Something for Everyone at SATURN 2012

Whether you are an aspiring software architect or an experienced practitioner, the SATURN 2012 Conference offers courses, presentations, tutorials, and talks tailored to your level of knowledge and experience.

Relative newcomers to architecture-centric engineering and development can take the introductory course in the SEI Software Architecture Curriculum, Software Architecture: Principles and Practices (SAPP) on Monday and Tuesday, May 7-8 at a discounted price. This popular course, offered each year at SATURN and taught this year by Rob Wojcik of the SEI, introduces participants to the essentials of software architecture. Also offered at SATURN this year is a half-day tutorial on Tuesday, May 8 by Peter Eeles of IBM Rational titled Software Architect 101. This tutorial (T1) provides attendees with a solid grounding in all aspects of software architecture and a framework on which they can build a deeper understanding of the role of the architect. Other Tuesday tutorials cover effective stakeholder collaboration (T2), integration of software architecture-centric methods into object-oriented analysis and design (T3), and architectural implications of cloud computing (T4).

SATURN 2012 Registration Now Open

Registration is now open for the eighth annual SEI Architecture Technology User Network (SATURN) 2012 Conference. Register by April 9 to take advantage of early-bird savings, which include $250 off the regular full-conference rate.

SATURN 2012 will be held May 7-11, 2012 in St. Petersburg, Florida  at the St. Petersburg Bayfront Hilton hotel. The conference is presented in collaboration with IEEE Software magazine.

Architecture: Catalyst for Collaboration

The SATURN 2012 program includes more than 25 technical sessions, tutorials, courses, panel discussions, and keynote addresses that will explore how effective collaboration across geographical, cultural, and technical boundaries is increasingly prevalent and essential to system success. You will leave the SATURN 2012 conference with new ideas and solutions to implement in your organization. You will also have the opportunity to

• Share ideas and hear case studies on hot topics including cloud computing; software architecture for ultra-large-scale systems; certification, culture, and process; architecture evaluation and review; enterprise architecture; and the interaction of architecture and Agile development
• Take the first public offering of a new course from the SEI, the Advanced Software Architecture Workshop
• Learn from and interact with industry leaders (including keynote speakers Michael Stal and Andy Hunt), researchers, and senior members of the SEI staff

To register and review rates, visit the SATURN 2012 website. We hope to see you in Florida!

SATURN 2012 – Architecture: Catalyst for Collaboration

Here at the SEI, we are excited to be planning for SATURN 2012, which we will hold in St. Petersburg, Florida on May 7-11, 2012. SATURN has grown in attendance, influence, and stature every year since its inception in 2005 as a small gathering of practitioners and SEI technical staff members. With another successful conference last year in San Mateo, California, SATURN is now a truly international conference with prestigious keynote speakers and a technical program that has become more ambitious in scope and engaging in content each year.

Along with the SEI SATURN Technical Committee–Ipek Ozkaya, Robert Nord, John Klein, and Soumya Simanta–I’m happy to announce the theme we have chosen for SATURN 2012 and invite you, our SATURN blog readers, to consider being a part of the SATURN technical program by submitting an abstract for a presentation or tutorial. Entering the third year of our mutually beneficial collaboration with IEEE Software magazine, we again offer to SATURN presenters the possibility that a paper based on their presentations will be featured in a future issue of IEEE Software. Papers from presentations at SATURN 2011 will be published in forthcoming issues this year.

As projects continue to grow in scale and complexity, effective collaboration across geographical, cultural, and technical boundaries is increasingly prevalent and essential to system success. SATURN 2012 will explore the theme of “Architecture: Catalyst for Collaboration.” We will include presentations, courses, and tutorials on

• collaboration in software development; for example, architecture in an Agile project
• collaboration in the context of mobile computing, cloud computing, social networking, open frameworks, and service-oriented architecture
• knowledge management for effective collaboration
• systems of systems and ultra-large-scale systems: how to achieve collaboration across independently funded and managed organizations
• multi-agent systems and collaboration among non-human entities such as software and networks
• collaborative design and architecture tools

SATURN 2011 Keynote: David Chaiken, Yahoo! Chief Architect: Architecture at Internet Scale

David Chaiken, Chief Architect, Yahoo!
Architecture at Internet Scale: Lessons Learned from Serving Half a Billion Customers

 Notes by Bill Pollak, Jack Chen, and Peter Foldes

Abstract

Yahoo provides IT for 1/10 of the people on Earth, more than 680 million users. Billions of advertisements. Number one in email, messenger, and other media categories. Premier digital media company. 93 million Flickr photos uploaded each month. Provides media services in communication and search to consumers. Connects consumers to the advertisers—that’s how they make money.

