I have noticed a nice spike in traffic on all three of my blogs (Kevin Mullins, The Tech Manager, The SysAdmin) an wanted to thank folks for reading and remind everyone that comments are welcome. In particular, my SysAdmin blog has really come on strong with twice as many hits and page view as my other two blogs. Again I thank you and remind folks that I am always open to share ideas and strategies on all three blogs and welcome your help and participation.
I came across a new site that is great for the new computer users. The site is called Tech-Bites and is found here ..... http://tech-bites.com/. Tech-Bites is a combination Web Blog and Video Blog with great content for the new computer user.
Here is a sample of some great samples of the posts and videos that they have produced ....Firefox Basics, Firefox Basics Continued and RSS Feeds.
Check them out .....
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs held a joint interview at the "D | All things Digital" conference on Wednesday May 30, 2007. The start of this 7 part interview can be found here along with the remaining 6 parts.
Check it out ...
Another good show from the Best Damn Tech Crew
Check it out ....
Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson produce a weekly security show called Security Now which is part of the TWIT (This Week in Tech) group of Podcasts which are all high quality and rich in content.
This past weekend I was listening to Security Now episode 79 and thought it would be of interest to all Technical folks that manage email. Steve Gibson went into great detail discussing "How Email Works" and in particular identified what to look for in the Email Message header if you suspect that the email that you received is Spoofed or from a Spambot.
Steve goes into a lot of detail, but has a great delivery and a knack of explaining complex scenarios in a very subtle and easy to understand manner. If you have an interested in better understanding how to read a email message header, or if you are a Technical Manager looking to brush up on email delivery, then this is a Podcast that is worth listening to.
Check it out ...
This past week a non-technical friend that has visited my site asked me to better describe web 2.0. I started telling her that it is the evolution of the web from real static pages to a richer more dynamic web filled with dynamically changing content, and includes social networking thru more user involvement and user commentary. I was trying to keep my descriptions simple and I told her that I had seen a couple of Videos You-Tube and I would post them here in an attempt to help with the explanation of Web 2.0.
Jeff Utecht from The Thinking Stick (Shanghai, China) produced this great little video about Web 2.0, check it out ......
Let me know what you think ......
In my last post I spoke of exploring an SOA model and all of the components that I think are part of an SOA model. If I make any mistakes or should you disagree with my though process or this model, please feel free to comment or send email to me at kevin@kmmm.net.
Here is the model from my last post:
Users -> Portal -> BPM -> SOA -> EIM
Users: We all know what users are, most of us are users of one application or another. Users are the folks in the Call Center, or in accounting, or doing order entry. In a non-enterprise environment they are the folks looking at Utube or connecting to Linken-In.
Portal: Portals have really changed in the last 10 years to be flexible, with user configurable interfaces and no client side installations, portal have grown past Client Server repositories to flexible front ends, configure by Applications Support folks.
A good example of a portal is the Liferay Portal. The Liferay Portal is an open source enterprise portal with integrated security and many variations for flexible deployment. It is an off-the-shelf Portal that will allow most companies to be up in running in hours as opposed to developing Portal technologies within the enterprise.
Here is Wikipedia's definition of an Enterprise Information Portal:
Enterprise Information Portals are one of the most popular ways in which enterprises can allow their employees and customers to search and access corporate information. It is a single gateway for users, such as employees, customers and company's partners to log into and retrieve corporate information, company history and other services or resources.
BPM: Business Process Management: When I think of BPM I think of Business process refinement. In large enterprise's, I see BPM as a Workflow, built into applications or a Workflows built into a process.
Here is Wikipedia's definition of BPM:
The term Business Process Management (or BPM) refers to activities performed by organizations to manage and, if necessary, to improve their business processes. While such improvements are hardly new, software tools called business process management systems (BPM systems) have made such activities faster and cheaper. BPM systems monitor the execution of the business processes so that managers can analyze and change processes in response to data, rather than just a hunch. BPM differs from business process re engineering, a management approach popular in the 1990s, in that it does not aim at one-off revolutionary changes to business processes, but at their continuous evolution.
SOA: Service Oriented Architecture.
Kevin's definition of SOA: SOA is a flexible application development and deployment strategy. It is an architecture and a topology that introduces new business tasks and applications into the enterprise in a consistent flexible manner.
Service-oriented architecture (SOA [pronounced "sō-uh" or "es-ō-ā"]) describes a software architecture that defines the use of loosely coupled software services to support the requirements of business processes and software users. Resources on a network[1] in an SOA environment are made available as independent services that can be accessed without knowledge of their underlying platform implementation.[2]
A service-oriented architecture is not tied to a specific technology. It may be implemented using a wide range of technologies, including REST, RPC, DCOM, CORBA or Web Services. to read more follow SOA link.
