Enterprise Technology Thought Leadership in a FTSE 100
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Windows
Last October I learnt my company wanted to put together a new blog/social networking policy. I decided that out of respect for my employer I wouldn’t blog until this was sorted out. This was perhaps was an easy decision to make as I was separating from my ex-wife at the time and frankly needed the time to concentrate on other things. So now the company has a brand new policy and I’m back into the dating game I thought I would blow off the cobwebs and get back to what I enjoy doing. First and foremost ......
Recently I attended the Business Analysis Conference in London that I spoke about in my previous post. My reason for being there was I accepted an invite to be a speaker on a panel discussing “The Role Of The BA: What Is Expected And What Is Delivered” Part of the Business Analysts role is to capture, distil and communicate business requirement to Technical staff so it was of great relevance that I played my part as the technical representative on the panel. If technical staff are to understand business ......
Next week I will be sitting on a panel at the Business Analysis Conference discussing “The Role Of The BA: What Is Expected And What Is Delivered” As you may have noticed, I’m not a BA and nor is anyone else on the panel! The common factor between us all is that we rely on what the BA delivers to perform our various roles. The role of the BA is a lynchpin in any IT organisation so it is to our mutual benefit that we support each other in the improving and developing each others professions. There ......
A little while back I posted a question on Channel 9 wanting to know more about SQL Server ‘Madison’ project. Well Charles Torre being the extremely nice bloke that he is (Thanks Charles I owe you another beer, perhaps not London Pride next time!) got on a plane from Redmond down to Orange County and went to pay the Madison development team and in particular Christian Kleinerman for is the Product Unit Manager for the Madison development, a visit The video is a good introduction into Madison, it ......
I’ve started a thread on Channel 9 to ask my questions about Madison, Gemini and Kilimanjaro which is now 2008 R2. If you’ve got any burning questions why don’t you put them there as well. The Channel 9 team are planning to do a series of video’s with the SQL Server Dev Group so they will put our questions to them. The Channel 9 thread can be found here : http://channel9.msdn.com/fo... Technorati Tags: SQL Server,SQL Server Madison,SQL ......
Continuing my series of great free stuff for SQL Server I’ve pulled a rabbit out of the hat for you today! In this economic climate one of the first things that seems to get cut is the training budget so anything that can help get your head around stuff is a big plus. To help Microsoft has released SQL Server 2008 Developer Training Kit So what does the Training Kit contain … Presentations (6) Filestream Spatial T-SQL Date and Time Types SQLCLR Reporting Services Demos (12) AdventureWorks Racing ......
Codeplex is a wonderful site. However not just for the .Net coder but the SQL Server guy/gal can find plenty of goodies there as well. One such goody is the FineBuild utility that does as the name suggest helps create a ‘Fine Build’ of your SQL Server install. All to often installing SQL Server can turn into a day long process with the various additional service packs, CU’s, tools and utility to install. Well FineBuild can automate all of that so all you need to do is run the start script, go off ......
It’s not often we get stuff for free but Microsoft has decided to give away a complete book, not just afew sample chapters. All you have to do is go to this link , press the ‘Sign Up’ button, leave some details about yourself, if you’ve registered with MSDN before it’ll just pick up you existing details and then pdf will download. So what’s the catch? Well you will be signing up to Microsoft Press Book Connection monthly newsletter and learn about new books on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and other ......
Microsoft have completely re-written Live Search, the new offering Bing! Bing is being marketed as a ‘decision engine’ as it tries to workout what you are looking for rather always giving the top ranking website out of an algorithm. Microsoft has commissioned allot of research to work out what people are actually trying to do for when they use a search engine. It is clear Microsoft cannot ‘out search’ Google but could gain market share by finding an edge and that edge is adding more depth. Achieving ......
R2 ! As you may know I’m abit of a SQL Server nut so I was particularly interested in the announcement at the recent TechEd of SQL Server 2008 R2. R2 is the combination of the Kilimanjaro, Madison and Gemini projects. Kilimanjaro is adding support for up to 256 processors to the existing code base. Whilst Madison follows on from the purchase of DataAllegro last year moving data to handling petabytes of data. Lastly Gemini is about taking on Qlikview and providing Analysis Services using column-oriented ......
