Comments for Big Men On Content

Comment on Full Disclosure by Lubor Ptacek (@lptacek)

Lubor Ptacek (@lptacek) — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:08:30 +0000

Interesting news. Congratulations on your new role!

Comment on The Last Architect by Lee Dallas

Lee Dallas — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 20:42:52 +0000

Democratizing the access to technology is of course a benefit of the cloud. It is not all about writing code though – it is about learning how to explain what it does (and doesn’t do) to people that pay you to make it work or that you need to do it for you for time or skill reasons.

Moreover – everybody doesn’t learn the same way and it is equally self-aggrandizing to assume everybody can or even wants to learn purely by poking around. That method does not scale.

The point was though that even if I poke around the API – if I never get to build something people will use and put it in production – I’ll have no idea how to manage the change in the business even if the cloud magically gives me all the bells and whistles simply by entering a credit card.

Every vendor I know hates enterprise architects because at one time or another one has said ‘no’ and they lost a deal. Sure there are bad ones that say no to everything but every profession has its collection of losers.

Somebody has to be in the position to decide (or at least suggest) which of ‘n’ choices for a cloud solution is the best one for a particular business. That decision is neither purely business or technical. It is a blend of the two. The best architects understand both sides. The bad one’s will tell you the business doesn’t matter.

Comment on The Last Architect by Peter Monks (@pmonks)

Peter Monks (@pmonks) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:29:09 +0000

The Cloud arguably provides a more democratised way of getting the necessary technical skills that an enterprise architect requires. Instead of only being able to learn about ERP, CRM, CMS, marketing etc. systems after paying for ludicrous up-front licenses and after attending numerous mind-bogglingly expensive & boring vendor training courses, I can now fire up a REST client and start poking around myself, without handing over a cent in many cases.

And despite what some enterprise architects seem to think, having a deep technical understanding of what each system can and (more importantly) can’t do is the number 1 key foundational skill of the profession. I for one welcome the numbered days of the whiteboard-marker-wielding, hasn’t-coded-in-20-years-and-proud-of-it, self-aggrandising “enterprise architect”!

Comment on The Last Architect by Lee Dallas

Lee Dallas — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:49:54 +0000

I agree and that is kind of the point the skills will always be needed. What worries me is that the training grounds are disappearing. When every company did everything on their own it increased the number of opportunities to build, fail and learn. People entering the business will have fewer and fewer places to work to get that experience. Some companies will have no where to learn at all.

Comment on The Last Architect by Peter Monks (@pmonks)

Peter Monks (@pmonks) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:32:06 +0000

Seems to me that the same role / skillz will remain just as relevant in the brave new world of Cloud / SaaS – it’s just that the technologies used to tie different silos together are changing. Instead of focusing on ETL processes, ESBs, COBOL etc. the Cloud gives the enterprise architect shiny new baubles such as REST APIs, web hooks, Javascript etc.

Unless of course you think that enterprises no longer need to integrate their ERP, CRM, CMS, marketing, … applications?

Comment on One Docbase To Rule Them All? by Scott

Scott — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:24:39 +0000

Good discussion, and not unlike those that we have everytime we go into a client. If there was always a single solution, why would they pay us to figure it out? I tend to agree that usually repositories are aligned with business units and business functions…except when they aren’t.

Comment on One Docbase To Rule Them All? by Documentum City Documentum City's monthly wrap up Documentum City, Documentum NewsDocumentum City

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:40:39 +0000

[...] Lee Dallas – One Docbase to rule them all [...]

Comment on One Docbase To Rule Them All? by webbej1

webbej1 — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 00:56:57 +0000

I believe you have answered your own question when you said that “change” is your biggest stumbling block. You are not required to think about docbases as square blocks. Why not assign docbases by level of change management anticipated? So, the whiz kids get as many frickin docbases as they want, but they have to deal with them. The scan/index accounts payable can have the slowest docbase they desire, hell give them version 5.25 and they’d be happy. Think of docbases as fluid, the bottom layer a lot slower some divide them up.

Comment on One Docbase To Rule Them All? by pmonks

pmonks — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 04:58:03 +0000

For the record, I’m not Tweedledum.

Comment on One Docbase To Rule Them All? by worthyl

worthyl — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 03:55:31 +0000

not sure if I agree with either pmonks or Pie – they seem to support and contradict each other in the same post. Tweedledee and Tweedledum? *smile*

Trying to fit everything in a single docbase can be expensive. Scalability, HA and DR impose a tax which may not be necessary for all applications. (Who else uses Exadata as a backing system?) Also shifting any of those dimensions after the fact after an upgrade can be prohibitively expensive – ever try partitioning the dm_sysobject tables after the fact? Not fun! Also not fun is trying to coordinate changes/outages with two or more incompatible business units.

Generally, IMHO, the best approach is to create a set of docbases organized along the lines of SLA and/or usability concerns and assign applications accordingly.

W-