Within the Enterprise, there are primarily two types of architectures.  The Data Architecture and The System Architecture.  The data architecture documents information exchanges throughout the enterprise.  The documentation includes knowledge management plan, data models, use cases, data dictionary and object library.  This is primarily at the application Layer.

The System Architecture documents the collection of hardware and software that is designed to work together to work together to provide one or more data or information functions within or between lines of business.  This is at the Infrastructure layer (Server, storage, Network).

Data is the raw materials with which information, Knowledge and hopefully wisdom is derived.  Without data there is no need for the system sub-architecture.  In most organizations, the Applications Architect is responsible for creating and maintaining (with the help of domain experts like DBA) the application architecture.  The application architecture is derived from end user requirements.  Once the application architecture is created, this information can be used to create the system architecture (with the help of domain experts like server experts).  Within both the data architecture and system architecture, security should be paramount.  Usability is another key component.  Sometimes security and usability are at crossroads; however the application architect should not lose sight of one for the other.  Both are important.

From my point of view, Data is always the driver for systems architecture.  Losing key data can bring the company to its knees.  However, if systems are destroyed, it can be recreated - it may take some time and money, but it can be done.  However, if data is lost it may be impossible to be recreated unless a working backup is available.  Since both data and systems are constantly in continuously evolving, both architectures must be scalable and “future proof” as much as possible.

Interesting development in the area of Network Neutrality.  The Network here is the public Internet.  The basic premise behind this issue is this, your Internet Service Provider for various reasons can shape the traffic that is passing through their network.  Should your ISP be allowed to do that.  So lets say, the ISPs don’t like you streaming movies on the Internet, they could throttle down your speed.  They may decide that certain company’s VoIP phone service from which they get some revenue should get faster speeds than say a competitors.  Its a slippery slope.  Its anti-competition and goes against freedom of speech.  The ISPs can make up any rules they want.  There has been debates on both sides of this issue.

The interesting development is that Google and a group of partners have released a set of tools designed to help broadband customers and researchers measure performance of Internet connections.

This will allow the consumers to check their speeds and to ensure they are getting the speeds which they are paying for.  It empowers the consumer to collect data and make a decision when choosing your ISP.

The tools are at Measurementlab.net
Article here

Here’s Tim Wu, Columbia University testimony on why FCC needs to take policy action that support Net Neutrality.

According to this article, in the CIO magazine by Phil Gilbert, employees and management do not have Visibility across the organization.  People from the CEO to the Maintenance person works in a silo.  No one person knows all the products of an organization and how they leverage the synergies within the organization.  This lack of visibility is what will cause issues with other industries like the Auto and the Banking industries.

Some interesting points:

1.  One of the three (Ford) is in demonstrably better shape than the other two, and it’s no mystery why. Two years ago, when he took the reins of Ford, Alan Mulally identified two things that needed to change: parts costs have to go down, and engineering productivity must go up.

Get it? The white collar workers who design the cars have to move from artisan to engineer, and they need to work together across all the company’s platforms to use common parts.

2.  CEOs and everyone below them must have a common understanding and visibility into the processes needed to establish new efficiencies. As an example, it’s rumored that Toyota’s engineers spend more than half their time “doing engineering.” In Detroit, it’s half that. And as Lewis points out, few people anywhere knew that a single mortgage was leveraged up to 10x through the various CDOs and credit swaps.

3.  This isn’t a lack of automation It’s a lack of visibility. Regardless of industry, the world’s largest companies are houses of cards, built on darkness and risk.

4.  Ironically, the off-shoring, which was the first response to the symptoms of the artisan-economy-on-steroids, served to increase risk and darkness even as it hid behind the allure of cost savings. Because the growth in the service workforce was not easily scalable (costs went up in a linear fashion as heads were added), CEOs found it easier to fire local workers and hire distant ones who were paid a fraction of their U.S. counterparts. These executives took the easy way out, often-times they actually added headcount to an already-unwieldy process and boasted about their “savings.”

5.  There needs to be a revolution in implementation of processes that bring greater visibility and less risk to all aspects of our businesses. It is no longer acceptable that senior management remain ignorant of the goings-on at even the deepest depths of the organization.

6.  But it requires imagination and determination from the very top of the tree. It requires driving change throughout the upper, middle and bottom of the white collar parts of your organization.

Information Technology needs to move from just gathering “data” to providing value added “information” to “Knowledge” to finally to providing “Wisdom” to the end users.  We cannot achieve wisdom or even knowledge without proper visibility across the enterprise.

A Mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single Integrated tool.  This article displays 100 Google Map Mashups.    Some of the Mashups that I found interesting are:

http://www.photoenforced.com/ - maps of Traffic light cameras
http://gruvr.com/ - shows venues where live bands are playing
http://www.healthmap.org/en - Maps of diseases in the world
http://www.missingkidsmap.com/ - Missing kids map

There are lots of good ones in this list….make sure you check out the full list is the article below:

article here

This is great. Its about time, the keyboard gets replaced with something that is easy to use and intuitive. What do you think? Do you think this will replace keyboard in the future?

“>

“>

RSS can help you become a more efficient and effective Internet user by bringing content to you instead of you going to each individual site to look for changed content. Here’s a cool video from commoncraft that explains RSS in plain English.

Video

Tags: Internet

Since the U.S. Economy and most of the world is facing recessionary pressures, IT budgets will be slashed in most industries. CIO magazine lists 5 outside the box ways to cut IT costs:

1. Harness consumer technologies (Example use Wiki instead of expensive enterprise tools).
2. Get the business side to scope projects (essentially the business side needs to feel the effects of their requests to their budgets, otherwise they will continue to fill the IT pipeline with low priority projects)
3. Use Open source Networking
4. Hold off on Windows Vista (Most companies will take this approach. There are lots of reasons to stick with XP)
5. Bring in the CFO (Ask the CFO for help in prioritizing IT projects)

Article here

Tags: IT Budget

Next Month, Intel is releasing a new CPU Architecture for desktop named Core i7 (Nehalem). Here are the benefits:

Corei7

1. Improved Multi-threaded performance scaling
2. Architected with the new age of Visual Computing in mind
3. All 4 cores a single CPU die.  Max CPU clock  - 2.66 GHz to 3.2 GHz
4. Super bandwidth - 6.4 billion data transfers per second, per QPI link

article here

Tags: CPU