Laptops are the client machine of choice in the Enterprise. They are an essential component of modern business allowing the workforce to turn almost anywhere into an office and place of business. In the Enterprise the laptop will steadily taken over the place of many desktops in business, there will be a place for them in static workforces but for everyone else it will be the default device. Because laptops play such an important role in the Enterprise, no Enterprise Technology blog would be any ......
As you can guess from the title I have written this post completely on my iPhone.A part from the obvious restrictions, such as the small keyboard, it wasn't a wholly unpleasant experience making the whole notion of using a device like this to construct posts a viable option.What put me off attempting to do this before was indeed screen-size but the iPhone does just about cross the boundary in a useable experience.So I'm a little late to the iPhone party with all the fuss happening last year but it ......
There really has never been a better time to get into Enterprise Architecture as the global economic downturn means that smart companies will be looking at making efficiency savings through strategic implementations and process streamlining, identification of function duplication and better IT/business alignment. Enterprise Architecture is a hard thing to get off the ground so why try and re-invent the wheel and benefit from the experiences of others in many different organisations. Using a framework ......
I, like many others, download Windows 7 Beta build 7000 on the day it hit MSDN after reading about its availability from Bink.nu. It came as an ISO so was easy to build into a virtual machine however on my home laptop I've partitioned my HDD and had XP in one partition and Vista in the other. Vista rarely gets to see the light of day simple because it is always doing something with the hard-disk! Checking! Scanning! Indexing! All driving me nuts as it slows down the performance of my machine. So ......
Servers are the backbone of enterprise computing today, most websites for example run on either Apache or IIS and will be running on a server of some description. Perhaps because of servers ubiquity it is easy to become complacent about them especially as they are rarely seen but understanding what a server can offer you and it's limitations will definitely help with software development. Servers on the whole are built more of the practicality side than for the esthetics, there is no need to make ......
Live Mesh seems like a simple thing, perhaps that is the point? But what 'Mesh offers me is of great personal value in that it gives me is a little part of my day back and one less complication in my life. So what is so great about it? Well I can work on documents, blog posts, spreadsheets, any file, from work or working from home, seamlessly without having to transport them via USB key or emailing them to a home or work account and run the gauntlet of quotas and cumbersome filters. Live Mesh is ......
Ok so this post is all about being a very proud Brit!
As of 10:47am BST we are third in the medal table! Nice one team GB!
My wife's cousin, Lara Davenport, was one of the swimmers involved in the Gold winning Women's 4x200m Freestyle Relay! Nice one Lara ......
The word on the mean streets of Rumoursville town is that Microsoft is going to lift the licensing restriction where currently software is licensed to a physical device. Why? With technologies such as VMotion and XenMotion, a VM is moved around a farm automatically to where it can make the best use of available resources such as CPU and memory. With Microsoft products you are required to license all the physical machines that the software is likely to run on, this isn't just Windows but SQL Server, ......
There is a bewildering array of Enterprise Architecture methodologies so it will be of great interest to me to find out which one people are actually using, if at all. So to find out, I have put together a pick poll so please take the two minutes and leave your choice. You get a chance to select up to 3 options because I suspect that people are using a combination of more than once approach, rather than following one prescriptively. This is purely for interest purposes, I'm not going to use this ......
I'm following the Olympics this time round with a bit more of an added interest. Lara Davenport, the Aussie Swimmer, is family so the very best of luck to her. Also, a fellow David Oliver, is a hurdler in the United States team, so the very best of luck to David ......
Need I say more? And to save time here is the link to MSDN Subscriptions Pages ......
I have this belief that understanding how to manage time is an essential task of Enterprise Architecture but oddly this is a principle that isn't spoken about much, if at all. Oddly some Enterprise Architecture software tools only seem to provide time management tools for software support life cycles. Hence a previous post that went in some way to start the debate with a mindmap to capture and categorise the elements that Enterprise Architecture would be interested in. After reviewing this mindmap ......
Many Enterprise Architecture methodologies talk about the management of time but I haven't found one that tells you how to do to that. For a practice that is about understanding the now and the step to achieving the to be, I find this an amazing oversight. Anyway, so what I decided to do was to have a go at capturing all the relevant timing information that an Enterprise Architect would be interested in. Hence the attached Mindmap, which you can click into. If you prefer you can come and join in ......
