Hello,
I am a Solution Architect working on the CRM (Siebel) platform. I had interested in learning about SOA and its implementation and had hope to clarify lot of my queries with this summit. I am writing upon some of the talks in the Summit that impressed me a lot and also helped me building up my knowledge on the same. The venue of this summit was at the prestigious Indian Institute of Science (IISc) campus at Bangalore.
Many of the delegates had come in early around 7:45am (probably to find a car parking). I ensured that I got a proper parking near to the gate so that I can leave early after the summit. At around 8:20 AM, more delegates starting streaming. We all were allowed to enter the venue for registration. I got my ID card, laptop bag along with the meal coupons and brochures. My colleugue and his friend were also along with me. We were among the early birds and felt very excited to enter the summit hall. We went straight to the main hall where everyone was supposed to come. We ensured that we took the front most seats to have a better concentration on the topic of presentation. Before the commencement of the first presentation, we were busy marking the focussed session taking place in the next 2 days. Since all three of us were interested in SOA, we ensured that the sessions that we marked were related to SOA.
The welcome address took place at around 9:00 AM and commencement with the introduction of Howard Charney. Howard Charney is a member of Cisco's office of the President and Executive Staff, reporting directly to the CEO John Chambers.
Smart Services, Bright Future - Howard Charney
Howard started the talk with an example of Carlota Perez Model. According to her, the centers of power had the following sequence: -
1. Industrial Revolution, 2. Steam and Railway, 3. Steel, 4. Oil and Automobile and 5. IT & Internet
UK had led the Industrial revolution and the steam & railway revolution. US took the control by concentrating on Steel, oil and automobile. UK and US had ruled the world. Now is it the age of IT and Internet. Can somebody start take control of the IT and internet revolution. It an be anyone even India if right direction is taken. Why can't India become a super power. It has a vibrant democracy, world class engineering and there is great R&D focus happening in India. It is a matter of Innovation and Collaboration. For achieving this, the critical factors are: 1. Proper Infrastructure and 2. Smart transportation.
1. Infrastructure: - The population is becoming increasingly urban. To support the increasingly growing urban population, the infrastructure has to be proper. According to one of the reports, it would take about $40 trillion till 2025 to have an acceptable infrastructure. Though there is lot of efforts being done to improve the literacy in India, it might not be enough. For this, India should have proper internet network because IT may be next revolution. Leaving aside the internet bubble and the financial bubble burst, it is the time to gear up for the future. An example of smart grid technology which works on the appropriate requirement of energy required by a household. Another example is the bridge (on I-35W) in Minneapolis that collapsed a couple of years ago. There is an idea to build a smart bridge would sense the actual weight of the vehicles, sense the weather conditions and with every kind of smartness that a bridge can have.
2. Smart Transportation: - As compared to any country in the world, Singapore is best country that could manage the traffic so well. There should be increasing thrust on having better transportation.
Since the survey in 1830 till now, India has always been an economic super power and has been ranked in the Top 10 countries in the world. It is the right time for India to take notice of these things and take advantage of this chance. Even the 2009 Nobel prize for Economics has been awarded to 2 social scientists named George Akerlof and Robert Shiller. This shows increasing concentration on social aspects.
The mantra according to Charles Darwin is 'Adapt or Go Extinct'. It is all about Adaptation. There was also talk about Computer Telepathy and Computer Hologram. These kind of technologies would consume all the internet bandwidth. It is very much required that the countries gear up for the same.
Finally, Howard ended his presentation with the note that the next big thing is 'INNOVATION'.
Wow, what a way to start a day. A terrific presentation by Howard which has set the ball rolling.
Give Cloud a Chance - Ramkumar Kothandaraman
Ramkumar is currently working with Microsoft managing a team of architects who help customers envision, architect and build solutions on top of Microsoft platform. His talk consisted of various cloud computing models followed by various economics behind the implementation, presenting the scenarios of opportunities for adoption and finally ending the talk with a call to action.
Wow, I thought that this talk is going to cut the ribbon on Cloud Computing which has been a mystery to me until now. He started with the definition of Cloud Computing which is as follows: -
Applications and Infrastructure over Internet
This small definition explains it all about cloud computing.
The application over internet is known as Saas (Software as a service). The pay as you go hardware and software is called Utility Computing
Aspects of Cloud Computing
1. Computer services on demand
2. No upfront commitment
3. Pay for use for short term
He talked extensively about various like the Amazon, Google and Windows Azure. He talked about how Windows Azure along with SQL Azure and .Net services is set as part of an infrastrucure for Cloud Computing. This was a great talk by Ramkumar. I pretty much got an idea about what Cloud Computing is.
SOA, Composite Applications, and Cloud Computing: Three Pillars of a Modern Technology Solution - Robert Schneider
After 2 keynote session, the first focussed session talking about the SOA is this talk presented by Robert. Robert is a Principal at Think88 Ventures, LLC who is an expert global talent and an expert in a wide variety of disciplines.
