Entries for Bob Familiar

ARCast.TV - Cloud Computing is for Small Companies Too

Bob Familiar — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:03:00 GMT

Cloud Computing is often presented as an esoteric technology that is only interesting to large companies. In point of fact, small- and medium-sized companies will find the economics and technology opportunities very compelling. Shy Cohen and Michael Stiefel discuss why this is so, and why small- and medium-sized companies should look for opportunities in the cloud computing area.

ARCast.TV - The Story of MyChristmasCatalog.com [ARCast.TV - The Story of MyChristmasCatalog.com]

Bob Familiar — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:07:00 GMT

‘Twas the week before the holiday season… in this interview, with Jeff Barnes from Microsoft, Ron Teblum, CEO of Catalog Enterprises Inc. and Raphael Parentes, lead graphic designer, discuss the launch of MyChristmasCatalog.com and their innovative use of Silverlight3 and Expression Blend and to deliver a truly unique one-stop, holiday shopping destination and experience.

Catalog Enterprises was one of the first registered Microsoft Bizspark Partners when the program launched almost a year ago - and now they are leading the race in e-Commerce 3.0 using Microsoft technologies. By leveraging all the rich media capabilities in Silverlight 3, they have brought together all the familiar sights and sounds of Christmas, including Christmas in New York, Silverlight games for the kids, the narrated Christmas story, Christmas for soldiers, and a truly unique shopping experience to help you find that perfect gift for those on your holiday list this season.

And don’t forget to check the Christmas Traditions section - they have digitized all the old catalogs from your childhood; Sears, Spiegel’s, Schwarz, and JC Penney’s using their proprietary print media conversion tool that converts them into digital flip-books. And using the Silverlight Deep-Zoom technology – you can once again see all the cool toys you didn’t get for Christmas…

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ARCast.TV - Improving Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio Team System [ARCast.TV - Improving Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio Team System]

Bob Familiar — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:50:00 GMT

In this interview with Zhiming Xue at Microsoft, Mike Snell, VP Solution Services at CEI, Microsoft Regional Director and co-author of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Unleashed book, discusses five key issues that typically exist in the application lifecycle management (ALM) process – requirements tracking, code review, unit testing, automated testing (aka black box testing), and continuous integration. Mike speaks each of these five issues from his extensive customer experience and offers his domain expert views and recommended practices, including use of Microsoft tools and systems such as VS 2008 Team System, Team Foundation Server, MSBuild and some non-Microsoft tools such as Ravenflow and RequisitePro for advanced requirements management. If you are interested in improving the ALM process at your organization or for your team, check out this video and let us know what you think.

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ARCast.TV - Mark Pollack on Architecture Refactoring [ARCast.TV - Mark Pollack on Architecture Refactoring]

Bob Familiar — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:45:00 GMT

While there are many qualities by which to judge an architecture, two technologies--dependency injection (DI) and aspect-oriented programming (AOP)--provide guidance on some of the most foundational. Not only do they influence how a system's components are designed and organized, they also determine how easily the system may evolve. In this episode, Mark Dunn and Mark Pollack discusses DI and AOP from an architectural point of view, showing how the principles promoted by DI and AOP translate to tangible architectural benefits such as loose coupling and a separation of business and technical concerns.

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ARCast.TV Special - Michael Stiefel on Software as a Service in the Cloud

Bob Familiar — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:33:00 GMT

The Architecture Innovation Cafe presents Michael Stiefel on Software as a Service in the Cloud - Architecting and building a Software as a Service application requires solving a series of problems that are independent of a particular software platform. Michael discusses three areas of focus for designing and building services so that you can leverage your work into new platforms such as Windows Azure.

ARCast.TV - CxO Level Discussion about Cloud Computing [ARCast.TV - CxO Level Discussion about Cloud Computing]

Bob Familiar — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:53:00 GMT

What are the business considerations of risks and benefits when considering cloud computing options, strategies, and trends? Check out this discussion between Miha Kralj and Zhiming Xue.

