Architect Cafe | September 2009 Series
DAY 1 – September 28, 2009 at Noon PST
From the Trenches: Using Architectural Skills to Increase Solution Adoption Success Rates
Jim Wilt (Chief Software Architect for Metrics Reporting Inc.)
Products, Solution Frameworks, and Development Tools are too often touted by vendors and development teams as solutions to customer business problems. Why do development teams, customers, and users seek products to fill this gap? When solutions fail is it too easy to blame a given platform than for those really responsible to take responsibility? It more often has to do with one's level of problem solving skills, planning, and ability to align technology with business strategy. This session introduces proven field architectural practices in leadership, communication, and some strategy tools that will assist stakeholders in becoming owners of their solutions--taking responsibility for their outcomes. This results in greater customer satisfaction, as the focus is all about enabling problem solvers (not expecting products) to deliver successful solutions.
DAY 2 – September 29, 2009 at Noon PST
Software as a Service in the Cloud
Michael Stiefel (Principal of Reliable Software, Inc.)
Architecting and building a Software as a Service application requires solving a series of problems that are independent of a particular software platform. First, a SaaS architecture follows directly from the fundamental principles of the business model. Second, a series of difficult technical problems must be solved in addition to providing the business functionality. These include certificate security, low-IT-capable clients, business continuity when connectivity is lost, provisioning of services, scalability as the number of clients increase, database design for clients, how to use virtualization, and how to integrate and release service functionality over several different client applications. Third, you have to effectively use the platform technology such as WCF and ASP.NET. If you approach building a SaaS application on these three levels, you can then leverage your work into new platforms such as Windows Azure.