Paul Homan recently commented on Green EA which set my mind thinking ... 'being more Green' is a strategic ambition and what is the process and practice for generating strategic change? Enterprise Architecture! When EA's are struggling to find some ROI reason to justify their existence in the economic down-turn amazingly one of the main ROI reasons is one of the biggest issues of our time as the 'Return' doesn't literally mean monetary and also doesn't necessarily mean more? ... it can also mean ......
Today I managed to sneak into the Farnborough Airshow under a trade pass to sample the delights of this bi-annual event without the public crowds of the great unwashed in my continuing search for innovation. After all, the defences, aviation and IT industries are joined at their respective hips as innovations in one are keenly felt in the others. Take for example the Eurofighter Typhoon Cockpit, it is pretty uncomplicated and has far fewer switches and buttons than most jet fighters. Pretty amazing ......
Vmware currently is going through the wars. A change of CEO, a plunging share-price and a competitor getting alot of attention with their new product, that being Microsoft with Hyper-V. However, I just don't get it!? ESX Enterprise is still out in front in terms of features and pricing is very competitive. Any organisation performing their own unbiased product comparison evaluations is going to be hard pushed to discount Vmware's flagship product. The killer feature for many is ofcourse Vmotion that ......
As I've been helping out with VMware I wanted to consider the old question of whether developers really could work inside virtual environments? As we know virtual environments can help maximise under utilised resources, CPU, RAM, diskspace and save on space, power, HVAC and TCO with centralised support and maintenance. Another main advantage of virtualised environments that is particularly attract to many developers is the ability to remote work which is a requirement that has become far more common ......
Roles in Perth, Scotland Business Analyst Support Analyst/Programmers for Home Services systems Roles in Basingstoke, England Analyst/Programmers for Energy Sales systems with C#.Net or PL/SQL skills Roles in Havant, England Project Managers Business Analysts Senior Analyst/Programmers with ORACLE skills Analyst/Programmers with ORACLE skills Analyst/Programmers with ORACLE E Business Suite skills Lead Systems Designers IT Security Engineers Database Administrators (DBAs) ORACLE or SQL Server skills ......
A few weeks ago 'Fluffy' was just an egg sitting in a make-shift nest behind my satellite TV dish. I checked this morning to find the egg had hatched and Fluffy the chick happily squeaking for his/her breakfast. OK, you can go Ahhhh now ......
To add to my frustrating time this week with my 1418 error when setting up Database Mirroring under SQL Server 2005. I was dogged by a continuous 'Service Unavailable' message when trying to load a ASP.NET page under IIS running under Windows 2003 R2. Typically 'Service Unavailable' is a nice catch all message that doesn't give anything away, and so it shouldn't as hackers learn about websites by generating exceptions. Diagnosing the real reason for the error is a case of reading the IIS error logs ......
6th April, Easter, clocks going forward and first day of spring have all past. However, now we get our first real amount of settled snow, Fantastic! Here are some of the pictures I took this morning from our bedroom window. There is something about snow that can make anything look beautiful. Anyway, the wife and I are off to ruin the pristine scene with a few snow-balls ......
Linux is a Godsend! Why? It's a mature operating system that has a reputation for being robust and resilient. Has legions of devoted followers a number of which support it with an almost religious fanaticism. Has been popularised in the media fervently. It has become more than just an operating system but a momentous unstoppable force in the IT Industry. Linux has become a movement that represents a seemingly just and noble cause about the success of the underdog using the weapons of mutual cooperation ......
Recently, I installed Vista SP1 RC Public Availability Programme (here) and I was initially disappointed as on inspection it was business as usual I couldn't find any differences and I was left wondering what was all that about then? I even took the time to do timings to do a before and after on times that was important to me such as timings in a DirectX games and none of them have changed, I even re-run them again and not one difference. So what I wanted from Vista SP1 was better performance in ......
