Ray Ozzie kicked off the MIX keynote by talking about the fantastic new things that have happened at Microsoft in the past year that are really re-engineering the DNA at Microsft from the acquisition of Aquantitive to the fantastic internal work with Silverlight 2.0 and IE8. As an employee in the trenches, it's often hard to keep focus on that big picture and remember that the company is aggressively self critical and self correcting. Another great step we are trying to take, that Ray touched on a little bit, is acquiring Yahoo!. It's interesting, but even in the field, I've seen that just the fact that we've made an offer has had a profound effect on a lot of people and is driving us into new and interesting directions. After that, he talk about the big picture and the directions that Microsoft is going with Services and Advertising and how that fits into the big picture of our S+S message. By Services, he's talking about software services in the Cloud (internet/network) rather than consulting services.

The next huge point that he talked about is the idea of software above the level of a single device. Our users are starting to leverage intelligent devices of all types from phones to desktops to cars in every part of their lives. We need to look at how to really leverage the strengths of each of these devices and platforms.

There are 5 buckets that we can think about these services in the cloud.

1. Connected Devices
   • The vision here is that we will have applications and services that span
2. Connected Entertainment
   • The vision here is that we would only have to license our software and media once and be able to use that across all of our devices from our music player to our desktop or car. This is a great
3. Connected Productivity
   • The vision here is that we will have a seemless experience from the desktop to the mobile device to the web with Office Desktop, Office Mobile and Office Live (web based).
4. Connected Business
   • The start of the vision is a set of services from online CRM, financial services, hosted exchange, commutation services and even hosted SQL Server with an elastic type cloud supporting it. The long game is enabling utility computing in the enterprise where people will virtualize more and more of their infrastructure onsite and in the cloud.
5. Connected Development
   • We have a ton of different scenarios that we can code to with the same skill set of .NET and XAML across many different platform. That's exciting. 

Personally, I'm really excited to part of the company with an end to end vision that is as complete as the one that Ray was able to lay out today.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008 5:58:36 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [1] 

This quarter's ArcReady is coming quickly. This quarter we are talking about Software + Services (S+S). This is Ray Ozzie's vision of the future of the industry. It's a vision that encapsulates SOA, SaaS and Web 2.0 and really takes it to the next level. SOA can be how you compose, govern and control your services but it doesn't talk enough about delivery of the software to the user. SaaS is a great way to deliver software if your users are willing to rent the software. It A: doesn't work for every user base and B: doesn't address multi-headed clients where you might want a desktop client, web client and a mobile client. Web 2.0 is in the same boat. Web 2.0 can define the user's experience with RIA, collaboration, collective knowledge and more. These tenants of Web 2.0 that we discussed in the last quarter (See the video of the session posted on the ReMix07 Boston site) are engaging on a number of levels but it doesn't really address some of the enterprise concerns of security, accountability and more.

Software + Services really builds on top of all three of these ideas. Come learn more in a city near you.

For the full abstract - see http://www.arcready.com.

* means I'm speaking...
** means that we're actually doing a last quarter's Web 2.0 session followed by this quarter's Software + Services session. They go well together and I missed Louisville and Grand Rapids last quarter.

That's going to be a tough 2 weeks on the road there to be honest. 12/7 - come to my funeral as I die from Red Bull overdose. :)

Microsoft ArcReady - Downloads

Tuesday, November 06, 2007 6:26:11 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

I blogged last about Platforms verses Applications and put the statement out there that platforms beat applications every time. At least one of my readers (Alan Stevens) agrees with me. My other reader hasn't commented yet.

Alan pointed out, however, that I missed some rather important platforms that Microsoft ships. One that all of the developers in the audience (on the Microsoft technology stack so that doesn't include you Joe) probably use on a daily basis is Visual Studio. Alan posted about it in his post on VSX. He points out Visual Studio itself is just a shell and that all of the other bits that you see are simply add-ins. That shell is now available for you to leverage as you see fit in your applications. Obviously, you can write add-ins such as the Dotfuscator from Preemptive Solutions or CodeRush. What you probably didn't know is that you can build a stand alone application there that you ship independently of anything else. The cool part about that is that you have a built in extensibility model and other applications can meld with yours because you're on top of a great platform. :) Don Demsak, aka DonXML, had a podcast about Visual Studio Extensibility back in April.

Mappoint and Virtual Earth, despite my recent jolly adventure with Mappoint, is a fantastic platform for building applications on top of. One of the local companies here in Michigan is using it for the base for one of their applications called eoStar. I find it fun that they have built their application as an extensible platform as well - see their plug-ins section for things that third parties have built for their applications.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a horizontal base platform for you to build vertical applications on top of such as Omnivue's Health Care application. There are multiple ways to integrate here from API calls to interfaces you can implement to web services that you can leverage.

I know that I'm missing some of the important applications out there that Microsoft ships as a platform.

So, what does this mean for your applications? There are two directions that you should be looking.

