Mike Walker's Blog

What is the Microsoft Strategic Architect Forum (SAF)

SAF is Microsoft’s most strategic event for the architect audience and in the architecture space each year. Managed by my team the Architecture Strategy Team, SAF demonstrates to our key customers and partners, as well as the larger architectural community, our thought leadership, our vision for the future, and the reality of our platform today. SAF demonstrates to our customers how valuable they are to Microsoft and how rich the Microsoft technology roadmap is for both the short-term as well as the long-term. SAF is on track to be one of the most exciting, influential, and valuable events of the year. The response from the customers and partners, the Microsoft field, and the business groups has been extremely positive and very proactive. I will be presenting and hosting at a number of informationals on Banking Transformation and SaaS in Financial Services. There are only 250 seats at this invitation-only event, and we have quickly filled them with world-class architects. Here is just a sample of architects that have confirmed their attendance: • Enterprise Architect, Dell   • Director of Architecture, Wal-Mart • VP of Architecture, Safeway                                                                       • Senior Architect, MySpace • Head Enterprise Architect, Sanofi Aventis                                             • CIO, Moscow Government • Chief Architect, Sandia                                                                                  • VP and CIO, Johnson & Johnson • Chief Architect, Commerzbank AG                                                           • Chief Architect, Environmental Protection Agency • Strategic Architect, Honda Motor                                                             • Chief Architect, Nokia • Chief Architect, Telefonica                                                                           • Enterprise Architect, Coca-Cola • CIO Army Material Command, U.S. Army                                              • Director Strategy & Architecture, BP The agenda represents a broad array of keynote speakers, informational sessions, and roundtables. SAF is about establishing a strategic-level dialog with these key customers and partners and using that to deepen existing relationships and form new ones. With billions of dollars in revenue represented at the event, SAF plays a key role in helping cement our platform within key global accounts as well as cutting edge emerging businesses. I look forward to meeting you!

More Business Continuity Questions

I keep getting asked over and over from multiple sources about business continuity . This question was specifically around banking branch offices. My response may be helpful for you as well.

Yes there is a lot of movement here but it just isn’t focused on branch. Legislation moves slowly however I believe we should see something in the next year after the dual factor authentication madness passes. The focus here is Business Continuity, Risk Avoidance and Disaster Recovery. In the wake of all of the natural disasters, pandemic issues (e.g., bird flu in Asia) and man made mistakes (poor IT planning) the government is stepping in. There are several branches of the government looking at this. However there is a task force looking at this.

The Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council (FSSCC) goal is to coordinate with the appropriate members of the regulatory agencies, coordinate efforts to improve the reliability and security of financial information infrastructure. Below is a high level communication chart.

Members include:

• Commodity Futures Trading Commission
• Conference of State Bank Supervisors
• Department of the Treasury
• Farm Credit Administration
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
• Federal Housing Finance Board
• Federal Reserve Bank of New York

FFIBIC Members Include:

• Federal Reserve Board
• National Association of Insurance Commissioners
• National Association of State Credit Union Supervisors
• National Credit Union Administration
• North American Securities Administrators Association
• Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
• Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight
• Office of Thrift Supervision
• Securities and Exchange Commission
• Securities Investor Protection Corporation

In the standards arena there are many emerging working groups within standards bodies as well around BC. Those include:

• BITS
• FSTC
• ISO
• IFX
• Carnegie Mellon
• CERT

Also look at the FFIEC guidance as well:
http://www.ffiec.gov/ffiecinfobase/booklets/bcp/bps_02_bcp_process.html

The OCC has been ratcheting up the pressure on business continuity in a very general sense by issuing advisories, such as this http://www.occ.treas.gov/ftp/bulletin/2006-12a.pdf. 

This FDIC study discusses some of the branch connectivity problems resulting from Katrina for branches that were wholly network-dependent.http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/examinations/supervisory/insights/sisum06/article02_hurricanes.html.  However, the study  contains the caveat that “this article is not a regulatory guide to business continuity planning.”

ACORD Updates

Today is the last day of the four day ACORD submit in sunny Ft. Lauderdale. On a personal note I am happy to be out of the rain! There was quite a bit covered this session. I think ACORD is starting to feel some outside pressure to deliver. From what I am told membership has stagnated. I will not cover the business or detailed specification changes that happened but some of the more exciting items with version 2.0 of the specification and some futures. Version 2.0 is now in the Candidate Recommendation Stage. This is a big step forward for the standard. But what I am really excited about is the Unified Messaging version of the standard. This version promises: A single library of business messages Support of the insurance value chain Geography neutral Support for the standards framework Support all domains and LOB's I am happy to say it looks like this standard is heading in the right direction. I was a bit worried after they went down the XML path. The last time I deployed an application using the ACORD schema it was cumbersome and to heavy. It just didn't perform much less scale. I think after some lessons learned they are back on track. Microsoft is helping were we can to aid in this effort!

What is the IFX Forum?

I get asked the question what is IFX and why is it important. I recently did an internal presentation to my team mates (Architecture Strategy Team) on what I’ve been up to for the past few months. I talked about my involvement in many projects including some standards work. So naturally since I deal with industries I talk about Financial Services industry standards (IFX) rather than technology standards (WS-*). Personally I view standards in a layered manner. There are protocol level standards and then there are the inter-industry language standards.

So let’s give you a high level overview of the standard. The IFX Forum is a group of banks, vendors and system integrators in the Financial Services space that develops and maintains an open business standard. When I say business standard understand that the goal of IFX is to be technology neutral. This has certain implications to this standard. Unlike other standards like ACORD or SWIFT where the messages are clearly defined, it is not the case with IFX.

Think of the IFX standard as a repository for standard business elements required in particular transactions. So it is almost like a data dictionary of sorts. The business elements defined have defined meta-data that define how it is to be used.

As shown above the IFX standard business elements which are called “Objects” in the standard is the base that messages are built on. I personally do not like using the term object so when I refer to business element I am referring to the an IFX object.

So what this standard so special in the banking space? Well I think it is very valuable considering that the banking space is so fragmented in the standards space. There is a specific standard for everything with a lot of overlap. IFX has the ability to cover the majority of the lines of businesses in banking and securities. Secondly, they have started from the business level instead of the technology implementation level. This is huge. Instead of building a messaging standard around the latest technology fad these guys and gals have built a truly technology agnostic standard. So if I would like to deploy IFX as a binary stream or an XML message, it’s OK! This is very powerful in such a diverse platform world such as Banking.

Some Key Focus Groups are Focusing on the Following Projects:

·         ATM and Point of Sale

·         E-Billing and Payment

·         Core Banking

·         Credit Processing

·         Web Services