I took my IBM 665: Architectural Design of SOA Solutions exam yesterday, and thankfully passed, I’d taken the same test previously and managed to fail by a single question, which was quite gutting to be honest, but second time round, with a bit more preparation. I managed to sail through and get a good mark.
Which basically means that I’m now an IBM Certified SOA Solution Designer. This fits in well with my role as part of the SOA Virtual Team within FSS at IBM.
The test itself consists of five sections with about 59 multiple-choice questions.
Section 1 covers knowledge of applied SOA; Applying SOA principles to solution design, positioning the SOA benefits with respect to business and IT strategy, determining the role that technology standards play when implementing an SOA, applying the IBM SOA Reference Architecture and leveraging the IBM SOA Foundation and applying proper design guidelines for an SOA architecture.
Section 2 deals with SOA Assessment and Analysis; Capturing and assessing business issues and drivers, IT/technical issues and drivers, performing functional area assessments to assure readiness for SOA (people, processes and technology), assessing the current IT systems from an SOA perspective, identifying functional requirements which address business issues and drivers, identifying nonfunctional requirements and how they relate to services and creating an SOA architecture (solution outline) utilising existing reference architectures.
Section 3 is all about SOA Design; Determining services and tasks based on business process model, applying appropriate standards to SOA design, articulating architectural/design decisions, determining the approach to legacy transformation in the SOA solution, designing the service integration environment, incorporating IBM SOA Foundation products into the design as appropriate, applying appropriate SOA design patterns to solve customer problems, designing a service definition to address functional requirements, and designing a service component to address nonfunctional requirements.
Section 4 is SOA Implementation; Guide and review security implementation, guide and review implementation of integration patterns, guide and review services enablement for legacy applications, guide and review quality assurance5. Guide and review the application of IBM SOA products/tools, and guide and review the information management implementation.
The last section, Section 5 deals with SOA Deployment and Management; Guide and review the service management implementation, the business/IT policy management, business Process Management, operations management and analyze and refine service integration for optimization and reuse.
The rose wasn’t part of the test, Michelle gave it to me last night when I got home, as a Well Done for finally getting through the test, which was a wonderful end to a hard day.
So TLE is now over, and it was great, due to network issues I wasn’t on as much as I’d liked to have been blogging the sessions as I attended but thats another matter. I have a whole bunch of thoughts I’m going to post over the next week or so, both on my internal and external blogs.
I short I think I’ve gained a huge amount of new knowledge about IBM, in the ways employees work internally, who’s who and I’ve connected with a lot of new people, and attended some great sessions. It’s very hot out here, much hotter than I expected, and it’s fortunate that I decided to book tomorrow off for the long weekend to spend some time with Michelle in Paris.
Work blogging will need to wait a little while whilst we enjoy the sites of Paris, and unlike the TLE convention, wireless (free at that!) seems to work from my hotel overlooking the Moulin Rouge, which means I should be able to get our photos up onto flickr pretty quickly
Great as Walt’s dream of the magical kingdom was, he obviously didn’t really envisage a bunch of techies trying to get onto wireless networks in the land of Micky.. Wireless access at the TLE as been pretty bad, and although I’ve not really needed it, it has meant that I’ve not been able to post as many blog entries as I wanted to from TLE.
The event itself is proving to be very useful, for me personally anyways. I’m not quite so keen on the 6:30am breakfast, but thats a small point. I started my TLE with the first session of the poster program. Mine seemed to go down well, I got alot of interest from people wanting to chat to me about the subject matter, bizarrely most of them seemed to be from GBS, It was nice to start linking up with some other areas of IBM, and trying to get them to understand what the Information Server was, and how it fitted with other aspects of the IBM portfolio
The Tuesday sessions that I attended where, for the most, very useful. I started with Jeremy Cohen’s session on changing your career in IBM. I decided to swap to this at the last minute, because I’d been talking with a few people here aboiut IT architect roles, and having been in the IT Specialist role for almost 10 years, I thought it might be nice to see what other areas I could explore. Jeremys session was great, a confident speaker, and his content was very interesting to me, a newbie in the real world of IBM. In particular he explained how his current role is to aid IBM’ers get to, or change their career through a number of new IBM tools. The first of these is the Careers Index, a portal to help ytou understand the career change requirements, availability and process. Also from the same place, there is the Advance Your Career site, both of these sites provide vital information if you’re thinking of moving in IBM, probably the most interesting of these seemed to be the ability to see statistics on career changes, such as what at the most popular migrations career wise (say IT specialists to IT Architect) and also areas of size, growth and shrinkage, for instance, the IT architect role is growing, and currently quite small compared to the number of IT Specialists. Once I get back next week I think this will be of great use..
