Google Wave

This week I was given the following link to a presentation of Google's new product called Google Wave. Please check out this video for a 1:20h preview of this upcoming product.

Google Wave is to replace the way email, blogs, wiki's, instant messaging and other collaboration tools are used. Wave can replace all of these tools. The most important feature of Wave is that people can work together in one text, where everybody sees the other people type. This means that for instance using instant messaging you don't have to wait for the other person to finish typing. Just like when listening to another person you probably know halfway a sentence what he will say, you can follow the typing of the other person in real time and start reacting on it even if she is not finished typing.

Other nice features of Google Wave are the dragging and dropping of pictures (which of course can be followed by other people eal time by looking at the wave) and the instant spell checker that "understands" your sentence (e.g. "Icland is an Icland" is automatically changed to "Iceland is an island").

Obviously Google Wave is running in the (Google) cloud. This enables people to collaborate anywhere using any device. The big question is: will companies stop using technologies like SharePoint in favour of Google Wave running in the cloud? Although Wave looks very good, I think not.

SAS 70

SAS 70 stands for “Statement on Auditing Standards number 70”. It is a standard for certifying process control.

SAS 70 (from 1993) describes how external auditors can judge the internal process control of an outsourcing party.

SAS 70 is created by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). There are dozens of SAS standards. SAS 70 is used more and more by outsourcing companies. Especially financial institutions are keen on SAS 70.

With a SAS 70 report organizations can prove to have control over their management processes in a datacenter. There are two types of SAS 70 reports:

1. Type I  = Report on Controls Placed in Operation. This concerns the setup and existence of control measures and the effectiveness to achieve predefined goals.
2. Type II = Report on Controls Placed in Operation and Test of Operating Effectiveness. Invokes Type I but includes a check if the processes are actually used in the day-to-day business.

The basis of a SAS 70 report usually is a set of proper implemented ITIL processes. SAS 70 does not prescribe certain processes, but checks if the processes are embedded in the organization and if they are being performed.

Usually a SAS 70 report is created by an external auditor (usually an accountant agency), jus like the yearly financial report.

SAS 70 can help comply to legal obligations, like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act - SOX. The report assures outsourcing companies the processes at the insourcing party are of good standing.

Too busy to write

Normally I try to write one article per two weeks. Although the economic crisis has set in, things have not been slow for me. I am very busy working on a large bid that will take most of this year. This means long days of hard work and very little time and room in my head for other things like writing articles. Not that I have a writer’s block - I have plenty of ideas written down. It’s just that I lack the time and concentration to sit down and write it down properly. So please bear with me. There will be new articles. But not every two weeks for a while.

TOGAF 9 - What's new?

TOGAF 9 will be formally presented at the Open Group conference in San Diego at 2-4 February 2009. Today I received my pre-ordered TOGAF 9 book. Strange. TOGAF 9 is not published on the Open Group site yet, and Amazon seems not to sell it either yet. I got the book here by the way.

TOGAF 9 is the latest version of the TOGAF framework. The previous version was 8.1.1. The new version is not much different from the 8.1.1 version, but is more evolutioned, modernized (TOGAF 8.1.1 was published in 2006) and elaborated.

Parts of the book seem to be a bit re-arranged from the previous one. I think some topics are on on more logical places. many pictures are new with a refreshed look and the overall feeling is that the book is more easily readable because of a new letter front and better graphics.

TOGAF 9 also describes more topics, like security architecture and SOA. It also elaborates much more on the topics than TOGAF 8.1.1. There is a good glossary of terms (in TOGAF 8.1.1 building blocks were used without any explanation on what they were, the same goes for for instance the Enterprise Continuum and boundaryless information flow) and a better introduction. In general more attention was given to business issues and business alignment.

The iteration of the ADM is better described as is the use and implementation of the ADM in the different domains. Risk management, capability based planning and architecture partitioning are more elaborated and enriched with lots of pictures that can be used when implementing these subjects in businesses.

The book is now a whopping 744 pages long (the 8.1.1 version was 508 pages). It is a good reference guide with lots of tips, templates and checklists on Enterprise Architecture and helps architects to better implement TOGAF in enterprises. I highly recommend the book.