Tonight, I had the privilege of being a guest lecturer on Enterprise Architecture for a class at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. My colleague Brian Hosier invited me to give an overview of EA for his students.
I had to do some serious chopping of my 2 hour workshop to get things down to a manageable timeframe. Even then, I felt extremely rushed and barely skimmed the surface of all that Enterprise Architecture is. The class went well and I got great questions from the students. I hope this short introduction to EA helped some of them think about the big picture.
As I was presenting, I realized how much our EA practices are IT influenced. This is a natural thing being that we grew EA out of IT and IT is where it primarily resides. As I presented some of the artifacts we developed, it became apparent that I need to rethink how to present EA to newbies. After a bit of theory and overview, I presented how EA can be applied strategically, tactically and then a bit on business architecture. The problem was that for each area except Business Architecture, my examples were very technology focused. Read more...
Here are the Day 2 sessions linked into one blog post. Again, lots of good content and multiple sessions that got me thinking about how to leverage the Microsoft capabilities we already own. I wrote mini posts on each session and linked them here for your easy reference.
** Updated post with links to slide decks – Dec 21, 2009
Wednesday Dec 10th
Session 7 – Unified Communications Overview – slides
Session 8 – Office Communication Server Case Study
Session 9 – Windows Server 2008 R2 Strategy and Future Directions – slides
Session 10 – Live@edu Overview
Session 11 – Security Microsoft Strategy Overview – slides
Session 12 – Education Products Strategy – slides
Day 2 was another full day with plenty of excellent information. Thanks to Microsoft for hosting this excellent event. I now have a much clearer understanding of what Microsoft can bring to the table. Now, our task is to understand and architect a roadmap to leverage our newly created Active Directory, migrate to Exchange, create and deliver a SharePoint platform service and protect it all using a multi-layer security approach using ForeFront. Read more...
Yesterday, I spent the day with my colleagues from other Canadian Higher Education organizations being briefed on the new directions from Microsoft. As our organization is rapidly moving to leverage Microsoft solutions, this was an extremely valuable day. I wrote mini posts on each session and linked them here for your easy reference.
** Updated post with links to slide decks – Dec 21, 2009
Tuesday Dec 9th
Session 1 – Keynote – Anthony Salcito
Session 2 – Email in Education – Exchange 2010 – slides
Session 3 – Office Systems Futures – Office 14
Session 4 – Windows 7 and the Optimized Desktop – slides
Session 5 – Microsoft’s Virtualization Strategy and Futures – slides
Session 6 – Microsoft Learning
It was a very full day with plenty of new information. I will create another post to summarize Day 2 sessions. Enjoy!
Session 12 Jon Perera, GM Strategy, Education
Higher Education studies about students and institutions. Looking at broad trends and their impacts on education delivery. Microsoft is making a commitment from a number of fronts – education software, programs and policy & advocacy.
Interaction with over 300,000 schools across 115+ countries and 900 dedicated full time MS employees working in this area. MS invests $485M USD in Partners in Learning.
Higher Education Approach
- engaging student, empowering educators
- enabling infrastructure agility
- fostering research & community
Software Roadmap Read more...
- divided between servers and services (software and services)
- tiers : applications, developer tools, programming model, application services, relational database, operating system, systems management
- academic toolkit (coming Jan 2010) – commitment to deliver MS Office with Higher Ed capabilities
- interactive classroom (integrated PowerPoint and OneNote) – this is an add-in for PowerPoint and OneNote, cool interactivity between faculty and students
- Semblio for digital content (packager for content) <- very interesting for our faculty includes assessment tools and powerful simulations – requires a client install for the Semblio player, web player by fall 2010 (this is a Silverlight platform)
- mathematics (embedded into Word)
Session 11 Patrick Hevesi, Enterprise Technology Architect, WW CATM Security Lead
Microsoft Forefront – Business Ready Security Solutions
Evolving Threats
- 2 axes – threat and person
- Threats = Curiosity, Personal Fame, Personal Gain, National Interest
- Person = Script-Kiddy, Undergraduate, Expert, Specialist
- Results: Vandal (largest area by volume), Author, Trespasser, Thief (largest area by $ lost and fastest growing segment), Spy(largest amount of gov’t IT security $ spent)
Evolving Threat Landscape
- huge improvements in bandwidth of networks
- botnets leveraging peer to peer
- 88% of attacks are on applications – top 3 applications attacked: #1 Adobe Reader, #2 iTunes, #3 Quicktime
- the explosion of social networks introduce hugely naive users to places where they voluntarily give up their personal data
- Malware sites #1 Game Cheats #2 Pornography #3 Music Lyric #4 Gossip sites
- http://www.microsoft.com/sir – security intelligence report (free report – updated every 6 months)
Core Infrastructure Optimization Solutions (optimized desktop, optimized datacenter, business ready security) Read more...
