Docandersen&#039;s Blog

When you consider the hype around cloud computing you find that it is more hype than anything right now. Like Dr. Miracles wonder elixir most of cloud computing can’t do the things you need and or want it to do consistently.

Partly of course this is the reality of squeezed IT budgets and cloud computing in the short run offers additional cost savings. But cost savings is a window. Once you open it it quickly closes.

The reality of cloud computing in the near term is security. In fact the more clouds I look at, the more I realize security may be the today and the tomorrow of cloud computing. Secure solutions that are based on APT, but also on years of experience both in managing secure solutions but also in building and providing solutions that are based wholly on a secure implementation.

Reality in the security space is there are as many wholes in some vendors offerings as there are answers. Microsoft offers a number of solutions that trumpet their “days to vulnerability closed” but the reality is there remains a high number of vulnerabilities. IBM has many solutions that have significant security issues. Redhat and other Linux vendors have long lags often between vulnerability opened and closed.

Cloud security can’t be about the response. It has to have an offensive capability working to close the gaps.

In the past I’ve talked about new models and patterns for developers to consider building towards. I suspect someone should spend some time (probably me later) on what the security options would be using cloud computing.

Security through obscurity
In transit or on-the-fly security
others?

.doc

Returning to the Syncverse, yes, it is still there…

February 26, 2012February 26, 2012doandersen

In my book “The Syncverse” many pieces of which originally appeared in my blog and podcasts, I talk about the concept of one solution that would allow for people to have hold and store the things that were important to them. It would have to leverage a USN and GUID system as per the various standards (with in the case USN represent the Universal Synchronization number for any specific solution based on a Globally Unique Identification or GUID of a specific data set).

There are many solutions that have come into being since I wrote my book that get close to the concept but still lack a number of critical components.

Universal Access
Security
Ease of use/access
one drive to rule them all and in the cloud bind them

I would like to talk about the last one today. I’ve beaten the other topics more in the past than I have the concept of one drive to rule them all. I’ve been playing with cloud drives for the past month or so.

During that time I have found some interesting things.

Gladinet is a great tool if you intend to embrace cloud storage solutions
backup solutions to the cloud are slow and most are expensive. I strongly recommend Carbonite for lower cost and reasonable speed.
Bandwidth remains an issue – yesterday while uploading 20 gigs to a cloud drive and running my cloud backup solution, the rest of the PC’s in the house had virtually no access to the Internet. I don’t have the most expensive Comcast Xfinity solution, but I don’t have the cheapest either.
Automated synchronization requires an application (see Gladinet above). There aren’t as many sync programs on the Macintosh.

The cloud concept is one that will in the end change the way we use and leverage computers. What cloud doesn’t provide us is the path to the Syncverse concept. That I suspect will have to come from cobbling a number of solutions together in the short run.

.doc

Creating an Architectural Board to maintain the concept of the profession of Software Architecture.

February 25, 2012February 25, 2012doandersen

So my friend replied to yesterdays blog agreeing with my now expanded scope of the reasons why there isn’t anything new in Software Architecture. He didn’t like the word immaturity, but who does.

He had an additional point that I was moved by. It actually got me thinking that his point might in fact be the number one reason there is nothing new in Software Architecture. I asked him if I could share the idea. He said yes so here it is.

Everyone has their own Architectural Theory.

When he first proposed that (we actually spoke on the phone this time rather than 24 emails) concept I was shocked. I have a lot of friends who have created their own architectural frameworks and ideas.

They borrow bits from many other theories and create their own. They often attribute the source so that is good. But the reality is they are making the waters murky rather than helping. His concept that strikes me is the creation of a body whose job it is to create and accept architectural concepts. It would reduce the number of theories out there by increasing the complexity of having an approved theory. Today all you have to do is say “look this is my theory of architecture and it’s the best one.”

It goes to my thinking about the Internet (the great Internet board) that I posted awhile ago. The concept that there has to be more than simply saying look at me for something to be published (this blog of course, a great example as it is simply a look at me).

Professions have boards and bodies whose job it is to maintain the profession. Not the people as any one person is well not critical. The profession as a whole entity is the important thing (which goes against the concepts of socialism but is the reality of a profession).

So,

I present this to the architecture board as a pundit/critic’s view of the architecture profession.

What say you board?

.doc

Sometimes when you listen you can actually find out that you were “partially” wrong.

February 24, 2012February 24, 2012doandersen

Yesterday I got an email from an old friend asking me about my blog “There is nothing new in software architecture.” he disagrees with me about the certification problem, but he felt the same way saying “yeah, haven’t seen anything new in more than 5 years.”

But then he asked me to consider if it wasn’t just certification (which we argued about in a 27 email thread but that is a different day and another blog) what else is wrong with software architecture.

I resisted at first having focused on the certification issue from both sides for more than 10 years. But after our last email I agreed to think about it, and if anything came of the thinking to blog it.

