The KIT ─ Knowledge & Information Technology
No. 120 - 16 May 2014
Was this forwarded to you?
In This Issue
Wolfram Connected Devices
Practical Guide to Cloud Computing v2
Scott Ambler on Agile
No Magic World Conference
Seen Recently
CB photo

Consulting Services
  • IT Strategy
  • Enterprise Architecture Roadmap 
  • Business Process Modeling & Analysis 
  • Enterprise Software Selection 
  • IT Innovation Briefings
  • IT Due Diligence
  • Executive IT Seminars
  • Cloud Computing
  • Security Maturity
  • Software Process 
  • Knowledge Strategy
  • Technical Communities
  • Knowledge Capture
  • Taxonomy development 
  • Enterprise Social Media 
Contact Us:
c�b� IT and Knowledge Management
www.cebe-itkm.com
info@cebe-itkm.com
+1 281 460 3595
Twitter: @cbaudoin 
Forward this newsletter to colleagues and friends: use the "forward email" link below at left, rather than "Forward" in your email software, to preserve your privacy, give the recipient more options (their own unsubscribe link, etc.) and to give us better click-through data from ConstantContact. Thanks!
Wolfram's Connected Devices Project
You probably haven't heard about Wolfram Research for a while. The brainchild of Stephen Wolfram was first famous for inventing the Mathematica symbolic language (1988). A second period of fame occurred with the "answer engine" called Wolfram|Alpha (2009). We mentioned this system in the KIT No. 3 (1 July 2009), saying that it "answers questions requiring an understanding of units and a knowledge base of scientific and historical data."

Now, Wolfram is jumping on the bandwagon of the Internet of Things with the "Connected Devices Project." This is basically a big online catalog of devices, which Wolfram hopes will be integrated into systems that use the Wolfram Language -- the language used to invoke Mathematica and which is progressively being developed as its own product.
Practical Guide to Cloud Computing, v2
The Cloud Standards Customer Council just issued version 2 of the Practical Guide to Cloud Computing, originally published in 2011. The PGCC v2 now includes 10 steps, thanks to the addition of a specific Security and Privacy step (the new step 7) written by Claude Baudoin. It also incorporates references and summaries of the various topical guides that have appeared since v1, such as the white papers on cloud SLAs or on application migration.
Scott Ambler on Agile
Before his full-day workshop on Agile development in Mexico City, Cutter Consortium's Scott Ambler led an executive roundtable on April 29. Here are some of the points he emphasized:
  • Agile people and enterprise architects often don't work well together today. In fact, agilists often willfully ignore both architecture and process.
  • Architects need to know how to code in order to command respect from developers.
  • Enterprise architecture is a multi-year effort, which is hard to sustain in a business culture that demands short-term results.
  • The best way to define requirements is in terms of tests (matching the concept of "test-driven development"). 
  • With Scott's "Disciplined Agile Delivery" (DAD) approach, even a conservative organization such as a bank can end up releasing incremental software updates on a daily basis! 
No Magic World Conference
No Magic, a modeling tool company based near Dallas, held its annual user conference on May 4-7. There were useful tutorials on how to model several aspects of business/enterprise architecture (e.g., processes, data, organization, as well as requirements).

The Object Management Group's Chairman Richard Soley gave a keynote about the benefits of modeling in the "Internet of Things" area (OMG manages the recently formed Industrial Internet Consortium).

One of the highlights was the talk by John Zachman, who introduced the concept of EA in 1987 with the Zachman Framework, which he has just updated. Elisa Kendall gave pragmatic advice on building a business ontology, and Ronald Ross talked about modeling business rules. If you would like more information about any of these topics, please contact us.
Seen Recently...

"The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply."

-- Zig Ziglar

 

"It's a good thing not everyone has a smart phone. Someone has to honk when the light turns green."

-- Bill Murray, comedian and actor