watch it move). First it updates in real time with no page refreshes which allows you to sit back and watch your order come to you. That alone is a refreshing change given that on Friday nights some chains take over an hour to reach you. But most important is the very small line of text right at the bottom. If you cant read it, it says,"Jennifer double-checked your order for perfection at 8:30 pm."

Wow. My 10 year old thought this was so cool she wanted to order another pizza immediately just to see if somebody else was going to cook it. It was like watch sushi chefs make your sushi right in front of you somehow. Of course being a natural skeptic (not really as Im generally very gullible, but technology is a special case for me) I figured Jennifer was like one of those computer answering systems with a name. Or maybe some programmer liked to call the system Jennifer or some such to remind him of his girlfriend. But when the name changed to the name of the delivery guy I started to wonder. So when the delivery person brought the pizza I quizzed him a bit.

Read More

This Week's Featured Book Review:
Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises
Tom Hope, The Angry Architect

The book starts with a tight lightweight, but perhaps a little pessimistic introduction to the current EA landscape. But there is no arguing with its key point. That it is managing the complexity caused by moving from an abstract design to the implementation of a physical system that is the major challenge.

As its title suggests this is a very pragmatic work. The first chapter draws together some of the business issues that will influence an architectural design. Here Sessions does a better than average job at summarizing the big business issues that should shape your EA. All too often this sort of detail is overlooked by theoretically orientated works. However, this is also the kind of content that can date a book really quickly, but that's the price you pay for being specific. The author covers off the Zachman framework, TOGAF and FEA in less than 20 pages and there aren't that many words on a page in this book.

The book then gets stuck into what I think is its most useful contribution. Complexity, with about 50 pages of pretty good layman's (as in designed for) explanation of complexity backed up with some math, history and psychology all delivered in a light easy read style. I'd recommend these two chapters to any architect its the things we need to be reminded of from time to time, delivered painlessly.

The second part of the book is literally the quest for simplification. We get about 80 pages out of a total @180 that cover techniques as the author lays out a divide and conqueror strategy based on Autonomous Business Capabilities (ABCs), Enterprise Partitions, a set of patterns and a methodology called SIP (Simple Iterative Partitions). Supported by a typical fictional case study.

Chapter 7 introduces the Software Fortress, which looks to me pretty much like re badged modularity on ACID. I'm not sure why it's here. I also noticed how SOA (Whatever that is? Fair point) got such short shrift? (Because its IBM?) I was left a little puzzled. But, by then I'd had my monies worth and was happy and it hadn't been a hard read. I have no doubt that this approach will work, but I am left wondering how well it would work at the big end of town, in the very complex enterprises.

This is not a book to start your collection with and it's not for managers. It is however, fortresses aside, worth a spot on your bookshelf. From where you should take it down every six months and read chapters 2 and 3 out a loud.


Sessions, Rodger (2008), Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises, Microsoft Press, Redmond

ISBN 13 978-0-7356-2578-5


More from The Angry Architect

IASA Italy Launches
Telecom Italia conference in the morning, Chapter launch in the evening

June 9, 2010 IASA Italy had a FULL DAY in Bologna. In the chapter leaders morning were invited by Telecom Italia to talk about IASA during their conference (in Bologna)  dedicated to start-ups,  IT Consultants and architects.

They had the opportunity to talk in front of more than 400 people about our mission and the importance to define the IT architecture profession in Italy with a WW coherent vision.



In the afternoon, they held their first Italian chapter meeting.
They found an incredible interest in IASA and its activities (for example, 30 minutes before opening the registration they had 30 people already in the room that wanted to meet them...)

They started describing the IASA Global organization and the Italian chapter. Then moved to ITABOK and the role of the architect in the WW market and Italian market. The hope to have foundation courses in Italy is very high and chapter leaders are very confident to plan a course before the end of the year with a IASA Global teacher!

Then they moved to more architectural sessions with Andrea and Roberto.

Then the meeting closed out with a social event with pizza, beer and soft drinks.

What attendees said:

"Fantastic event, great content!! I will follow you!"
"ITABOK rocks"
"Fantastic! but... is it real?"
"Thank you  guys... today I saw the light for my career"
"It's very important to have this kind of offline events... thanks"

You can View the Presentation