- best protection is to run Windows NOT as administrator especially when surfing the web
- Microsoft worked with Intel and Dell to build security into hardware and software (OS working with the hardware – 64 bit)
Frank Chiappone, Sr Project Manager Live@edu
Evolving Education Market – move to digital campus and manage IT costs and complexity
Software + Services drives this model (left on-site progress to right cloud services)
- Exchange Server – Exchange Online – Outlook Live (built on MS hosted Exchange – 10GB mailbox)
- SharePoint Server – SharePoint Online – Office Live
- Office Communications Server – Office Communications Online – Windows Live
Blend of IT Managed and Self Managed services like SkyDrive that gives 25GB per user – SkyDrive will transition to SharePoint Online to allow for management by organizations
Demonstrated a School Portal using SharePoint platform integrated with Live@edu and SkyDrive and Office Live. Using ADFS 2.0 will allow for AD federated authentication.
Provisioning uses a basic Identity Lifecycle Manager implementation to sync between AD and Outlook Live.
We need significant help to address the Patriot Act and how Canadian Educational institutions have been able to implement Live@edu.
Session 9 Kevin Lan, Senior Program Manager, Windows Server Division
Windows Server Release History – every 2 to 3 years for a new release
Technology Investment Areas
- virtualization – Hyper-V with Live Migration
- management – PowerShell scripting
- web – ASP .Net and WebDAV, IIS 7.5 component install
- scalability and reliability – 256 core support, componentization, boot from SAN or VHD, support solid-state devices, file classification infrastructure
- better together with Windows 7 – DirectAccess, BranchCache
Scalability
- designed for groups of 64 processors
- SQLServer can take advantage of 256 logical processors
R2 Power Management
- reduce power consumption by only powering cores that are working – Core Parking
- Power AQ program – 10% savings in power from CPU utilization all managed from Group Policies
- V4.0 ACPI spec supports this to allow power metering
Server Core Changes Read more...
- 64 bit delivery only
- minimal installation option for window server (no GUI shell, command line interface), excellent for Read Only Domain Controllers and for Hyper-V virtualization
- types of servers: Web, Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter
- reduces patch burden due to fewer components by approx 40%
Session 8 – |OCS Case Study – Cambrian College, Sudbury, Ontario (Michael Alloy, CIO Cambrian College and Mauro Lollo, CTO UNIS LUMIN)
Business Situation – before
- Nortel PBX with CallPilot
- Novell Groupwise
- Employees sharing phones
- limited phones in classrooms
Needs
- increase classroom phones
- enhanced distance ed program
- add more phone extensions
- greater integration between communication and collaboration tools
- future proofing & innovation
Challenges
- cost
- features and flexibility
- lack of integration
Approach – engaged a consulting firm that specializes on Unified Communications
The Solution for Cambrian
- OCS on premise Web conferencing – content sharing with audio and video
- OCS Edge infrastructure – remote access
- High Fidelity recordings
- Integration with 3rd party video and conferencing equipment in the classroom
- OCS Voice
- Integration with existing Nortel PBX
- Optimized for OC softphone endpoints for staff – headsets and USB phones
- Office Communicator Phone Edition IP phones in the classrooms
Cambrian is facing significant revenue pressures and the implementation of UC is seen as strategic to the future of the college.
Results and Benefits Read more...
Session 7 Raj Gopalakrishnan, Enterprise Technology Strategist, Voice, Compete, Incubation
Currently – silos of communication with multiple inbox, phone numbers, etc
Future of Communications (centred around identity and presence)
- Unified Inbox & Presence
- Authentication – heavily leverage Active Directory
- Administration – uses Exchange Server
- Storage – SQLServer
- Compliance
Unified Communications decreases costs by addressing ( estimated 40 -50% savings):
- travel expenses
- telephony and audio conferencing charges
- real estate and facility costs
- messaging and voice mail costs
- cost of communication systems
Case Study – Microsoft Internal Deployment – generated 240% ROI and savings of > $212M USD annually (used Forrester’ Business Value Framework)
There is a significant Environmental Sustainability benefit with Unified Communications – significant reduction in carbon footprint and power consumption.
The core of Microsoft’s UC solution is that it is “presence powered”. Impressive demo starting with Outlook, moving to IM, audio and then a video conference. Impressed with the ease of use and seamless integration.
Three Phases of Rolling out UC – start simple and add onto your existing investments in Exchange and SQLServer by adding Office Communication Server.
Session 6 Chris Pirie, GM, Microsoft Learning Marketing and Sales Mgmt
The Skills Imperative – bridging the skills gamp and increasing deployment – 3 pillars
- Digital Literacy – reaching the masses through technology readiness
- IT Academy Program – reaching future tech leaders through competency and career enablement
- Commercial Gold Certified Training – driving deployment through career enhancement
Channels for Microsoft Learning
- Extended Classroom
- Online Learning
- Certifications
Provided some stats on aging IT workforce, global IT employment growth about why this is important to Microsoft
The Microsoft Ecosystem in Canada http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship (IDC report)
IT Academy Overview – BCIT might want to consider joining http://www.microsoftitacademy.com
- essential level – digital content for Digital literacy, Operating System and Office applications
- advanced level – supports content for Office, Server and Developer products
- will be part of the Campus Agreement in 2010
Jeff Johnson – IT Academy Area Lead North America
Diploma/Degree + Certification = Career Advantage