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Essence Enterprise 365 |
Ivar Jacobson International (IJI) has released a suite of tools that allow users to codify their enterprise's software development methodology, using a modular approach that was standardized by the Object Management Group in 2014 under the name Essence.
This suite, Essence Enterprise 365, consists of the Practice Workbench (the main tool to create and edit practices), the Practice Exchange (a collaboration network) and a free-to-browse practice library of 25 practices coded using the Essence language.
It remains to be seen how many organizations are serious enough about creating a solid and rigorous enterprise-level software engineering discipline to want to use such an environment. Software is still immature in comparison to electrical, civil or mechanical engineering, in which there are very specific steps (e.g., high-level design, circuit simulation, placement, routing, timing simulation, etc.) performed in a codified sequence to ensure the functionality and quality of the product. The whole premise of the Essence effort is that it is high time to bring software engineering to the same level of formal method definition. |
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Taxonomy Boot Camp in London |
Official, structured enterprise vocabularies help are a foundation of information management. They help with document indexing and search, database design, consistent pull-down menus in applications and websites, and more.
The flagship conference for people who work (or plan to work) on taxonomies is the Taxonomy Boot Camp that takes place in Washington, D.C., each November. For some time, there has been a companion event for European practitioners. This year's event, Taxonomy Boot Camp London, will take place on 17-18 October. |
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BIZBOK® Guide v6.0 |
The Business Architecture Guild has published version 6 of its Business Architecture Book of Knowledge (BIZBOK®). It contains a number of improvements, including new reference models for vertical industries such as financial services, insurance and healthcare. There is also a new appendix on a process and criteria to help readers select a business architecture tool.
The Guide is free to members of the Guild. Membership in the Guild is available in the form of tiered corporate bundles, but also on an individual basis at $125 per year, an attractive option for consultants or the "lone architect" in an enterprise. |
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Drones in Industry |
A very interesting webinar hosted by the Society of Petroleum Engineers on June 20 covered the use of drones for equipment monitoring. Such solutions can clearly apply to other domains such as agriculture, civil engineering, public safety and more.
John Barratt, CEO of the Oil & Gas Innovation Center in Palo Alto, Calif., reviewed the types of drones available in the market, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration rules that constrain the use of drones in this country, and the miniaturization of sensors that enables drones to be used for monitoring. Some of the more innovative sensors include electronic scanning radars without moving parts, thermal imaging sensors that only weigh 400 g (0.9 lb), coin-sized combined GPS/INS (inertial navigation system), and miniature magnetometers.
SPE members can view the recorded webinar here. Other readers who would like more extensive notes about this subject can contact Claude Baudoin. |
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Another Supercomputing Race Forecast |
Announcements about exponential increases in both computing speeds and storage capacities come regularly. Every June sees the publication of the new Top500 supercomputer ranking. What is new this year is that the U.S. is no longer in the top three, positions now held by China (TaihuLight and Tianhe-2 are no. 1 and 2) and Switzerland (no. 3). Titan, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, drops to no. 4 with one-fifth the speed of TaihuLight as it has not been upgraded in five years.
This IEEE Spectrum article points out another phenomenon: applications of such high-speed capabilities are no longer limited to scientific research, but will impact consumer-facing applications such as self-driving cars and machine learning. Real-time language translation is not mentioned, but may be one of the applications with a strong impact on social and professional lives. |
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