Goal to do fast product cycles. Release functionalities every three weeks. Flickr pushes code to production multiple times per day. Speed reflected in products such as Yahoo! Home page. Goal is to make each of their experiences customized for each and every person as well as for national cultures. Yahoo home page regenerates millions of times a day with millions of different views.

SATURN 2011 Theme Leader to Present SEI Webinar: Emerging Technologies for Software-Reliant Systems

(The archived version of this webinar can now be viewed here.)

On Thursday, February 24 from 1:30 to 2:30 PM EST, Grace Lewis of the SEI will present a free SEI webinar, titled “Emerging Technologies for Software-Reliant Systems.”

Register.

Lewis is one of seven theme leaders for SATURN 2011, which will be held on May 16-20 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott in Burlingame, California. She recently wrote a blog post about SOA and cloud computing, the theme that she is leading for SATURN 2011. This webinar and others are our way of introducing readers to the themes that will be covered at SATURN 2011. Registration for SATURN is now open.

About the Webinar

Software-reliant systems of systems (SoS) now tend to be highly distributed software systems, formed from constituent software systems that are operated and managed by different organizations.

SEI architecture research planned for 2011

Each year, the SEI conducts a program of research in architecture-centric engineering. These are the topics that we plan to investigate in 2011:

1. Quality Attribute Foundations and Analysis

• Resource allocation for massively parallel multicore platforms–developing task models, resource abstractions, and scheduling strategies for predicting real-time performance
• Static analysis for multicore—investigating use of scalable static analysis to ensure that concurrency-related invariants are preserved as systems move to multicore platforms.
• System reliability framework—developing new metrics and approaches for using architecture knowledge to assure the safe and reliable operation of software-reliant systems
• Architecture-based testing—investigating techniques for using architecture knowledge to inform and reduce system testing.

SEI Concept Lab

The SEI Concept Lab produces proof-of-concept demonstrations that explore how new software and systems engineering technologies and their associated practices can provide technical insight. The demonstrations also support substantive technical and business claims for these technologies and practices with sound, validated, and accurate results.

Kurt Wallnau, a senior researcher in the SEI’s Research, Technology, and System Solutions (RTSS) Program, believes that systems that combine social intelligence, computational intelligence, and pervasive sensing will define the field of software and systems engineering for decades to come. Wallnau is leading an effort to create a concept lab to demonstrate such systems, among others, and the software engineering technology needed to design and operate them.

To learn more about the SEI Concept Lab, read this story on the SEI website.

Architects of Change at SATURN 2010

What a month it has been: busy, tiring, but full of energy and thought-provoking exchanges!

SATURN attendance has been growing steadily since its inception in 2005, and this year’s conference was no exception with attendees from 14 countries, representing more than 70 organizations. More importantly, the level of sincerity in sharing lessons learned through the presentations and the spirit of collaboration beyond the sessions that spilled into the evening activities was remarkable. Attendees were busy learning from each other and exchanging ideas until the minute their shuttles were ready to take them to the airport Friday afternoon (me included—I had to run out of the door.)

Here are my takeaways from this year’s conference, which is by no means an all-inclusive list, nor does it cover all the high quality presentations:

SATURN 2010 TECHdotMN Session Notes, Wayne Longcore Keynote, Thursday, May 20

SATURN 2010 / TECHdotMN field notes
by Mike Bollinger 5/20/10

Keynote Address: Wayne Longcore

Wayne Longcore discusses the agile architecture methodology that his team used to create the “smart grid,” a high-functioning ultra-large-scale system. His talk was titled “Managing Scale and Agility: Transformational Architecture for the Smart Grid.”

SATURN 2010: Notes from Wayne Longcore’s Keynote

Wayne Longcore, Managing Scale and Agility: Transformational Architecture for the Smart Grid

North American power grid is an ultra-large-scale (ULS) system. Cisco has said that it believes the Smart Grid will be 1000 times larger than today’s internet. When the electric grid went down in 2003, society was disrupted. The power grid must be adaptable. One of the defining characteristics of ULS systems is that, while pieces of the system might fail at times, the system as a whole must remain operational.

“I didn’t know the SEI term ULS system then, but I’d have used it had I known it.”