So what does the New Year have in store? Well I don't know! There are however some reasonable certainties such as the economic down-turn but one's things for sure unpredictable events will happen. My predictions are going to be nothing more than my personal musings on the state of affairs and not on insider information, so be warned, don't necessarily put money on horses I'm backing. So in no particular order here's what's on my mind ... Microsoft will make huge efforts to bolster Vista Lets be honest, ......
Thanks to James McGovern for the original posting of these statistics. Thank you Microsoft for the transparency. Microsoft internal IT: 600k connected devices 10,000 Servers 3 Datacenters 1 operations center 11% is virtualized in Microsoft Datacenters 330 of 385 servers run Windows Server 2008 (RC0) plus all 85 Microsoft.com servers 11 clustered systems 30,000 users in Redmond domain (50,000 with vendors) NAP reporting 140K clients, 90 clients deferred mode The Redmond Active Directory domain is ......
Mary Jo posted an article called 'Will IBM’s Lotus Symphony succeed where other Office killers haven’t?'. The gem in the new Symphony crowd is Lotus Notes 8. Now I've been luck enough to get to use the new Eclipse based client and the UI is indeed much prettier and generally nicer to use but still has that Notes familiarity around it so an existing user can pretty much get up and running straight away. So all in all abit of a tick in the box for IBM until you notice this ... ... the first two process ......
It's funny how life continues here. The horse and sheep are still where they were yesterday and the day before oblivious to anything other than the meal under their feet. The cockerel is still sounding out his territory to all who can hear but the noise of the gentle lowing of cattle has gone. Living in short walking distance of the Prides farm and very much inside the protection zone of the recent outbreak has brought into sharp focus that Lou and I very much recent ex-townies that are now living ......
The reason why I haven't been blogging so much recently is because my wife and I have bought a new house and it needs a lot of TLC. This is the Front room for example before the smaller fire-place (to the very left of the picture) was removed. After a steel girder was added to the roof to stop the chimney from falling down kind of left our bathroom in a bit of mess. And a hole in the floor ... But it's all worth it! This is the view from our bedroom window ... Anyway I hope you have enjoyed this ......
The post is a cautionary tail of the latest episode of common sense versus cool. AJAX is a great technology that allows webpages to have much richer content. Google Maps was the turning point for this technology as it brought the technology to the attention of the Technorati that has enjoyed a superficial level of hype ever since because it is encompassed as the lynch-pin of Web 2.0. The key part of AJAX is Javascript which is a language that all mainstream browsers, no matter what operating system, ......
Yesterday, Steve Job as part of his keynote at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) announced a version of the Apple Safari Browser for Windows. Job’s was honest and admitted that 4.9% of the market is currently Safari and he would like to increase that amount. So it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the Mac has a larger share of the PC market than 4.9% so many Mac users must be using something other than Safari and to hazard a guess I bet it’s Firefox. So I see the release of the ......
Let us not beat around the bush, Google is the default search engine for much of the Internet, I need look no further my blogs site visitor statistics for evidence of that! 46% of my visitors come via search engines and 93% of those come via Google. So thank you Google for sending me nearly half of my readers! Ok so Google is popular but I'm not married to Google, I don't own shares, so my loyalty only comes from Google being good at it's job and helping me find relevant sites after entering my search ......
Hot in the heals of Fridays beta release of Channel 9 version 4 are rumors that there will be a new MSDN channel 9 style forum called Channel 8 but this site will perhaps be aimed more specifically at students. Students do not particular get a rough ride on Channel 9 as many make a great contribution but it can't be all that cool for students to hang-out with a bunch of old techies like us, perhaps the reason for the site? Attracting more students in an effort to support them better, why not! After ......
Check out the future of Channel 9! Nice one chaps, it's looking great! http://beta.channel9.msdn.com/ I will tell you more about it once I've had more of a play, but for now get suck in ......
I like the idea of the Apple iPhone, I think that anything that pushes innovation in this market space is great. However the HTC Touch P3450 (Elf) is serious competition for the iPhone mainly because of the interface. This video from BBC demonstrates the HTC Touch's user interface. You can order the device today if you wish. Sadly the iPhone is not yet available to purchase in the UK yet but there is massive interest. Of course the device is a Smartphone running Windows Mobile 6 which means connecting ......