First, when you are starting a new application - is there something out there that you can leverage as the base for your application that will handle a lot of the underlying plumbing. I like Brian Prince's quote - "Don't be a plumber." What he's talking about is leveraging platforms and frameworks that will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you so that you can concentrate on your business logic which is your real value add.

Second, you need to be thinking about what are the possible extensibility points where someone else could tap into your application. I know, you're thinking - but Josh, I'm building the corporate equivalent to Notepad here - there is no extensibility points. While that may be true - think about your favorite text editor here and what add-ins you're using. If you are still using Notepad - you are in the dark ages and need to look at UltraEdit, Scite, E or any of the thousands of others that are out there. One of the things that all of these have in common is that they all support extensibility. Scite, for example, has a great page dedicated to different plug-ins called Scite Extras. There are extras there from various language formatting libraries to scripts that you can use. But what this proves is that even simple tasks like text editing can benefit greatly from being able to leverage a great platform so you should be thinking about that with your applications.

Alan Stevens on VSX

Monday, November 05, 2007 2:51:20 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [83] 

Soma Segar did a Red vs. Blue show with Church and the gang. It was funny hearing Soma, who is always seems to be serious, chatting with the guys that aren't. One of the things that he talked about was the Balmer Developers, Developers, Developers speech in terms that I actually agree with. He said that Microsoft is a platform company at heart and that we have been since the company was founded in 1975.

That is fantastic and absolutely true! I've been saying for quite a while that a platform will beat an application every time. There are a couple of great examples of this right now. For example, Microsoft Office is, more so than it is just word processing and spread sheeting, it's a fantastic platform that you can leverage to build your application. It wasn't overly difficult to do with COM, not that the object model was straight forward. Even so, all of the power was there and the average developer could figure it out and put together some fairly compelling applications. Now with VSTO, it's very easy to build compelling applications on top of any of the Office Suite of applications including Outlook. As I live in Outlook a good portion of every day, I love the idea of being able to extend it to all of the other things that I need to do throughout the day. <mindDrifting>Now, if the expense system would expose services - I could have a ton of fun with Excel and Outlook.........</mindDrifting>

Another Application vs. Platform situation that you can look at is MySpace verses Facebook. MySpace allows you to customize your page a ton but it's not really a platform for you to build on. Facebook allows you as a developer, through their Developer APIs, to build your own application that adds right into their platform and feels like it's part of Facebook. There are several thousand of them out there already. Some of them are downright stupid like the Vampire application. <rant>I really wish that there was a nukem button for anyone who tried to make me a zombie or vampire or any other stupid thing of Facebook more than 3 times after I've ignored them over and over and you know who you are...</rant> However, some of them, such as the Twitter and Cities I've Visited are great. Others, such as Groups and Photos feel like they are part of the platform when they are actually add-in bits created by the Facebook crew. That's pretty cool and it's part of the reason that Facebook is winning. (That being said, I will have to post some other time about my feelings on whether or not Microsoft should have ponied up 250 Million for rights to do the advertising...)

There are applications that should be platforms that are not currently great platforms and are suffering a little for it. For example, Internet Explorer is a fantastic application - but it's not a great of a platform as Firefox. That's frustrating because it could be such an amazing platform. As it is, it's a frustrating set of COM based interfaces that are not quite completely undocumented.

Now, what does this have to do with your applications? You should be thinking about platforms that you could have built rather than applications. I've been in a number of shops where there are 10+ small applications that are build that could have and should all been written as a single application but the first and primary application was not extensible so the other groups around simply added new applications rather than adding value to the first one.

Defy All Challenges

Saturday, November 03, 2007 2:00:33 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [3] 

ArcReady is ramping up again for another quarter's worth of content. This quarter we have Jon Rauschenberger from Clarity Consulting putting together content on Web 2.0 based on his experience with creating the FaceBook Developers API and more.

Applying Lessons to Your Company

After Tim O’Reilly’s article “What is Web 2.0” in 2005, there has been considerable buzz around Web 2.0 technologies and the companies that use them. From the open platform Facebook to the rich user interfaces of web mail clients like Microsoft Exchange, the architecture of web applications is changing rapidly. While other companies have begun to see potential business value in Web 2.0 technologies, there is still uncertainty on how to integrate those technologies into corporate activities. How can you balance corporate security needs without negating the architecture of participation that is important in Web 2.0 applications? Where is the line between internal and external applications? What can we learn from the most successful public Web services and does it apply to our internal SOA?

In select cities, our guest speaker will be Jon Rauschenberger, CTO for Clarity Consulting. Together with the Central Region Architect Evangelists, we’ll discuss lessons learned and best practices around collaboration, rich user experiences, and data syndication from existing Web 2.0 application architectures. We’ll also provide guidance how current Microsoft platform technologies like AJAX for ASP.NET, SharePoint Server 2007, and WCF can be used to turn those lessons into a practical corporate Web 2.0 architecture. Finally we’ll take a look at the next generation of Microsoft technologies like Silverlight and Visual Studio 2008 and discuss how architects can design and deploy applications beyond the current Web 2.0 experience.

Hopefully I'll see you there...

