Welcome to Architecture @ Microsoft!

Hello architects! Welcome to Microsoft’s new architecture site! I’m Barry Briggs, Chief Enterprise Architect in Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Evangelism group, and I’ll be hosting the site as well as contributing to and moderating this blog – all dedicated to you, the IT architect.

Why an architecture site? Why an architecture blog?

Well, you could certainly argue it’s long overdue, and I wouldn’t argue with you.  But I would also argue that it’s terribly important now.

Why? Suffice it to say I’ve been in the software industry some thirty years now, and while our industry is constant only in its change, the rate of change has rarely been greater than it is today.

Listen to what one enterprise architect said recently: “Our end users and our customers demand we provide them with real-time, 24x7 response, and our business partners rely on us for accurate financial reporting, CRM, human resources management, business intelligence – and so on. At the same time the underlying technology is rapidly evolving: in-memory and column-oriented databases, NoSQL data sources, increased bandwidth requirements for large data sets, video-on-demand, security architectures that protect our IP in world of nation-state threats. And then there are the truly revolutionary technologies that will change everything: cloud, devices, Big Data and machine learning, and a workplace made interactive by social computing. What’s an architect to do? What should I do first?”

The answer is, of course, that competitive pressures will drive you to address all of them. That’s right – all of them. (By the way, in case you’re wondering who the architect was who said those words above, it was me.) Never before has the role of architect been as crucial to a company’s success as it is now. In the old days, of course, a business unit might simply ask IT to create or buy a new application, and, after some code, or some procurement, acceptance testing, data center space allocation, and so on, there would be a new member of the IT portfolio.

But now, when considering new functionality, you must consider whether it is really cost-effective to add another on-premise application. You must consider whether it can handle not just today’s data load, but orders of magnitude more data tomorrow and the next day as you are able to collect it. Does it allow for end-user “likes” and can you analyze them to find out what’s working and what’s not? Will it perform well as it integrates with systems in the cloud and perhaps in partners’ data centers?

Many of the choices that architects make today are platform choices – private or public cloud, HTML5 or application, JavaScript or Ruby or PHP – that IT departments will have to live with for many years to come.

Helping you with those choices – that’s the purpose of this blog, and of this site.

Why me, you might ask? Why am I qualified to discourse on such weighty topics? Well, for the past five years I served as Chief Architect and CTO for Microsoft’s own internal IT team consisting of around 4,000 dedicated employees and a few thousand applications. I’ve witnessed first-hand what it takes to create an IT cloud strategy, to social-enable applications, to drive insights from Big Data and to make IT capabilities work on mobile devices – and by the way, not just ours but iPhones and iPads and Android phones as well. We know it’s a diverse world, and we live it too.

But it won’t be just me. I’ll have  guest interviews with thought leaders from around Microsoft, and from industry luminaries as well.

Even more importantly, you will have an opportunity to contribute as well, through the comments sections and the discussion forums we’ll be creating.

What can you expect? Everything. Elsewhere on the site you’ll see an ever-increasing collection of reference architectures, blueprints and case studies providing examples (some including code). We’ll have articles on Microsoft’s cloud vision, on its economics, we’ll discuss the new role of the client, how to incorporate machine learning into your applications, how to use enterprise modeling to design your ecosystem, how all the technology pieces fit together to form a cohesive, cost-effective, cool application that your users love.

Yes, we’re going to do all that.

And it’s going to be a blast.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 26, 2014
  Cool! Looking forward for new posts... Maybe you should also consider creating QA section?

• Anonymous
  March 26, 2014
  awesome

• Anonymous
  March 26, 2014
  Great. Waiting for more...

• Anonymous
  April 21, 2014
  Thank you for doing this.  Is this going to replace the former MS Architecture Journal?  In addition to practical architecture topics such as case studies on implemented and proven architectures, will you discuss architecture framework topics such as use of archimate, UML or AADL?  Are you open to posting articles from authors outside of Microsoft?

• Anonymous
  April 27, 2014
  Looking forward to this adventure. I need guidance about one of my MVC4 project. I am going to use entity framework 5 and wants to know the best practise for placing my code, like should I place EF code in a separate project and should I use dependency injection. Thanks, Akhtar

• Anonymous
  May 01, 2014
  @Derrick (and anyone else who has an opinion) -- curious for your thoughts. Are you interested in seeing the Architecture Journal reinstantiated or would you be more inclined to read articles online?

• Anonymous
  June 11, 2014
  At last :) thanks for this, hope we will start releasing even Architectural Journal as well

• Anonymous
  June 12, 2014
  @barrybriggs, I previously enjoyed reading the pdf issues of the architecture journal, it would be great to see it reinstated.

• Anonymous
  July 21, 2014
  Awesome !

• Anonymous
  August 14, 2014
  Thank you So much Barry!!! I am decided to take the architect track in my career. I think it will be a good starting point for me and all who are aspired to become an architect. I will be good if you give separate blog for each competency like Beginner, Moderate and Expert. Anyway thank you and waiting more from you

• Anonymous
  May 15, 2015
  Hi Barry Briggs...sorry...only saw your question now.  Had a baby born around that time so I forgot everything in the process...I think any forum where Architects who are on the Microsoft stack can exchange papers and ideas is great...the MS Architecture Journal is not necessary for this, and I'd rather read articles online that can be downloaded in PDF format, and then printed out if required.

• Anonymous
  August 16, 2015
  Good blogs. Lot of help full content.

• Anonymous
  September 18, 2015
  Nice efforts here! I had enjoyed Architecture Journal, but I feel reading online articles is better.

• Anonymous
  November 25, 2015
  The comment has been removed