The talk started with the definition of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture): -
1. Business Driven
2. Vendor agnostic
3. Enterprise centric
4. Composition centric
The differences of the aspects of all these 3 technologies is as below: -
A. SOA
a. Strategic or Tactical - Strategic
b. Scope - Departmental or organization wide
c. Purchased/Chosen By - BAs, IT Architects with mainline business users and IT
d. Speed to deploy - Slow
e. Technical skills - High
f. Market penetration - Low
g. Speed to ROI - Slow
h. Eventual Total ROI - High
i. Expected logevity - Long
j. Standard-based - High
k. Maturity of Vision - Relatively new
B. Cloud Computing
a. Strategic or Tactical - Both
b. Scope - Departmental
c. Purchased/Chosen By - Business users with IT
d. Speed to deploy - Very fast
e. Technical skills - Low
f. Market penetration - Medium
g. Speed to ROI - Relatively fast
h. Eventual Total ROI - Medium
i. Expected logevity - Medium
j. Standard-based - Somewhat
k. Maturity of Vision - Relatively mature
C. Composite Applications
a. Strategic or Tactical - Tactical (generally)
b. Scope - Departmental
c. Purchased/Chosen By - Mainline IT with business users
d. Speed to deploy - Relatively fast
e. Technical skills - Medium
f. Market penetration - Low
g. Speed to ROI - Very fast
h. Eventual Total ROI - Low
i. Expected logevity - Short
j. Standard-based - Low
k. Maturity of Vision - Very new
Now this is a terrific representation of 3 different technologies and would give anybody a good idea about various aspects of these technologies.
Succeeding with SOA - Eben Hewitt
Here comes another talk on SOA with a real life practical example of Eben. Eben Hewitt is a software architect at a multi-billion dollar retail company, where he focusses on designing their SOA and architecting large scale applications for their web and desktop.
He talked about his approach for implementing SOA in the following manner: -
1. Start with well-defined business initiative and outcome
2. Deliver architecture and pilot services concurrently
3. Work within the COE
4. Integrate, Communicate and Educate
The project was implemented in 3-stage plan: -
A. Services
a. Platform
b. Tools
c. BUS
d. Services
e. Data Services
B. Infrastructure
a. Registry/Repository
b. Composites
c. Business Process Modelling
C. Governance
a. RT Monitoring
b. Enforcement
c. Process
He did throw light on some his consideration of the design patterns like Russian Doll, Salami slice, Venetian blind and the Garden of Eden. He implemented the combination of the Salami slice and the Garden of Eden due to various project considerations. He talked about the orchestration tools that he implemented and why. He did mention about the importance of SOA governance which enforces organization policies and standards at the strategic as well a the technical level
With all the above steps and processess, the implementation for a practitioner becomes very simple. It indeed was a great practical implementation.
Software + Services: The Technical Landscape - Sachin Vinod Rathi
Another great talk was delivered by Sachin Vinod Rathi. He is an Architect Advisor with Microsoft India. He talked a great deal of the importance of Software in combination with the services with some great examples like the Photosynth, The Bristish Library site, the new MS Outlook and the Eve Online. He also talked about the various technologies that were a sensation during those times as given below: -
1980 - RPC (Remote Procedure Calls)
1990 - COM, DCOM, RMI
2000 - SOAP
2005 - SOA
2010 - Software + Services (in future)
Ten Strategies for overcoming technological impact of SOA Governance - Robert Schneider
Robert delivered another great presentation which stresses upon the importance of SOA Governance. The following things needed to take care when SOA Governance is implemented: -
1. Include governance technology
2. Ensure governance platform is agnostic
3. Ensure governance platform is able to support all service deployment
4. Recognize the importance of testing
5. Collect importance governance-related metrics and review them regularly
6. Track activity through multiple IT resource layers
7. Break down barriers between repositories and registries
8. Write a format RFP for selecting a technological product
9. Avoid tools that require code modifications
10. SOA governance tool fits in the existing IT landscape
He talked about various tools that can be used for SOA governance like the following: -
1. Wikis,
2. Spreadsheets
3. Emails
4. Word of mouth and
5. None of the above
10 things that Software Architect Should Know - Eben Hewitt
A great and impressive presentation by Eben the excerpts of which were taken from a popular book for which he had contributed some of his important thoughts. The following are the things that are important for a Software Architect: -
1. Don't be a tech bigot
2. Importance of Consomme' (Requirements)
3. Promote Context, discourage meaning: "I'm just saying ..." rule
4. Establish and publish architectural principles
5. Programmer as a philosopher, Be a philosopher
6. Write clueless APIs
7. If IT doesn't deliver, the business will go around them
8. All fields are green. All fields are brown
9. You are usually moving the problem. Move it somewhere you like better
10. Quality is a feature
11. Don't be a problem solver
Wow, what good points to be remembered by an Architect. This definitely made an impact on my thought process.
Apart from all these presentation there were other presentations which were good but do not find a mention here. I have just described the presentations which impacted me a lot.
Overall the summit was a great personal success and I do hope that the organizers would have also felt the same. I won't forget to mention the giveaways provided the summit like the laptop bag, T-shirt and ofcourse some great prizes like the Apple i-phone (though I didn't win it inspite of providing some good feedback) and technical books. Well there is always a next time. I will ensure that I would attend all the 'BT Summit' taking place every year.
Thank You
Yashovardhan Rao Mopur