Today Google announced Google Gears at their Global Developer conference. The blurb says ... Ok so it doesn't take a genius to work out that it's a client side data cache. Client side data caches are not new and architecturally speaking it's always cool to make 'chunky' data calls because a 'chatty' application will reduce the performance and the users experience of an application and that's it! do not pass go do not design a 3 tier application with everything on the client. Gears is about 'To do' ......
If you are like me, you will use Live Writer a lot to blog with. I think it's a great tool. I especially like the new Beta 2 which has got in-document spell-checking which the previous version didn't which is a huge boon for me because my spelling is rubbish. One small draw back, can I have an British English dictionary please? It does have a new kind of Vista feel about it which is perhaps just the colour scheme but is still a lovely and simple, uncluttered and straightforward freebie tool to use. ......
Lots of buzz came out of Mix 07 about Silverlight which was undoubtedly the star of the show but one of the other announcements caught the attention of my colleague Big Al on an experimental web data service technology grandly codenamed "Astoria". Now I am a fan of WS-I Web Services, I think that any technology that can gain that kind of ubiquitous acceptance across the whole industry, including all the major players is some achievement, however I can understand the argument that accuses the WS-I ......
No I haven't been in hiding but as the proverb says 'there is no rest for the wicked', so I must have been very bad. Anyway, I have a new house which has meant tarting up the old one and work has been ultra hectic but our websites for a well known travel brand are going live one at a time. Anyway, I hoping from a nice summer to get stuck into some good tech. Microsoft has also been busy, it is becoming crystal clears days where Redmond is heading with Service Oriented Architecture. For example John ......
One of the key parts of a SOA’s is the Business Process Logic Layer. One of the key technologies in this layer is Windows Workflow Foundation, one the key things that was missing from WF was support for BPEL so this called into question Microsoft commitment to the XML standard. Anyway, I’m happy to report that BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation March CTP is available able from MSDN Download. With this add-on you will be able to import and export BPEL from WF. Remember it is still in CTP so is officially ......
Announced at this years Cebit the brand name Commodore has risen from the ashes to title a range of some rather high speced PC's. These machines are aimed fairly and squarely at the PC gamer. Amongst the distinguishing features of these PC's is the option to chose a different piece of art-work for your case called a 'C-Kin'. The art-work is very contemporary in style and ranges from recent game-titles to street art from simply garish to - not '3' bad. The PC's themselves have the highest speced graphics ......
This coming Wednesday (March 7th) Benjamin Mitchell who is one of the founders of DDD, will visit us at Oxford NxtGenUG to give us the 101 on the Windows Workflow Foundation and a few demos on how to quickly building workflow enabled applications. Now if you're like me who has a suspicion that 'Dub' F is going to useful but don't have the time to investigate it fully then this is the perfect opportunity to find out ... and eat pizza, meet fellow coders and a change to win swaaaaggggg! I just want ......
I've just come back from a brilliant evening with the Oxford chapter of NxtGenUG. So why do I think it was brilliant/fantastic? These phrases are banded around so loosely these days, well I quantify my statement. Take Biztalk for example, not many developers out there get really what Biztalk does and there aren't enough hours in the day to learn. Unless a developer has a specific reason they aren't really going to look it up. But when you do start looking into Biztalk all to quickly you find yourself ......
Ug I have just spend a few infuriating hours playing with Yahoo latest utility, Yahoo Pipes. Tim O’Reilly said this was a milestone in the History of the Internet. (Ug isn’t he the same bloke that coined the phrase ‘Web 2.0'? Ug, what does that mean?) In a nutshell Yahoo Pipes is a utility that lets you build your own custom searches, it allows you to aggregate search-engines searches and RSS into one stream of output. So for example, if I wanted to see all what had been posted about ‘Girl Geek ......
After Fridays post I decided to do some more digging around and find out if anyone independent has performed an authoritative test. Of course there are the usual magazines but rather surprisingly I hadn't found one yet that had made any major comparisons yet. However, I found Virus Bulletin Magazine which is "a regular source of intelligence about computer viruses, their prevention, detection and removal, and how to recover programs and data following an attack." The magazine is British based and ......