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ARCast.TV - Matt Hessinger on How Business drives Architecture [ARCast.TV - Matt Hessinger on How Business drives Architecture]

Bob Familiar — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:54:00 GMT

Enterprise Architects, Solutions Architects, Infrastructure Architects, and Business Analysts all work hand-in-hand to deliver value to the enterprise. In this interview, Joe Shirey talks to Matt Hessinger about the dynamics of each of these groups and some strategies for improving these dynamics.

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ARCast.TV Special - Jim Wilt on Increasing Solution Adoption Success Using Architectural Skills [ARCast.TV Special - Jim Wilt on Increasing Solution Adoption Success Using Architectural Skills]

Bob Familiar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:36:00 GMT

The Architect Innovation Cafe presents Jim Wilt on Using ArchitecturalSkills to Increase Solution Adoption Success - 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.

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ARCast.TV - How to Improve Testability with a Modular Architecture [ARCast.TV - How to Improve Testability with a Modular Architecture]

Bob Familiar — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:26:00 GMT

Mario Cardinal and Aaron Kowall discuss how to easily test in an autonomous way an application conceived with modular abstractions such as the "layer". Mario and Aaron discuss how to partition the concerns of the application into layers and best practices regarding application architecture and modularity.

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ARCast.TV - Re-architecting Applications for Internationalization [ARCast.TV - Re-architecting Applications for Internationalization]

Bob Familiar — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:44:00 GMT

Achim Ruopp, an internationalization specialist and a former program manager at Microsoft, discusses the typical process of and efforts involved in internationalizing existing applications in this interview with Zhiming Xue. If you are interested to know how to plan and get started with the process of internationalizing applications, how applications are typically re-architected for internationalization, what tests are conducted once they are internationalized, and what tools and resources are available to facilitate application internationalization, this video is made for you.

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ARCast.TV - Clemens Vasters on Architecture Implications of the Internet Service Bus

Bob Familiar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:40:00 GMT

Companies need infrastructure to integrate services for internal enterprise systems, services running at business partners, and systems accessible on the public Internet. And companies need be able to start small and scale rapidly. Joe Shirey talks to Clemens Vasters, senior program manager on the Windows Azure team, about the architectural implications of the Internet Services Bus and .NET Services.

ARCast.TV - Using LAAAM to Make Good Architectural Decisions, Fast! [ARCast.TV - Using LAAAM to Make Good Architectural Decisions, Fast!]

Bob Familiar — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:19:00 GMT

Bob Familiar interviews Jeromy Carriere on the Lightweight Architecture Alternative Assessment Method (LAAAM), a fast and efficient way to make good architectural decisions that are aligned with the needs of your business. Making good architectural decisions early in the software development lifecycle helps reduce project risk and ensures that precious time and energy isn't wasted delivering solutions that miss the mark. This is critical in our ever-accelerating software development world. The most unique characteristic of LAAAM is its focus on defining what quality means for a given system or product. We all want to create high-quality products, but LAAAM helps us go further in determining the aspects of quality that are important to the stakeholders for a given system. The "-ilities" are commonly used, coarsely, to talk about architectural quality; however, LAAAM won't let us simply say "my system has to be scalable" or "I need flexibility". Instead, LAAAM forces us to be: a) precise in the kinds of scalability and flexibility that are important; and b) prioritize these quality attributes so that appropriate tradeoff decisions can be made. LAAAM produces a set of artifacts that represent a rigorous, rational decision making process. These artifacts are extremely valuable in justifying and communicating architectural decisions, since it's rarely possible (or even desirable) to have every stakeholder involved in every conversation. The LAAAM artifacts give us a way to express the reasoning that went into a given decision, with a foundation in the definition of quality for a system. LAAAM has been successfully applied to make decisions large and small at Microsoft, Fidelity and VistaPrint. LAAAM draws its roots from the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method developed at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

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ARCast.TV - Caleb Jenkins On Dependency Injection [ARCast.TV - Caleb Jenkins On Dependency Injection]

Bob Familiar — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:28:00 GMT

Brian H. Prince caught up with Caleb Jenkins at the MVP summit. They commandeered a conference room, and talked about how all developers need to care about architecture. Developers should think of architecture at the code level and the benefits of Dependency Injection.