Tuesday, August 07, 2007 3:50:48 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Larry Clarin (one of my fellow Architect Evangelists) has a great write-up of the ArcReady tour and a bit about the new one coming.

Larry Clarkin on the upcoming ArcReady events

From the ArcReady site:

Architecting the next generation of software. The why, the what and the how.

Microsoft’s journey towards creating new technology strategies, platforms, tools and practices is to drive the next generation of software for consumers and the enterprise. It’s not without irony that one of the most neglected and challenging components of the software design process is understanding how to identify, design and implement the ‘experience’ that an individual will have with an interface. Learn how Microsoft is elevating ‘user experience’ to a first-class citizen in the software design and development process. Understand why ‘user experience’ may be one of the most important parts of an Architect’s job in creating new software that will matter.

Our next ArcReady program is called “Architecting for the User Experience.” Our guest speaker will be Chris Bernard, UX Evangelist for Microsoft. Together with the Central Region Architect Evangelists, we’ll discuss the role of the ‘user experience’ in architectural design and provide hands-on, practical guidance for getting better results in your own projects. We’ll discuss WPF, WPF/e, XAML and the new Expressions suite of products that allow designers, architects and developers to build great ‘user experiences’ using the same base technologies. More importantly, we will discuss how architects can work with software design professionals in new and innovative ways to create the next generation of ‘experiences’ and products that will be demanded by consumers and the enterprise.

Session 1: "Why the User Experience Matters in Architecture"

Session 2: "Architecting for the User Experience"

Join Us for This Free Event.

Show Cities and Dates

• Houston - 05/07/07
• Dallas - 05/08/07
• St Louis - 05/09/07
• Kansas City - 05/11/07
• Austin - 05/15/07
• Downers Grove - 05/15/07
• Minneapolis - 05/16/07
• Des Moines - 05/18/07
• + Nashville - 05/21/07
• + Louisville - 05/22/07
• + Cincinnati - 05/23/07
• Indianapolis - 05/24/07
• + Detroit - 05/25/07
• * Memphis - 06/11/07
• Milwaukee - 06/12/07
• * Cleveland - 06/13/07
• * Columbus - 06/14/07
• * Grand Rapids - 06/15/07

The ones with the + are where Chris and I will be speaking together and the ones with the * are were I will be speaking by myself or with a partner such as Jeff Blankenburg.

Link to Larry Clarkin - Architecture meets User Experience at upcoming ArcReady events

Registration for the next round of ArcReady events - http://www.arcready.com

Monday, April 09, 2007 12:14:19 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

In case you haven't seen it - Enterprise Library 3.0 has been released.

There are a ton of new features. Most of these are additive.

• Validation Application Block - this allows you to centralize your validation rules and validate data from anywhere in your application. This means that through config - you can use the exact same validation in your smart client, ASP.NET, server side and so on.
• Policy Injection Application Block - Provides a powerful approach for separating cross-cutting concerns from business logic using declarative policies that are attached at runtime to methods on your objects.
• Application Block Software Factory - Dramatically simplifies the process of building application blocks and providers through the magic of guidance automation.
• Visual Studio-integrated Configuration Editor - great improvements on the config editor and VS.NET integration.
• Environmental Overrides - Use the configuration tool to specify configuration settings that are common or different across multiple environments, and merge this information into configuration files to be deployed with your applications.
• WCF Integration - This is a bigger deal that it seams as we are now able to config the services layer o the Enterprise Libraries to talk to almost anything through Windows Communication Foundation. This has implications on the Logging, Exception Handling and Validation Application Blocks.
• Pre-compiled, strong-named binaries. No need to compile and strong name the code unless you want to manage and evolve the code yourself.

Check out Tom Hollander's blog for a more compete write-up.

Link to patterns & practices – Enterprise Library

Friday, April 06, 2007 3:03:42 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Thanks to all that came - feel free to follow up with me with any questions or comments.

Link to Microsoft ArcReady - Downloads

Tuesday, April 03, 2007 5:52:33 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

I'm in the middle of the ArcReady tour around the Heartland district (That's Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee). Tim Landgrave spoke in Detroit, MI yesterday and did a bangup job as always. It was fantastic to sit and soak in the knowledge that he has gained through the many years that he's been in business as a consultant on a tremendous number of different projects. He brings a lot of great stories and antidotes that we can all relate to from these varius projects. The only issue is that each of the presentation brings out slightly different sets of antidotes depending on the questions and audience reactions so really, I'd like to sit through all 11 of these rather than just 3 or 4 of them.

I got some questions about the presentation so I thought I'd answer some of them here. First, the names of the books that were referenced in the Patterns and Anti-Patterns section were:

Second question that I'm getting a lot is when and where can I get the presentation? We will be posting it on http://www.ArcReady.com as soon as the tour is over.

The question that I have for you is what topics/speakers would you like to see in the future for this series? Feel free to email me direct or leave answers in the comments.

Link to Microsoft ArcReady: Reinforcing the Foundations of Solutions Architecture

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 5:10:33 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [2]