Speaking on SOA: The Paradigm Shift and IO in Denver Tuesday

I will be speaking as part of our NuCon 2008 - Denver conference that we are doing together with Microsoft. I am super excited that we have the Scott Kerfoot from Microsoft as our keynote speaker:

Keynote: The Future is NOW!

The pace of change in technology increases every day. In this keynote you’ll see some key new Microsoft technologies in action and learn how they can help you build on what you know now to help you create the business of the future. You will get an introduction to the Windows Live Platform, Popfly and XNA Game Studio.

Presented by: Scott Kerfoot, Director of Strategy, Microsoft and Joe Shirey, Architect Evangelist, Microsoft

I am giving my presentation in the context of Microsoft IO, which is our strategic initiative. The official abstract is below, but in simple terms, IT is currently out of whack in many cases with the business objectives. IT needs to move from being from being a cost center to an Agile and Dynamic Enabler of the Business. To that end, Microsoft IO is based on a set of maturity models to access where you are today and where you want to be. Service Enablement and SOA is a huge piece of getting IT to where they need to be but ONLY makes sense in terms of THEIR specific business needs and goals and their model, not anyone else's or just plugging in SOA for the sake of doing it.

SOA: Making the Paradigm Shift

Building SOA enabled applications requires a different paradigm for how organizations design, build, and operate their existing business systems. While the “perfect” architecture exists in everyone’s minds, we all need to deal with the realities of our existing business systems, the skills of our teams, and immediate business needs. It is unlikely that the business will “pause”, enable you to retrain or rehire your team, hold off on new project requests, and allow you to completely re-architect your existing business infrastructure. So, how do you meet the short term needs of the business without compromising the longer term objectives of SOA enablement? During this discussion, we will talk about utilizing Microsoft IO to transform existing arrays of heterogeneous, distributed, complex and often inflexible IT systems into a set of more connected, simplified and adaptable ones that can better support the business.

Presented by: Sam Gentile, Principal Consultant, Neudesic

I'll be repeating the same talk in New York City on April 2nd.

We also have state of the art sessions on LINQ, Silverlight, BI, SQL Server, TFS and more from the people living this latest wave in real deployments in the field. Sure would love to see you there!