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ARCast.TV - David Hill gives us an introduction to the Application Architecture Guide [ARCast.TV - David Hill gives us an introduction to the Application Architecture Guide]

Bob Familiar — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:59:00 GMT

No one will argue that the process of architecting software solutions that use available capabilities to address business needs within an organization's constraints is often a daunting task. Challenges like this can be much more approachable when you have a solid way of reasoning about all of the options using a common frame. The second edition to the wildly successful Application Architecture Guide provides just this frame. Denny Boynton interviews David Hill to get a glimpse of this architectural playbook.

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ARCast.TV - Ward Bell and John Stame on using Silverlight on the UFC Project [ARCast.TV - Ward Bell and John Stame on using Silverlight on the UFC Project]

Bob Familiar — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:52:00 GMT

Ward Bell and John Stame discuss using Silverlight for building Rich Internet Applications (RIA's) for UFC.

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ARCast.TV - Simon Guest on Patterns for Moving to the Cloud [ARCast.TV - Simon Guest on Patterns for Moving to the Cloud]

Bob Familiar — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:39:00 GMT

Everything that you read these days seems to suggest that you should be moving to the cloud. But where do you start? Which applications and services should you be moving? How do you build the bridge between on-premises and the cloud? And more importantly, what should you be looking out for along the way? In this talk, learn architectural patterns and factors for moving to the cloud. Based on real-world projects, the talk explores building block services, patterns for exposing applications, and challenges involving identity, data federation, and management. Denny Boynton talks to Simon Guest about the tools and knowledge required to determine whether cloud computing is right for you, and where to start.

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ARCast.TV - Ward Bell on Building Modular Applications Using Microsoft Silverlight and WPF [ARCast.TV - Ward Bell on Building Modular Applications Using Microsoft Silverlight and WPF]

Bob Familiar — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:21:00 GMT

How do you build line-of-business applications in Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)--applications that can be maintained and extended over a period of years? How do you design and code to handle real-world complexity? Composite Application Guidance (a.k.a., "PRISM") from patterns & practices offers guidance, libraries and examples--in small, free-standing, digestible chunks--that you can use to tame the complexity. Denny Boynton talks to Ward Bell to learn how to compose complex UIs from simpler views, integrate loosely coupled components with "EventAggregator" and "Commands", develop independent modules that can be loaded dynamically, and share code between Silverlight and WPF clients.

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ARCast.TV - Juval Lowy on The EnergyNet, the next software boom [ARCast.TV - Juval Lowy on The EnergyNet, the next software boom]

Bob Familiar — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:06:00 GMT

The ongoing economy unraveling is the defining moment of our time. Many professional developers are fearful for their livelihood, as employers and customers cut and slash development plans, and as economic activity grinds to a halt. But not everywhere. In centers of technical excellence and innovation such as the Silicon Valley, the major players, from investors to industry leaders, are aligning themselves with the next boom in software, a field Juval Lowy calls the Energynet. Alternative energy covers a wide range, from new cars, to micro renewal sources energy producers, infrastructure upgrades to charge stations and distribution, new power and transformation grids, and integration of billing systems, let alone commercial building and homes modification. And the key for making all that work is software. We simply cannot make the physics or the chemistry substantially better, but we can profoundly integrate systems, iron out inefficiency, automate and vertically integrate energy trading, production and consumption; and the key to all of that is great software. This massive new software system is the Energynet, and the analogy to the Internet is a good one - instead of packets and request the Energynet transfers watts and usage data, connecting anything and everything in the energy market. In this unique session, Juval Lowy presents the case for the next boom in software, shares personal observation and perspectives, and points out the skills and expertise required of developers that want to not only survive but thrive on the next boom in software.

