Changing the Rules of Systems Architecture
Arvinda Sehmi, Architect and Head of the Enterprise Team EMEA, Microsoft
Architecting systems is just too difficult and time consuming. Architecture is a process of complex work activities involving lots of smart people. There has to be an easier way to build systems. At Microsoft we want to change the way in which systems are being built, deployed, and managed. We want to free up time and costs to allow architects, developers, and the business at large to focus on adding value where it matters—with their customers and in the business functionality of their applications and not in the core platform technology. Efforts are underway at Microsoft in a number of areas to change the rules of systems architecture. I will provide a look at a number of the key initiatives that will make this happen and how architecting systems will become simpler, less time consuming, and affordable. We will look at the new rules of systems construction, deployment, and management where many of the architectural choices have been taken already and baked into the platform itself, allowing you to focus on the things that really matter to your business.

Architecting an Adaptive Enterprise
Marc Wilkinson, Software Group Regional CTO, Hewlett Packard
The Adaptive Enterprise helps customers lower IT-related costs while making IT flexible enough to deliver what is really needed—simplicity, agility, and value. An Adaptive Enterprise enables customers to achieve a tight coupling between business and IT so they are able to quickly and easily respond to change, helping to maximize return, mitigate risk, improve performance and increase agility. This talk will discuss bringing people, processes and technology together to build an adaptive enterprise.

The New Role of Applications in SOA: Ensuring Business Agility
Gordon Van Huizen, Strategic Technology Advisor, Sonic Software
Software development is undergoing a dramatic transformation as the demands for business process optimization, IT agility and corporate compliance continue to increase. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) promises to provide standards-based connectivity and interoperability, but we need to stop thinking one application at a time. Instead we must consider the implications of building large-scale systems from sets of collaborating applications. The enterprise service bus (ESB) has emerged as the leading way to connect business services to ensure flexibility, visibility and governance of enterprise SOA environments. And the emerging technology of event stream processing (ESP) takes the next logical step by enabling service-oriented systems to detect and respond to critical business conditions in real time. This keynote will examine these new pillars of software architecture and how they can be leveraged to build the next generation of IT infrastructure.