Architect Inverse Vandalism

Article on CR4E

2009-10-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

My article on evaluation of 'Crystal reports for Eclipse' : http://java.sys-con.com/node/1118330

IT Manager’s Guide to Surviving a Recession

2009-06-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

Came across this guide & consolidating tips from it below:

Saving Next Year When Cutting IT Today
Ø Unless you know that a simple operational change will yield a significant cost reduction, cut operational expenses before strategic. Business applications are strategic, technology upgrades are operational.
Ø A simple consolidation and shutdown of a business unit data center or aging application will save more than that of IT proposed cut on projects and infrastructure management.
Ø Ask vendors to come in and do a free audit and review of how you could cut expenses: cooling costs, maintenance, licenses, aging devices, or whatever.

Ways to Cut IT Costs without Cutting Deliverables
Ø Go “Good enough” - Serena software is saving $750,000 a year by moving to Gmail from MS Exchange, its IT Head says “Gmail may not have all features but it is good enough”.
Ø Automate More IT Tasks - A study at Extreme network on IP phones that are shut off at 5 p.m. and turned on at 9 a.m. showed network costs dropped a staggering 75%.
Ø Stay Flexible - Avoid getting locked into expensive and even unnecessary projects , divide projects into small units – deliverable in say, 60- or 90-day timeframes, and maintain close contacts with end-users.

Gutting Costs Guts Viability
Ø Cost cutting is not a long term strategy and is a short-term tactic. In observing behavior and outcomes we can class cost cutting as a dependent variable because there are limits to how much cost can be removed from a system and still be viable.
Ø Rather than focusing on cost cutting, there is another approach, one that doesn’t have limits. Sales, in contrast to costs, are independent variables. There aren’t limits to how much sales can be generated. In fact, arguments of sales not being possible are reflective of management’s inability to effectively penetrate existing markets or develop new ones.
Ø In a down economy like today, selling the same products the same way may no longer work. But with that “simple” understanding come real effort in the areas of planning and execution.
Ø There is a huge difference between a market being unwilling to buy a current product or service and management’s inability to innovate and bring new products and services to market. The ability to rapidly innovate and bring new products and services to market is critical.
Ø Management teams that are focusing on cost cutting risk the future of their organizations. Firms that have gutted their ability to innovate and compete will find themselves irrelevant in the market and either languish or outright fail. Instead, they must focus improving throughput and reducing operating expenses simultaneously.

Three Ways to Thrive in a Recession
Ø Turn your project management office from an administrative entity to a group that can quickly and transparently articulate where IT is spending its money, what returns are being generated, and what risks have been assumed. If some concept cannot be translated into a defined plan with measurable economic results, scrap it and allocate the resources elsewhere.
Ø Think of every project you undertake as a miniature business. There are costs to start the business, resources to be allocated, and returns to be garnered. If you cannot articulate each aspect of the venture, especially the costs and expected returns, then the project is a bad idea no matter how many IT rags advocate the technology or how many industry leaders run the same software.
Ø Vendors provide a defined service, Partners on the other hand provide advice and guidance. Ensure that your vendors are doing what they should be doing: providing exceptional service at the right cost. Your thinkers should be providing actionable strategies and plans that you can successfully execute. If one is not delivering what you need them to deliver, or attempting to stray too far outside their territory, seek another vendor or partner.

Six Tips for Stretching IT Budgets
Ø Repurpose software you already own - Extend existing software to handle other business functions, without the hassle of buying, implementing, and managing new software.
Ø Manage IT operations more efficiently - Automate repetitive tasks, Implement a set of monitoring tools, Enable your business users to do some of the work themselves.
Ø Reuse old hardware - Must see the need and innovative ways to reuse old hardware.
Ø Get “more for less” with managed services - By investing in MSPs, IT departments can still benefit from new and innovative technologies without spending money on hardware, infrastructure, or internal management and monitoring, allowing them to keep pace with technological innovation even on a tight budget.
Ø Automate enterprise-wide processes - By automating batch processing with workload automation solutions.
Ø Leverage your existing reports for BI - “In today’s economic crisis, one of the fastest ways to save resources and make smarter business decisions is to leverage your existing reports for BI.

Writing Winning IT Plans in a Recession
Ø Pick yourself up and out of the box of thinking about cost controls and start thinking differently.
Ø Recognize that outsourcing is not always the shrewdest move and when it does make sense carefully analyze the year by year outlays to be sure there will be consistent savings over the life of the contract.
Ø Look for places to practice guerilla IT, this means hunting for blatant problems that nonetheless lend themselves to quick, efficient, and inexpensive solutions.
Ø Show flexibility about spreading larger IT outlays over several years, faster approval is seen for programs that extend the dollar outlay over two, three, possibly more years.
Ø Tie every new expenditure back to provable returns. ROI is the big driver today.
Ø You cannot start a plan with the technology. Not today. Start with the numbers, end with the numbers and know that is exactly what the C-suite wants.

