IT's a good read! — Part 1: Microsoft Architecture Journal

Tony Austin
Tuesday, 21 October 2008 13:02

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft Office 365

This has the theme of distributed computing, with articles such as Considerations for Designing Distributed Systems and Architectural Patterns for Distributed Computing and Head in the Cloud, Feet on the Ground and Distributed Applications in Manufacturing Environments.

Journal 9 (October 2006) was around software factories, and Journal 6 (January 2006) was about SOA Governance.

Journal 13 (October 2007) covers Microsoft's vision of "Software + Services."  This, you may or may not know, is not the same as "Software as a Service (SaaS)."

In this edition, Ray Ozzie, the "father of Lotus Notes" and Microsoft’s chief software architect (he assumed this role from Bill Gates in June 2006) shares his vision for a Software + Services world, and some of his thoughts on becoming a software architect.

Journal 13 also has articles on Implications of Software + Services Consumption for Enterprise IT and Enterprise Mashups and Microsoft Office as a Platform for Software + Services and A Planet Ruled by Software Architectures ("tour of Architectopia, a world where different computing paradigms define civilizations"). Wow!

You get the idea, it's all great reading. Naturally enough it tends to have a Microsoft orientation, which nobody can begrudge them. (Not me, certainly, and you probably already know that I'm an IBM retiree. Besides, I'll be writing soon enough about various IBM publications for IT professionals.)

I happened to attend the Microsoft Architect Summit in Melbourne early in 2004, and this was fortunate indeed, since one of the keynote presenters was Pat Helland.

He left Microsoft during 2005 for a two-year stint at Amazon, but returned to the Microsoft fold during 2007. You'll find a bit about him in this fairly recent profile and this interview by TheServerSide. Also, here's his weblog.

The reason that I'm picking him out is because Pat Helland is quite famous for his Metropolis (found in Journal 2, April 2004). No, this is not about Fritz Lang's classic sci-fi movie, but rather: "A metaphor for the evolution of information technology into the world of service-oriented architectures."

The fascinating Metropolis article "Explores the idea that information technology is evolving in a fashion similar to how American cities have evolved over the last two centuries. The opportunities and pressures of the technological revolution have driven our metropolises to adopt new frameworks, models, and patterns for commerce and communication. Recent developments in IT are analogous." And is asks: "What can we learn about the present and future directions of IT by studying the recent history of our urban centers?"

There's a related article Metropolis and SOA Governance in the July 2005 edition of the journal.

I've been hunting for a complete webcast of Pat Helland's Metropolis presentation, but cannot find one anywhere. The best I could find is this one: IT shops have evolved a lot like cities which even though only 2:20 in duration is worth watching.

I'd appreciate it if anybody can locate a long version and post the URL in our comments section. (A 329 MB downloadable March 2004 version here has "gone missing" and I wonder if there's a copy lurking elsewhere on the Web.)

So there we are: the Microsoft Architecture Journal. It really is a good read!