This is the second in the series of posts (the first being here) that lets you know about my journey in finding security software for Windows Vista. Well it seems NTL, Telewest & Virgin.Net have all joined forces and are now Virgin Media this happened after ntl:Telewest purchased Vigrin Mobile for £1 billion last year and have chosen to merge under the stronger brand. Virgin Media offer cable & ADSL broadband, land & mobile phone, cable and mobile TV (using the HTC Monet) Virgin Media ......
I have been playing with this fascinating little tools for hours now! Wikipedia explorer is a wonderful free tool for viewing and navigating around articles in Wikipedia. It’s strength is it’s ability to graphically show relationships between articles on Wikipedia and hoping from one article to another which is a lovely way to surf around. I picked on my own home town, Woking in the UK and jumped from link to link and found this lovely picture of the Alien Martian Tripod heading towards the Lastminute ......
For sometime now I have been working on a few papers on the subject of SOA. This is the first, my definitive definition of what is SOA Governance. 'SOA Governance' is perhaps the hotest of topics in the SOA world currently but it seems that almost everyone with an opinion has a different definition of what it is and how to do it. I have attempted with this post to distill these definitions into one document which you can take away and use as part of a policy statement to help you with your SOA's ......
I’m loving this new Texas Hold’em Poker games that comes with Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. Anyone else a Card-Shark? Then post your best score up on your blog. Also, have you seen the prizes on the Windows Vista site? They are really amazing ! So, I thought I would enter, why not? It just means watching three short videos and then you can enter to win. Anyway, it seems that everyone had a great time a yesterdays WebDD, I didn't get to go because I felt rougher than old boots in the end which ......
After a lot of speculation it seems that Toshiba are finally producing drivers for Windows Vista. The message given thus far from Toshiba has been, "when we're ready", which seems rather odd when considering that Toshiba are actually selling machines with Vista pre-installed, hmmm what drivers are they using? Another odd matter is that the drivers are only available currently from the US Toshiba site here, so I would take this as a note of caution which is that main reason I haven't installed any ......
Now I have Vista installed I want to protect my installation with some decent security software. NTL NetGuard the free Internet Security software for NTL subscribers which is made by Radial Point is actually very good and meets my needs very well but during installation under Vista an Error 1321!? appears. After speaking to NTL technical support it seems they will support Vista eventually but the operative couldn’t supply me with any dates. Jan 30th I suggested! Another reminder that I would have ......
Ok, I've been lucky enough to get a copy of Vista Ultimate RTM. Firstly the disclaimer, trying any of the suggestions in this post is taken at your own risk. If you have data you want to keep ... back it up! And don't try this on a system that doesn't first pass the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor test. I had installed many Vista Beta's under VMWare on my machine and they had worked but hadn't exactly been fast enough to be really useable or try features I wanted to check such as Aero so I decided ......
... according to the BBC, the full story can be found here. I'm not sure however what date both Office 2007 and Vista will appear on MSDN subscriber downloads, but Microsoft have promised it should be appear there first. I will keep you posted when I hear any more information. Well done Microsoft ......
Virtual Environments are very much in vogue right now because of the obvious advantages they bring in getting the most out of your hardware investment, infact having a large server these days running just one single OS does seem such a waste. There is a down-side, the most common problem encountered with virtual environments is resource hogging. How do you prevent a virtual server or especially a virtual application from stealing all your processor time and/or memory? With environments such as Citrix, ......
In the next two posts we are going to discuss SOA which as you may know if you read this blog regularly is a pet subject of mine. I’ve encounter many a good person that is fully aware of SOA and its much hyped benefits but this doesn’t help them visualise it, hence these posts which are for you good people. The logical model is my interpretation of SOA, it may not be everyone’s interpretation, so if it’s not I would love to hear from you. The SOA logical model has 6 layers, Existing Systems, Data ......
In this post I would like to share some the comments about the QTEK 9100/I-Mate k-Jam/HTC Wizard devices that I’ve had in the field since mid February. The feedback is from ordinary users where I.T. isn’t their primary function. Some of them have used Palm-Pilots in the past, for many this is there first experience at a Microsoft platform based devices. I should also explain that my organisation has both Lotus Domino and Exchange thanks to mergers and acquisitions, so many users use Lotus ......
