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Data Platform

Simon Griffiths

Introduction There’s no question that data is becoming an important topic in almost every organisation. For some organisations data will be seen as a challenge – as security breaches, privacy violations and data misuse appear on the news almost every day; for other organisations, data is an opportunity as new startups look to use data in new ways and established organisations look to monetise their current data. What is common across all organisations is the recognition that data cannot be ignored – data doesn’t look after itself and the value inherent in data cannot be realised without both up-front investment … Continue reading Data Platform

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Securing your data

Simon Griffiths

We all know that cyber-crime is increasing every year and at the moment we seem to be losing the battle against the blacks out there. Clearly the solution is to brick up the cyber walls and hope for the best ? But is that really the best approach? In security circles, the mantra is defence in depth – and for many years this served us well. Organisations built strong firewalls and DMZs and stopped employees interacting with the internet. Emails were checked in and out of the organisation and ports were blocked, file-sharing and messaging sites were banned and blocked, … Continue reading Securing your data

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Microservices and Business Processes

Simon Griffiths

In yesterday’s article I discussed the challenges of co-ordinating activities across a complex set of microservices, and I touched on the subject of end-to-end view of customer journeys and complex business processes, but I didn’t really cover that in any detail, so let’s look at what we need, and how that could be achieved. Perhaps the key objective of a microservices architecture is to break down a complex monolithic architecture into a set of components, each of which can progress and evolve at they own pace thus accelerating innovation and the development lifecycle. The challenge comes, of course, when the … Continue reading Microservices and Business Processes

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Some thoughts on Orchestration and Choreography

Simon Griffiths

Analogies are risky things, there’s always a chance that if you stretch one too far, it breaks and disproves the point you’re trying to make. What’s even worse is when an analogy needs to be explained, and therefore the analogy is pointless. And here with orchestration and choreography we have a case in point, not only does the analogy need explanation but it completely misses the point. By training, I’m a musician who studied orchestration as part of my undergraduate degree. Orchestration is all about how you choose different instruments for a large musical work, and how you write that … Continue reading Some thoughts on Orchestration and Choreography

Architecture Advent

Simon Griffiths

At this time of year, the demand for enterprise architecture seems to drop precipitously. Most companies have the dual challenge of meeting huge challenges, but with reduced resources as everyone tries to take some well deserved holiday. Change freezes have been known to start in November, and for retail, logistics and utility companies, Christmas planning will have started many months before. So as these efforts step up, it’s not really surprising that long term strategy takes a back seat. Not that I’m complaining, of course. I’m glad of the quiet that allows for more time to think, and especially to … Continue reading Architecture Advent