The second session of the day was by Luis Suarez, now this was quite a bizarre networking round loop.I booked onto Luis’ session about social computing and improving your socal network through tools, and I then found his blog internally when I was searching for something completely different. I left Luis an email on his blog saying I was looking forward to his session, and he left me a reply, saying that he’d try and find my poster and have a chat with me. His session was very good, and this really proves the point of what he was talking about. I also know Andy Piper (virtually since we’ve never met), and Luis knows Andy (although Andy has never met Luis), after the session I spoke with Luis, and then bumped into Roo Reynolds, metaverse evangelist, who also knows Andy. He was talking to someone, who’d also been looking at some integration requirements, so by a round about route of blogs, and virtual buddies, I got to find a new contact in IBM that I could help out with my knowledge on something he had a need for..
But I digress slightly, Luis’ session was great, he was talking about the social computing aspects of IBM, in simple terms the tools such as Blogs, Wiki’s Media Library, eMeetings and Sametime. I, personally try and update both my internal, and external blogs as often as possible, sometimes with the same content, sometime with different content, but one thing I didnt see before that Luis pointed out, was that social computing is really about building up social capital. That is by sharing, blogging and committing to a socal community, you build interest and credibility in yourself, and allow others to feed you information, relate to you, and ultimately respect you and your opinions. The concept of sharing something via email, is a very limited (unless you’re emailing all of IBM) , publishing the same information on a blog, wiki or other social network can reach a much wider audience, most importantly people that you probably didnt either know existed, or you’d normally not contact. The other important aspect here is that we are talking communities,that is people with similar interests or needs, NOT you local team that you work in, the idea of a community is a free open, growing and dynamic group of people that are far outside your normal sphere of people you’d meet. I’m definitely going to be writing a bit more on this next week as I had quite a few good ideas from Luis’ session.
The last session yesterday was by Mandy Chessell, distinguished engineer and master innovator, her session was very interesting, and I was pleased to see that her recommended reading list consisted of all the books that I had ordered from the IBM Learning bookstore here on site earlier in the day. Mandy talked about how people resisted innovation, and how good ideas could die due to that resistance. She gave a very competent talk on how to help innovation and inventions within the business. This was very interesting as I’m currently in the process of putting forward my first patent for consideration by IBM, she also agreed to help me through that process, which I think will be very useful to me in many aspects.
I’ve also managed to do a fair bit of magic, both for people that know me, and (fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it!) lots of people that I never knew before.. They seemed toi remember me, although I’m hoping thats for all the right reasons
It looks like I’m off to Paris in May.. I’ve been nominated to attend the IBM Technical Leadership Exchange (TLE) conference in Disneyland Paris
One of IBM’s most prestigious and successful learning events, the 2007 Technical Leadership Exchange (TLE) is an invitation-only education, professional development and networking event for key technical and delivery leaders. This year’s theme, Imagine the Possibilities, focuses on the potential of integrating and leveraging the diverse expertise and skills of the TLE attendees to increase client value by developing and delivering innovative solutions.
Apparently as a leader within my organisation, I’m being asked to participate in a new initiative, Pass it on! A program that promotes continuous post-event sharing of TLE information, learning, mentoring, and networking with colleagues to support IBM’s objectives of excellence, innovation and growth.
There’s a huge website that I’m going to have to read through, so it’s all a bit daunting.. Especially given I’ve never attended a TLE, or up until a few weeks ago even knew what the TLE was.. But we’re going to be staying out in Paris after TLE for a few days to do some exploring..
..also an excellent opportunity to practise some more magic I think!!
Well its Friday, and that means I get to leave Munich, the DataStage Enterprise Edition Mentoring training (part one), and head back home..
It’s been a fairly good week, mad cat lady taxi drivers, souvenirs form restaurants (so far one large menu, for the comedy value of the translated items on the menu, and shot glasses from last night), Wim catching beer mats like some dog thats never seen a stick before, squealing pig impressions,Le F*cking Car, and evenings sat under lamps hanging from reindeer antlers..
Last night we experienced more traditional German customs, this one, the ordering of starters at the restraunt. It seems that you can’t have white sausage after 9am, and having been sorely told off by the waiter for even considering that I might be able to have one, he took my alternative starter option, the beef stew with pancakes..
It seems though he took great offense to this, and decided to completely ignore all our starters, and skip straight to the main course when he delivered it, although maybe this was some other weird German custom of just stating, if you did have a starter, what would be really nice to have..
It also seems that whatever desert you have, and you are allowed deserts between the hours of 9am and 1am, it consists of a loaf of bread in custard.. or.. for us a big bun in custard..
I guess the final thought for the week is, Do my ears look big in this??
So todays celebrity taxi driver was Mad Cat Lady from the Simpsons.
The normal trip to the IBM office in Munich seemed to be taking a turn for the worst when she decided she probably actually should be wearing her glasses, she only really decided on this course of action when she was waiting at the crossroads parked over the tram lines.