EIM: Enterprise Information Management
EIM overview and whitepapers from TechRepublic:
A coherent EIM strategy is a fundamental requirement for managing the huge volumes of data businesses accumulate. An EIM strategy will allow business users to have access to many and different types of information coming from multiple data sources across the enterprise. The information can then be accessed, in many cases, through an information portal being fed with data from operational data stores.
I work in a application delivery and support group and I am very familiar with Network and Operating system setup and support. I understand the tiered architecture approach and the majority of the applications that I support are Client Server based, with my team supporting the middle tier.
Recently while sitting in a long 2 hour meeting, I had a conversation with our Application Architect concerning SOA, and Web 2.0. I was looking for examples of Web 2.0 and SOA in our infrastructure and at first he was somewhat reluctant to talk about SOA but I pressed him further and we agreed to meet after the meeting to discuss.
Once we met, I told him about my blog and I explained that I was interested in better understanding real word examples of SOA as opposed to digging into any possible new application strategies introduced by our recent merger. He understood and told me that there were more components in a SOA topology than just Web 2.0 and SOA.
We spoke about how older applications had been designed and written to complete 10 to 15 different but similar tasks. In a SOA topology, each one of the 10 to 15 different tasks are broken down into an individual task and delivered as flexible services. He stepped thru the following Application Model within a SOA topology:
Users -> Portal -> BPM -> SOA -> EIM
In the next couple of weeks, I am going to attempt to dive into this model and share my recent understanding of an SOA topology, and try and give real examples of each component.
Wikipedia describes a prediction as a forecast that is a statement or claim that a particular event will occur in the future . My predictions are closer to my opinions than statements of fact. My opinions are formed from reading and listening to many technical and managerial blogs and podcasts.
Here are my predictions - opinions for 2007:
1) Web 2.0 adoption will continue to grow especially on customer facing sites. Established companies will start to incorporate functionality for feedback and community support around their products.
2) Web 2.0 companies are creating opportunities and not a Dot-Com bubble.
The Wall Street Journal Online invited two technology venture capitalists, who were active in the dot-com days and have invested in the current crop of startups, to debate the topic. Todd Dagres spent nearly a decade at Battery Ventures before starting Spark Capital last year. David Hornik, a partner at August Capital and a former Silicon Valley attorney, writes the popular VentureBlog. Todd Dagres supports that theory that the current Web 2.0 activity is another dot-com bubble and David Hornik opposes Todd stating that this new Internet Web 2.0 activity is an opportunity for progress.
Some Web 2.0 companies may not make it in 2007 however this surge in Technology and surge in spending is good of the economy and good for the Technology Industry.
3) Industry adoption of Web 3.0 functionality or whatever it will be called will not happen until sometime after 2007.
Ken Rutkowski from Ken Radio calls Second Life a Web 3.0 application, however given the complexity defining Web 2.0 and the debate surrounding adoption, I think it's too early to define a company or an application as Web 3.0. My guess is that there will be a lot of discussion surrounding this topic in 2007.
4) Virtualization will continue to grow in 2007
In my opinion, server Virtualization is already mainstream. We will see continued growth in the software applications space, the software testing space and in the storage space. I also think that competition between Vmware and Microsoft will heat up in this space.
5) Continued growth in Voice Over IP (VOIP)
VOIP works great in a nice controlled environment where folks can monitor usage and network performance, however I am still skeptical about Global-Enterprise level VOIP over the INTERNET. Sure Skye works and is very useful on a Business trip, however I would be very skeptical delivering Skye to the CEO of a large global company. I see more development in this space before VOIP is ready for the global enterprise.
6) Email is not dead.
Email may change, however I see it growing in 2007 before plateauing in 2008. Web 2.0 adoption and the Internet usage is still growing, which drives email requests and requirements. In the coming years we may move to more of a voice, video, IM or SMS means of communication, however that is far in the future.
Also, email is embedded in the fabric of all support organizations. We receive hundreds of alerts and events every day. The consumer experience may change, but email will remain at the heart of all support organizations.
7) The convergence of Video, Movies, TV Shows, and Podcasts onto the Internet will continue. The Internet is another delivery mechanism for Content suppliers and they have finally realized that fact.
8) Adoption of Web Based OS's and applications will grow. Products like goowy, youOS, and eyeOS offer community based services that can be useful to many SBM's.
Your comments are welcome .....
Happy New Year
Last month I wrote about Microsoft's Virtual Lab Express which is a great tool for previewing and testing software.
As I have investigated further, I think I prefer the Microsoft Virtual Hard Disks (VHD), which are very similar, however the advantage is that you can download the VHD's to your environment, share them with your end users and then test the functionality in a very secure environment.
I feel that this is the new paradigm for software testing. You can create and entire virtual network within a VHD, along with the Active Directory, DNS, Front-End Application environment and Back End database server environment. You can use this environment for development, user acceptance testing or even offer this environment as a demo or testing environment to your customers.
If you are an IT professional with Microsoft based responsibilities, you should check out both the Microsoft's Virtual Lab Express and Microsoft Virtual Hard Disks.