What Colin doesn't know about VMWare isn't worth knowing after all it's only going to be a matter of time before server are build with a virtualisation product as standard because without one a whole server to run one OS will seem such a waste! So, if I was you Colin's new blog is going to be one to watch and an opportunity to get with the learning curve. And as VMWare Server entry level product is now free, so what are you waiting for? Colin's blog is here here. Free VMWare server is available here, ......
No rest for the wicked! My first week back has meant clocking up the miles and visiting vendors and attending meetings. One of the software vendors I went to visit was Sybase at their Maidenhead office and particularly their mobility division. I would like to thank Ian Matthews and Tim Roberts for there hospitality. The day visit was a deep dive into the Afaria mobility management product. Afaria, if you have done your homework, is the pretty much the market leader in the mobility management space ......
Now there is lies, down right lies and statistics specially in I.T. (Oh you cynic Dave) Statistics are the major weapon of spin, so it’s interesting when a US Government agency, CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) publishes it’s stats for 2005 which can be found here. And CERT says “This bulletin provides a year-end summary of software vulnerabilities that were identified between January 2005 and December 2005. The information is presented only as a index with links to the ......
When companies such as BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Siebel Systems, IONA and Sybase comes together it is for an important reason. There are two main reasons for this, firstly Enterprise Java Beans initially didn’t come up with the goods, it didn’t really do the job it was advertised to do and it was clunky and clumsy. Secondly, because J2EE wasn’t as good as hoped it endured a few major revisions which has made it difficult (and expensive) to get JCP certified. Ok, so there is ......
Microsoft Research has released details of the new operating system it is currently working on called ‘Singularity’. “Singularity is a research project in Microsoft Research that started with the question: what would a software platform look like if it was designed from scratch with the primary goal of dependability? Singularity is working to answer this question by building on advances in programming languages and tools to develop a new system architecture and operating system ......
Every once in a while you find something that is just amazing and you sit back and think whow! I’ve kind of adopted the position of mobility guru at my place so I get to meet all the people coming into our organisation to sell us stuff, which is actually more a pain in the neck most of the time and not that many free lunches, in fact precious few especially as our company has a policy to not except gifts over the value of £1. Anyway, today it was Brand Communications turn and there product ......
I’ve had a busy week on the road, well until the gear-box on my car broke! Anyway, it gives me a chance to catch my breath and post about a few things that have caught my eye recently. Microsoft has gone all abit Live! Press announcement here. In brief, what was announced is that some new and existing product and services will align themselves under the Windows Live, Office Live or Xbox Live banner. For example MSN Messenger will become Windows Live Messenger with the next version. MSN will ......
What were you doing on Saturday? Traipsing around the shops looking for new socks? Spending hours in the Supermarket? Getting the car sorted out? That badly need haircut perhaps? It’s sometimes a bit of a rubbish day-off. But last Saturday it was another fantastic Developer Day 2 @ Microsoft in Reading followed by a Geek Dinner! Ahh my Geek Heart almost exploded with excitement. Now I didn’t go there for the freebies! Who does that? Please! I did however go to socialise which is one of ......
For sometime now my home PC hasn’t really been behaving itself. It’s been slow in parts and mysterious errors have surfaced in commonly used applications. A whole bunch of those repair and optimisation utilities have been thrown at my PC over the years but the simple fact was that the machine was suffering from to much clutter. I had released a while ago that I had never completely rebuild my machine from scratch I had always upgraded my PC with each new version of Windows from 98 to ......
“Windows XP N is a version of Windows that is unbundled from Windows Media Player. The European Commission decision prohibited Microsoft from charging more for the stripped-down operating system -- Microsoft listed the product for the same price as the full version of Windows XP.” Full story here. All I can say is that I’m not surprised! Firstly, I do agree that the EC is trying to make an even playing field and they should be applauded for that but in this instance the result was ......
"Companies developing plans to better serve customers running JBoss Enterprise Middleware System on Microsoft Windows Server. ATLANTA and REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 27, 2005 — JBoss® Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to explore enhanced interoperability between their respective JBoss Enterprise Middleware System (JEMS™) and Microsoft® Windows Server™ products and deepen JBoss support for the Windows Server operating system. While the two companies will continue ......
