LEAP - Halfway through the Dutch masterclasses

The past few months I have been attending the Microsoft Lead Enterprise Architect Program (LEAP).

LEAP is no architecture programme, but a programme for architects who want to know more about Microsoft solutions and the vision behind the various Microsoft products.

Last week the third of five masterclasses was given in The Netherlands. These masterclasses are about currently available technologies. In January a trip to the Microsoft head office in Redmond, USA will give us more information about the future vision of Microsoft.

LEAP is organised by the Dutch Microsoft Innovation Center. There are 4 groups of approximately 50 people each. Each masterclass is given for one of those groups, so Microsoft gives each masterclass 4 times, on several days.

The subject of the first masterclass was "(De)coupling or information systems". Presented technologies were among others BizTalk and Sharepoint, but also for instance Microsoft Host Integration Server. This session was mainly about Service Oriented Architectures (SOA).

The trainees get much information sent to them to prepare for the masterclasses. In this first masterclass 13 documents were sent, which had be studied in advance.

The masterclass itself started with a short (and fast) overview of the different products and their use in architectures. After the presentations a case was presented concerning a fictional bank.

The group was split up in 6 teams for a workshop. Each team got the following tasks:

  • Extract the business requirements from the case.
  • Define architectural decisions.
  • Create a high-level architecture.
  • Describe the pros and con's of the architecture.

After the workshop, the results had to be presented to one of the other groups.  After a short break Microsoft presented its own design to all people present.

After a good meal the masterclass was finished at 7:30 PM.

The set-up of the following masterclasses was equal to the first, only the subject was different.

The second masterclass was about "Access to information and services". Here technologies such as Silverlight, Smart Client, XAML, BI and datamining were discussed. This too was a very informative and inspiring day.

The third masterclass about infrastructure was my speciality. The presented processes and technologies were: Infrastructure Optimization (IO), MOF (ITIL with a Microsoft taste), System Center (formerly known as MOM and SMS server with some extra extensions) and the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI).

A very interesting subject was WSSRA (Windows Server System Reference Architecture). This is a set of documents with standard patterns for the implementation of Microsoft technology. It contains architecture blueprints, implementation guides and goods pratices concerning security, storage, networking and much more. The total scope of the information is approximately 3000 pages!

In a couple weeks the following LEAP session session is planned, about security. More about this later.


This entry was posted on Friday 09 November 2007

Earlier articles

Quantum computing

Security at cloud providers not getting better because of government regulation

The cloud is as insecure as its configuration

Infrastructure as code

DevOps for infrastructure

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

(Hyper) Converged Infrastructure

Object storage

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV)

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

What's the point of using Docker containers?

Identity and Access Management

Using user profiles to determine infrastructure load

Public wireless networks

Supercomputer architecture

Desktop virtualization

Stakeholder management

x86 platform architecture

Midrange systems architecture

Mainframe Architecture

Software Defined Data Center - SDDC

The Virtualization Model

What are concurrent users?

Performance and availability monitoring in levels

UX/UI has no business rules

Technical debt: a time related issue

Solution shaping workshops

Architecture life cycle

Project managers and architects

Using ArchiMate for describing infrastructures

Kruchten’s 4+1 views for solution architecture

The SEI stack of solution architecture frameworks

TOGAF and infrastructure architecture

The Zachman framework

An introduction to architecture frameworks

How to handle a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack

Architecture Principles

Views and viewpoints explained

Stakeholders and their concerns

Skills of a solution architect architect

Solution architects versus enterprise architects

Definition of IT Architecture

What is Big Data?

How to make your IT "Greener"

What is Cloud computing and IaaS?

Purchasing of IT infrastructure technologies and services

IDS/IPS systems

IP Protocol (IPv4) classes and subnets

Infrastructure Architecture - Course materials

Introduction to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Fire prevention in the datacenter

Where to build your datacenter

Availability - Fall-back, hot site, warm site

Reliabilty of infrastructure components

Human factors in availability of systems

Business Continuity Management (BCM) and Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

Performance - Design for use

Performance concepts - Load balancing

Performance concepts - Scaling

Performance concept - Caching

Perceived performance

Ethical hacking

The first computers

Open group ITAC /Open CA Certification


Recommended links

Ruth Malan
Gaudi site
Esther Barthel's site on virtualization
Eltjo Poort's site on architecture


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The postings on this site are my opinions and do not necessarily represent CGI’s strategies, views or opinions.

 

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