Session 1: Innovations in Identity Management

Stefan Brands (who’s also Dutch) took the stage and shared with us his story. He and some colleagues joined Microsoft due to the acquisition of Credentica (http://www.credentica.com/) last year. Credentica has developed and patented their so called U-Prove technology which is a new way of doing Identity management.
UProve will become/is a so called “minimal disclosure token”

I was expecting a story about the new Geneva platform, so this was a nice kind of surprise to me. Stefan took us through this UProve technology and explained a bunch of its features. I invite you all to read more about this technology at http://www.credentica.com/unique_features.html and watch the introduction video http://www.credentica.com/intro_video.html.

Some of the features Stefan highlighted are:

• Subset disclosure: Only send the requested claims from the token
• Unlinkability /untraceability
• Derived claims: only disclose a property of a claim (can be computed)
• Issuer driven revocation: ex. a credit card that became invalid. The token will be blacklisted.
• User driven revocation: ex. the token is lost
• Verifier driven revocation: something invisible in the token van indicate that the token is blacklisted
• Brokered disclosure: some sort of query can be send to a broker. the result will not contain the details itself; the result will just indicate that records have been found (with perhaps the record count)
• User signed transcript: a relying party can send a subset to another relying party as an audit transcript

It’s really interesting where this is going and I expect this to be integrated in all sorts of Microsoft product stacks like for example WCF.

Session 2: Navigating the New World of Business

Daniel Rasmus elaborated a bit more on the well known subject : New World of Work / Business.
His story was about the different generations passing on (like the babyboomers, generationX and right now the Millennials) and how these generations all have their own characteristics and requirements related to their profession.
Daniel writes about this subject on his blog, and you can also find more on this web site: http://www.listeningtothefuture.com/

He and Rob Salkowitz wrote a book called “Listening to the Future” in which they speak about methods of scenario planning to look at issues facing businesses over the next 10-12 years. The work force coming up will be of a whole different kind that most of the companies are currently ready for. So anticipating on this is a major thing!

Interesting stuff, I recommend reading this whitepaper he wrote about the New World of Work:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/1/2/012e8e6e-ff65-4b04-857c-1e2c991f57f4/NewWorldOfWork.pdf

Session 3: Building composite information worker solutions using the Microsoft Office System

Paul Stubbs talked about OBA’s:  Office Business Applications. He showed different kind of architectures to build these and also showed a tool called the OBA composer. This is a tool which allows a user to mashup his OBA sharepoint application, and then let the tool generate this app within sharepoint. Nice kind of way to abstract all sorts of sharepoint configuration details.

Session 4: Security

Steve Riley came along, and did a whole different kind of session. Without a powerpoint he did some sort of whiteboard session where everyone could ask questions and discuss all sorts of issues.
I really enjoyed this session. It is great to see someone speaking on a subject he knows a LOT about; and he did it in such a humorous manner that I think everybody was on the tip of his chair ( :) that’s a Dutch saying that means you’re listening very closely to the speaker, and he has grabbed your full attention).

So we a great laugh at this last session of the day. Afterwards, we went directly to the busses to visit the Newcastle Golf Club for a dinner and a spectacular view.

That latter wasn’t possible due to the fog that hung around the hill.. Pity, however the dinner and table talk were fine!

Session 1:  Software + Services a.k.a Windows Azure

The first session of the day was all about Windows Azure. Yousef Khalidi took the stage and gave a nice talk about this.

As I visited the PDC 2008 last year, and I also attended the Cloud Computing seminar done by David Chappel, for me there was not that much new stuff being told.

He told what Azure as a Cloud Computing platform delivers:

• Automated Service Management
• High availability and scalability
• Rich developer experience (uses the common platform: .NET, VS2008)
• Model driven service lifecycle management (manages services, not just servers)

Some characteristics of a cloud computing platform (for more on this, read my blog post and its links about the David Chappell seminar):

• Scale out and not Scale up
• Add and remove capacity on demand
• Pay for what you use, as you go (based on e.x. network utilization, storage capacity or VM hours)
• Automation is the key to reducing costs

Then, Yousef shared some ideas on the future of azure:

• Support for unmanaged code
• Also run legacy apps
• support for more application types
• more interfaces to utilize (for example for monitoring, tracking and event handling)

Session 2: Role of Architecture in the current Economic Climate

Now here was a session that I didn't quite expect, in a positive sense. Neil Leslie had us put our feet back on the ground talking about how to leverage the current economical situation to its best.
( I found his PPT right here on a public web site: http://architect-center.com/groups/saf/media/p/30.aspx)
First he talks about the Microsoft internal IT characteristics:

Message here was, Microsoft does know enterprise IT and how to best centralize this. With these kind of numbers, I guess you have to :)
Leslie then took a lot of time asking and discussing what he called the ‘Ultimate Question’:

• How do you add business value?
  The answer Leslie have have here is:
• User Experience
• BI

When talking to, or selling to customers make these are your unique selling points. Focus on these because right now it seems these are the most triggering aspects a customer might relate to and decide on.

• And how do you drive out costs?
  The answer Leslie gave here is:
• SOA and Business Process
• Development

SOA and Business Process has everything to do with centralizing key (software) functions, reuse (not just of small software parts, but also of complete subsystems)  and optimizing business processes around this.  To reduce costs, you could also take a look at fast prototyping methodologies like Agile (Scrum, XP etc…)

To distinguish yourself, Leslie told, you have to move now! On what area? Watch this slide:

Session 3:  Application Architecture Guidance

Unlike the Agenda stated, not Don Smith took care of this session, but Ade Miller took the stage.
He guided through the Application Architecture Guide you can find on CodePlex.

I’ve been using this guide for a while now, and I must say I think it’s a great collection of information you’d normally see spread out in different segments within a project. It’s not that Microsoft is telling anything really new in this guide, to me the added value is the fact that it’s now all put into one great book for reference purposes.

Ade told about the different Architectural Types, Architectural frame and Architectural Styles. He also explained the different steps you can take when designing your architecture, and the quality attributes you should look at the guarantee some sort of stable, high quality deliverable.

If you are now raising your eyebrows, I’d really invite you to take a look at the book.

By the way, I really belief this kind of info should go hand in hand with a security approach. So when defining an architecture also take a look on the MSDN Security Developer Center, and especially on Threat Modeling.

Session 4: Office Futures

Gideon Bibliowicz took his turn to talk about the future of the Office products.
Due to an NDA we had to sign, I cant say anything about this, but as usual it will get bigger, better, more beautiful and perhaps also easier to integrate :)

Well, at least I guessed Gideon’s favorite soccer team right, ‘Holland’ won me a USB key :)

After the bus ride back to the hotel, we went to the Lucky Strike Lanes & Lounge across the street for some fun and beers.

So here we are! LEAP 2009 @ Redmond has started!

After a steady flight we arrived perfectly on schedule in Seattle WA.

Luckily, it didn't take long to get passed through customs and soon we were on a bus ride to the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

I just checked in and I have pretty much the same room (and the same nice view!) as two years ago.
After checking in and a shower, we took a walk to the mall (http://www.bellevuesquare.com/) on the other side of the street. I had some ideas of presents to buy, but finding those items seems to be a bit hard… so many shops…. I hope I have more luck on Friday, we’ll have a day off then and will visit downtown Seattle.

Expect more LEAP follow ups this week!