As with so many of these debates we never seem to draw conclusions. I would like to take this opportunity to do that as this is an old debate and one that really needs finally putting to rest.I started this debate here on Channel 9 because this old issue hasn't really been resolved as VB does encounter a lot of FUD.A good example is that many UK companies will hire a C# developer for approx £5000 more than a VB.NET developer, this is because the HR guys have been steered by us, we have created ......
Clemens Vasters of newtelligence AG has written a new whitepaper for Microsoft introducing Windows Communication Foundation (formally known as Indigo) that explains the fundamental concepts of building services with WCF. The paper features descriptions and examples of service and data contracts and more besides and literally including the ABC’s of WCF … "ABC" is the WCF mantra. "ABC" is the key to understanding how a WCF service endpoint is composed. Think Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster ......
More interesting information to come out of this weeks PDC include more information on Windows Presentation Foundation or WPF which was formerly known as Avalon. The WPF development tool will use cross-platform standards, so you can use them to write normal apps that will run on different platforms or even Web-based apps with multiple browser support. Even as it steers developers toward the forthcoming edition of Windows, Microsoft is building tools to write applications for Mac OS X and the Web, ......
Another exciting announcement to come out of the PDC is the introduction of Windows Workflow Foundation or WWF (not to be confused with a bunch of big bloke in tights getting all snarly) So what is a 'workflow?' It is not always possible to completely automate a process in code, often a point in a process will require interaction from a human, device or perhaps even another system. A workflow is the steps in a path a of process that takes into account points where interactions take place. An obvious ......
And now to my other project that is close to my heart at the moment which is SOA. As you may recall, we were having difficulty in selling the idea of SOA in our business, this has now changed. We have a project and a business sponsor. So in this post I want to reflect on some of the tips I’ve picked up so far that I would like to share with you. Now this is list isn’t completely comprehensive, I’m bound to have miss something out, but hey, something to talk about in future posts. ......
I’ve been pretty busy recently with two of my projects, mobility and SOA, getting to critical stages, the first project mobility I will talk about here in this post and the second in the following. So my mobility project has finally made it to POC (Prooth Of Concept), which means that a small-ish test group of actually user are using hand-held devices as part of their primary function. As yet I’m not at liability to say what the mobility project entails in great detail but I promise I ......
Marcus Perryman (UK Microsoft Mobility Guru) has posted this on his blog. "Microsoft Mobile Embedded Developers User Group UK. This will be a free User Group that MS will support now and again with the use of their London Offices for meetings. During these meetings we (the organizers) would hopefully have organized technical presentations from both software companies and hardware companies alike. As a software developerof Windows Mobile solutions you might also like to join this community and participate ......
Go away for the week and the world goes mad! So the Windows operating system previously called ‘Longhorn’ has gone thought the marketing mincer at Microsoft and is now called Windows Vista . Hmmm, I’m not sure about this name at all, it doesn’t make me feel all excited or inspired and get my imaginative juices going. Even the picture on the official website is an ugly cityscape. When you hear the word ‘Vista’ what images does that bring up? Mountain ranges? Rolling ......
Have you built a mobile solution for you company from scratch? Yes, I’ve tried it too. Don’t get me wrong Visual Studio is a very powerful tool and the emulators are a great step forward but for my mind most of the pieces of the solution just aren’t there and you have to end up building most of that yourself. The risk is the components parts are not built to best practice and often aren’t as productive as they could be. In this space you are still very much on your own. Often ......
Today I spend part of it installing Microsoft latest version of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise April CTP and the Team System Server BETA 2 installing a vanilla Windows 2003 Enterprise server (of course with all the packs and security updates) sitting under VMWARE GSX 3.1. I’ve installed SQL Server 2005 twice before and this time was the easiest installation, went this time without a hitch, the only prerequisite this time was the addition of Windows Installer 3.1, which will require the installation ......
Microsoft is slated today to take the wraps off its new security anti-virus/anti-spyware bundle, code-named "A1." The official name for the product is "OneCare" and we should see it around the end of this year.The product is likely to be subscription based and is pitched in competition with Nortons, Sophos et al.The code for this product originally came from GeCAD and Giant which were both recent purchases. I believe Microsoft original driver for OneCare was to further protect Windows from security ......