Source: "The IT Manager's Guide to Surviving a Recession" ebook from http://www.internet.com/

SAML2.0

2008-11-19T20:59:00.000-08:00

The Shibboleth System is a standards based, open source software package for web single sign-on across or within organizational boundaries.
Inputs from Shibboleth has gone into SAML specifications thro' out.
Here is a detail demo on its usage: http://www.switch.ch/aai/demo/medium.html
Shibboleth uses an single sign-on system like Pubcookie for authentication services.

Pubcookie is an open source software that can turn existing authentication services into a solution for single sign-on authentication to websites. http://www.pubcookie.org/docs/how-pubcookie-works.html

Reuse Metrics

2008-11-19T20:47:00.000-08:00

Dr. Jeffrey Poulin identifies 3 fundamental metrics useful in measuring software reuse:

1) Relative cost of writing for reuse (RCWR)
Developing s/w intended to be reused requires incremental effort. Poulin estimates that it requires 50% more effort to write a reusable component.

2) Relative cost to reuse (RCR)
Reusing components designed for reuse doesn't eliminate 100% of effort. There is a cost of 20% assigned to reuse preexisting components.

3) Software reuse payoff
Using these simple metrics, s/w reuse achieves breakeven within 1 reuse of a component ie. using an RCWR of 1.5 and an RCR of 0.2.

This s/w reuse metrics can form a reasonable baseline to justify services reuse in SOA scenario.

Endpoint Security

2008-11-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

Endpoint security consists of a number of different activities such as traditional anti-virus and anti-spyware, as well as other security activities.

There are many endpoint security tools, each with a narrow focus such as:
• Anti-virus
• The personal firewall
• Host intrusion prevention
• Anti-spam agents
• Application control

Yesterday’s endpoint security has little integration. These separate agents are difficult to manage, especially from an end-user standpoint. These agents impact the end-user experience because they consume resources extensively. The amount of processing that is required to look at every virus, every file, every kernel activity, and everything that is happening on a given device is enormous. If a system has different agents that have to look at all the different traffic, the resources consumed may be five or six times more.

Tomorrow’s endpoint security is likely an integrated agent that is focused on stopping all types
of malware, whether it is a virus, a worm, spyware, social engineering attack, or some kind of spam-based attachment.

Hmmm...seems integration is the buzz now...

Maven Build Process

2008-10-19T11:02:00.001-07:00

I just noted that my article on Maven build process published in JDJ (April'08 Issue) is now available online:
http://java.sys-con.com/node/535316

Puzzles

2008-10-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

(Source: Henrey E.Dudeney)

1) Find their ages: "My husband's age" remarked a lady, "is represented by the figures of my own age reversed. He is my senior & diff betn our ages is one-eleventh of their sum."

2) Find ages of Mary & Mark:
Mark: Do you know, that in 7 yrs time our combined ages will be 63 yrs?
Mary: Is that so? And yet it is a fact that when you were my present ages you were twice as old as i was then.

Ans:

Opengroup @ Virtual EA conference

2008-10-11T22:37:00.000-07:00

This is the key pts from the presentation made by OpenGroup during the Virtual EA conference on Sept 30, 2008.

Benefits of SOA:
Improved information flow
Agility
Ability to expose internal functions
Lower devlopment & maintainence costs
Ability to optimize performance, functionality, cost

Using TOGAF ADM for SOA:
ADM is similar to that followed for other architectures except for the following phases:
Business architecture-Define business vocabulary & service context
Information system architecture-Identify functions to be performed by services
Technical architecture-Define service stds & infrstructure

SOA provides many features but architect needs to select the ones needed for the enterprise.

David Linthicum @ Virtual EA conference

2008-10-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

This is the key pts from the presentation made by David Linthicum during the Virtual EA conference on Sept 30, 2008.

Current issues:
Competing frameworks
Hype driven confusion(SOA 2.0)
Lack of leadership Processes moving outside firewall-Cloud computing,SaaS..
More enterprise apps web delivered

SOA and EA must synergize together & not operate in separate worlds.

EA Megatrends:
SOA
SaaS
Web2.0
Enterprise2.0-mashups,inside-out,outside-in

Enhance & not replace existing EA.