Glasses on, it seems that the trip couldn’t get that much more interesting, however, pulling a sharp left into a side street, and seemingly seriously weighing up the pro’s and con’s of driving on the wrong side of the road to get round the traffic in front, she calmly announced that the car in front of the lorry was scared and she was was going to pull along side it and tell it so..
Having pulled alongside the car and I’m assuming having told it it was scared, from the animated hand waving and mumbling to the other car’s passenger side door she drove on. The next part of our trip seemed to unearth a wealth of gems that drivers in Munich may not be aware of..
Firstly, those pesky traffic lights, always turning to red as you approach them.. now according to mad cat lady taxi driver, there is a secret piece of wire under the road, and getting them to change involves rocking your car back and forth over the top of the wire in the road. Admittedly we looked a little like some reject from ‘Pimp my Ride’ and ‘Gangster Rappers do Munich‘ when we were treated to a demo of it on our trip,
Secondly for those travelers, like us, going to the IBM Munich office, its worth noting that the NEC is within walking distance of the IBM office, and she seemed to get quite upset that even though we wanted to go to IBM, we didn’t seem to appreciate her offer of dropping us off at the Trade Fair at the NEC instead, I think it may have lost something in translation, but like she said ‘If you go IBM, you could go to the Trade Fair, its just the same’, although I think just the fact I think she
was referring to our office as ebay.m, I wasn’t holding much on her corporate analysis of our company.
Having almost completely missed the point of being a taxi driver and upholding the prime directive – ‘take your customer where they ask you to take them, not where you fancy driving today’, she announced that she’d been a taxi driver since 1993, and knew Munich like no other taxi driver.. I did wonder if the jar of mayonnaise in the back of the car had been there just as long, but decided not to ask that..
Mad Cat Lady Taxi Driver also was quite proud of the fact that she new every corner of Munich at any time of day. Another handy hint for travelers from the Mad Cat Lady seems to be that she was implying that street corners in Munich, may change during the day..
So beware of changing street corners, secret traffic light wires, and cars with personality disorders and Mad Cat Lady Taxi Drivers..
I’ve now safely now arrived in Munich, quite tired after the 4am start yesterday and on the second day of training.
Last night we ate at the Restaurant at the Chinesischen Turm or Chinese Tower.Not quite as impressive in the dark, or in the cold outside, but theWeiss Beer and the Dunkle Beerwas good, as was the food.
The trip back to the hotels was interesting, as you can see, five people in a car thats about the same size as a Smart Car.. It was tight in the back, and we eventually got back using the French Sat Nav system in the car, declaring.. ‘at le next roondaboot, I wont you to turn left… I know tis is ah wonway steet, but you are french, close your eyes.. you will be fine…vila france!!’ You are most probably now at your desteenation..’
So today I was at the IBM labs in Hursley. Its an amazing place, not only just from the amazing views and grounds, but also from the fact its not your average IBM office.
For a start its huge.. and I mean huge.. the mix of old Hursley House, and the new buildings cover was seems like a mass expanse..
I had a meeting in the main old house part of the site, and this is the view from the window, down over the gardens with the sunken gardens just out of sight.
Unfortuantly I didnt get time to see, or even find the museum, I guess that will be the task for next time I’m down there.
Its quite humbling walking round the corridors of the buildings. The walls are covered with pictures of the employees, and their inventions, Master Inventor seems to be the most popular, and you realise just how much stuff IBM have come up with over the years, and its strange the mix of the historic Hursley House, the grounds, and the leading edge technology of IBM..
Definately want to go back there and have a proper poke around what I think is one of the more relaxing parts of IBM..
Its all been fairly painless (from my point of view..) and theres another set of product name changes to get used to..
Ascential DataStage becomes IBM WebSphere DataStage, and so on, meaning the IBM WebSphere Data Integration Suite comprises of the newly named IBM WebSphere DataStage, IBM WebSphere QualityStage, IBM WebSphere ProfileStage, IBM WebSphere DataStage TX, IBM WebSphere AuditStage, and IBM WebSphere MetaStage..
The new IBM WebSphere Data Integration Suite provides data profiling for understanding data and relationships; data quality for cleansing, standardizing, and matching information; data transformation for preparing information for analysis or exchange; and data movement for high-volume data extraction and loading. As well as WebSphere Information Integrator providing enterprise search technology for finding relevant information; federation technology for dynamically integrating data and content sources as if it were coming from one system; and replication and publishing technology for distributing, consolidating, and synchronizing data. Pretty much creating a knock dead solution for all the integration requirements out there..
I think the next 6 months will be an interesting time, especially for our competition.. the big beast is now being data integration, and will be powering ahead with it..
So todays celebrity taxi driver was Mad Cat Lady from the Simpsons. 
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