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ARCast.TV - Scott Hanselman on scaling websites with caching [ARCast.TV - Scott Hanselman on scaling websites with caching]

Bob Familiar — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:54:00 GMT

Architecting an enterprise or web application for high performance, scale, and availability can be a challenge without an appropriate caching strategy. One approach is to leverage a distributed caching platform to support the needs of performance, scale, and availability. In this ARCast episode, Scott Hanselman and Joe Shirey discuss Microsoft's codename "Velocity" project and how it supports building out these types of applications as well as what architects and developers need to think about when implementing a distributed caching approach.

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ARCast.TV - The Cloud Part 2, What is Microsoft doing [ARCast.TV - The Cloud Part 2, What is Microsoft doing]

Bob Familiar — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:57:00 GMT

On 30 – 31 March 2009, at Weston Manor, Oxford UK a group of senior IT architects from across the industry met to consider the coming ‘Cloud’. What it is, what it means for business and the software profession and what has Microsoft been up to in the cloud. This episode is part 2 in the series, what Microsoft is doing in the cloud computing space.

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ARCast.TV - The Cloud Part 1, What it means to the user [ARCast.TV - The Cloud Part 1, What it means to the user]

Bob Familiar — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:32:00 GMT

On 30 – 31 March 2009, at Weston Manor, Oxford UK a group of senior IT architects from across the industry met to consider the coming ‘Cloud’. What it is, what it means for business and the software profession and what has Microsoft been up to in the cloud? This episode is part one of the discussion, what the cloud means to the user.

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ARCast.TV - Implementing a Hybrid Architecture Based on SOA and ROA in the Enterprise [ARCast.TV - Implementing a Hybrid Architecture Based on SOA and ROA in the Enterprise]

Bob Familiar — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:56:00 GMT

In this interview, Kevin Israel, Visual Studio Team System MVP, shares with Zhiming Xue his thoughts on implementation of a hybrid architecture based on SOA and ROA in the enterprise space. Kevin explains what Resource Oriented Architecture (ROA) is and, through examples, highlights its key differences from Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). He argues that while the two architectural patterns share the same common problem domains such as versioning and application manageability, they work differently in practice. ROA services or RESTful services may be used to bring resources to the user, whereas SOA services are typically created to process business logic. Therefore, the crux of the hybrid architecture implementation is to use them together and use them for their intended purposes. Kevin believes that as cloud computing and enterprise meshup applications start to emerge, more applications based on the hybrid architecture of SOA and ROA may be seen in the enterprise.

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ARCast.TV - Windows Azure, A conversation with David Chappell [ARCast.TV - Windows Azure, A conversation with David Chappell]

Bob Familiar — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:22:00 GMT

What's the latest on Windows Azure and Microsoft's cloud platform? David Chappell discusses his perspective on this fast-changing area with Bob Familiar.

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ARCast.TV - Dynamic IT, Trends in IT Operations [ARCast.TV - Dynamic IT, Trends in IT Operations]

Bob Familiar — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:44:00 GMT

Microsoft System Center products and solutions help capture and aggregate knowledge of IT infrastructure, policies and best practices to help IT organizations build manageable systems and automate operations to reduce costs, improve application availability and enhance service deliver. Teresa Horgan, Senior Business Manager of System Center, introduces us to Dhananjay Mahajan and Vij Rajaran. Dhananjay Mahajan interviews Vij Rajarajan, GM of System Center, about his vision of the future of System Center and how it is poised to help Enterprises prepare for new industry trends and challenges. We learn how System Center fits in the DynamicIT and broader Microsoft strategy. Dhananjay and Vij discuss how Enterprise IT Architects can help prepare their organizations for upcoming changes.

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ARCast.TV - Roger Session on Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises [ARCast.TV - Roger Session on Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises]

Bob Familiar — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:35:00 GMT

It is common to hear of massive IT failures; projects that are over budget, late, poorly aligned to business needs, or all of the above. Often, the resulting losses are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The cause is almost always the same: uncontrolled complexity. The solution to complexity is simple — or more specifically, simplicity.

This talk is about the mathematical models of complexity and the methodologies needed to control it. Complexity is the most insidious problem facing IT architects. Control it, or it will bury you! David Solivan interviews Roger Sessions about his book 'Simple Architectures for Complex Enterprises'.

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