Problem 1: Immaturity

(Sung to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”). With the advent of UML structured architectural documentation came into being. From the Zachman framework we aligned documents produced with the phase of a project. From there people discovered gold and the gold rush began, Every major software vendor created their own iteration of ITIL, UML and each one was uniquely positioned by the vendor as the best and the brightest. So confusing that I’ve noticed the opposite affect on documentation lately as more and more projects adopt agile methodologies, they drop project documentation. Which by the way isn’t part of agile it is part of the immaturity of software architecture.

Problem 2: Ego

There is often a reality behind why things don’t mature. One of the biggest drivers is ego. I am calling this the Cult of Architecture for lack of a better term. In the cult the folks flock to the latest and greatest (certifications count here pal) because well that is what it takes to build the ego. The ego becomes larger than the person. I know of so many places that suffer this problem “I have a new idea” the person says, everyone in the room then waits for person X to comment on the new idea before they do.

OK Pal, I thought about it, there are many more reasons and certification is a contributor not a driver. I think it is a huge contributor to the problem but I will concede your point that in fact it is not the only driver.

.A chagrined Doc

Nothing new, lots of in-fighting and 23 people trying to get through the door at the same time…

February 23, 2012February 23, 2012doandersen

I am beginning to realize that it impacts me more than I want to admit, this feeling that there is nothing new in software architecture.

Partially because I spent so many years chasing the dream of a profession. I still see a profession in the future, but until the various groups can all just “get along” I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

In the fullest sense of disclosure I am a member of IASA. I have been for a number of years and so I do support IASA’s point of view in relation to the overall concept of a profession for architects.

What concerns me is that there are a number of organizations now that continue to spring up. I have been using the comparison to the presidential race going on in the US right now. What would happen if every week a new candidate joined the race. It may in fact happen that someone will wait until the entire race is over and jump in at the last minute. They (probably Sarah Palin if anyone) won’t suffer the slings and arrows of the race up until then. That is the problem with the many organizations being created now around software architecture.

There are too many variables
There are too many certifications
There are too many people touting their particular certification is the only certification of value
There are too many people touting that their organization is the only one seeing the future of software architecture.

I got back over and over again to other professions. You don’t have competing certification boards they are quickly killed. You don’t have numbers of professional organizations professing that they are the one to join. You usually have one focused core group and several smaller specialty groups.

If you had asked me 5 years ago about a timeline for having a profession I would have said we would have one by now. I was so focused on building that profession that I didn’t read the tea leaves.

If you asked me now I would say it is still 10 to even 20 years away. which is why it makes me sad that there is nothing “New” in software architecture.

.doc

Up ahead on the left, the road less traveled.

February 21, 2012February 21, 2012doandersen

Waiting for the compelling event. The pocket pc phone was before its time. It in the end failed because it never had its compelling event that drove it forward.

I hung on for 8 years hoping it would get better. It never actually was able to make that final transition. The IPhone and the rapidly growing Android devices saw the disadvantage. 19.99 for a mobile software package was too much. .99 cents was the right price point and that became a compelling event. The sheer number of phones sold, drove more application developers, the cost of the applications meant you could have more applications on your device and not worry because in the end the cost was reasonable.

The compelling event for smart phones however may not have been the applications. It may have been the cachet of the Apple device bursting the “phone” bubble. It became acceptable for those who considered themselves “non-geeks” to have a smart phone.

What is the compelling event for software architecture? Or has it in fact come to rest on its laurels? Enterprise Architecture seems to have taken off recently (although you can argue what and how that has happened and the impact it will eventually have). But the reality of the industry right now remains the separation perceived or real of IT from the Business. If software architects are the visionaries of the IT world, where are they going?

Is there a cachet of and around software architecture? In the end I worry about that. I don’t see anything new in the space and the problems still exist. the old joke (clinical definition of insanity do the same things over and over but expect different results each time) applies.

Robert Frost once wrote “and I took the path less traveled.” The thing that all the various groups don’t understand as they offer “Architecture” certifications and bless “Cloud Architects” and “Mobile Software architects” is that they are all not choosing the road less traveled – they are blazing trails that don’t exist. Which isn’t actually doing something new, if in fact you are simply repeating the failings of the past.

We are bound by and to our failures. The past less traveled is even less traveled now than it was. Overgrown and forgotten software architecture is spinning its wheels. In the end we may dig a rut so deep with our spinning wheels that we can’t get out. Not a wheel on the road and a wheel in the ditch and Neil Young wrote about Alabama. wheels buried to the axels in the mud and muck we generated by spinning our wheels without anything new.

Its time for a little sand for traction and then veer off the beaten path to the road less traveled.

.doc

There is nothing new in software architecture but I think I know why…

February 20, 2012February 20, 2012doandersen