Worlds In Collision: Methodology Mashups in the Enterprise

Mashups are popular in pop music - blending two or more different types of songs to create a new one. Web 2.0 applications often mashup disparate systems to provide useful capabilities.

However, what happens when enterprise planning methods interact? The enterprise is constantly adapting to its surroundings and each functional area employs its own set of methodologies to plan, and execute. Methodology mashups can also occur within the enterprise. What happens when these methodologies conflict? Can methodologies be harmonized to leverage their strengths and overcome their weaknesses?

This presentation will examine these questions from the perspective of the Enterprise IT Architecture practitioner. It will consider how methodologies employed in IT architecture can and do conflict with other methodologies in strategic planning, operations management, finance, and overall governance within the organization. In particular, it will examine the interactions of Enterprise IT architecture frameworks such as The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) and methodologies such as Six Sigma, ITIL, COBIT and Lean Manufacturing.

Dr. Bill Estrem is the Principal Consultant of Metaplexity Associates Inc, an education and consulting firm that provides services to organizations across the globe. He is a member of The Open Group Architecture Forum and is a contributor to the development of TOGAF. He is an adjunct associate professor at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota in the International Business Administration program where he teaches courses in Operations Management.

Presentation materials

Software as Strategy

Starting technology-leveraged companies takes a combination of talent, strategy, product innovation and a good helping of luck. Do you have the right product? Can you deliver it at the right time and cost? Why do you need to know about Web 2.0? What is an open company? Where does open source fit in?

In this discussion we will review the aspects of leveraging technology as you build out great products, and how to operate in an agile, ever-changing environment. There have never been more tools and services to leverage, but choosing the right ones can be the difference between success and failure.

Jamie Thinglestad is chief technology officer and vice president for the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, the internet services division of Dow Jones & Company. His team creates, builds and supports the web platform behind such popular sites as the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch.com and Barrons. Additionally the team runs a number of smaller sites such as BigCharts and Virtual Stock Exchange.

Mr. Thingelstad joined Dow Jones in January 2005 when Dow Jones acquired MarketWatch Inc. where he was the chief technology officer for that online news, information and licensing business.

Mr. Thingelstad started his information technology career at the University of Minnesota in 1992, building a database to serve disabled students. He moved in 1994 to WebSpan, an internet services startup, as vice president for technology.

In 1995, he joined BigCharts as vice president and chief technology officer. When BigCharts was acquired by MarketWatch in June 1999, Mr. Thingelstad became the MarketWatch chief technology officer. He left for one year to take a comparable position at Breakstep LLC before returning to MarketWatch in 2002.

Mr. Thingelstad attended the Institute of Technology at the University of Minnesota. He lives in Minnetonka, Minnesota with his wife and daughter.

Presentation materials:
The presentation
Web 2.0 movie
CNBC piece on BigCharts, day 1
CNBC piece on BigCharts, day 2
Windows 2000 launch with BigCharts

An Iterative Approach to Healthcare Connectivity

The healthcare system requires significant amounts of communication between hundreds of thousands of hospitals, clinics, insurance companies, patients, and other interested parties. Most of these communications transmit structured data that is amenable to electronic automation. However, due to the size and organic growth of the industry, a large number of custom solutions and technologies have been applied to subsets of the overall problem. The resulting lack of interoperability pushes costs into the system and produces a fragile, inefficient, and sometimes insecure healthcare communications fabric. VisionShare is a Minneapolis-based secure healthcare communications company focused on providing a platform to achieve secure healthcare interoperability by technologically decoupling trading partners from one another. To provide value in such a large and complex marketplace, an iterative mentality permeates VisionShare's business. We will discuss how a "culture of iteration" allowed VisionShare to make progress in all of the following areas: sales, marketing, product architecture, software development process, and strategy formulation.

John Feikema is President and CEO of VisionShare, Inc., where he has spent the last six years focused on healthcare information security while building the foundation for efficient information exchange and interoperability among healthcare providers, insurers and third party solutions providers. Feikema's experience developing new opportunities and building businesses using disruptive technologies has elevated VisionShare to its current standing as a national leader in secure information exchange. Prior to joining VisionShare, Mr. Feikema held various leadership positions at 3M, Imation and at CDXC Corporation, where he served as president. He earned a MS degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota and regularly speaks on the topics of workflow efficiencies, corporate culture and entrepreneurship.

Brett Peterson is Chief Architect for VisionShare and previously served as Vice President of Development. He most recently held Chief Architect, team lead, and senior software developer positions with ObjectFX, a geospatial visualization and platform company. Prior to ObjectFX he held senior development roles with Platinum Technology specializing in electronic software distribution and asset management products. He also spent several years with IBM developing PL and C++ compilers targeting the IBM AS/400 product line. Brett holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Computer Science from Iowa State University.

Presentation materials:
The slides

Security and Peer-to-peer Systems

In this talk, we discuss some of the security issues related with P2P systems. In the first part of the talk, we discuss how to design a P2P system to be more robust. First, I introduce Myrmic, a peer-to-peer routing mechanism, guaranteeing to deliver 99 % of packets even when 50% of nodes are malicious. Second, I will introduce mechanisms to correctly account for a peer's consumption and contribution even when some of the nodes are selfish or malicious.

The second part of the talk will be dedicated to current P2P systems. First, we discuss security of a popular P2P network, the Kad network, which has over 1.5 million concurrent nodes. By exploiting critical implementation weaknesses, we developed an attack on Kad that prevents completion of a significant fraction of all Kad keyword searches with reasonable costs -- a single node with a 100Mbps link could stop 65% of all Kad searches. Second, I will discuss the relationship between the Kad network and the storm worm, which has been one of the worst spam relaying botnets also engaged in several distributed denial of service attacks. In particular, I will discuss how to detect bots (infected hosts or zombies) using our attacks on the Kad network.

Prof. Yongdae Kim has been working on various projects in data and communication security. During his PhD study, he designed group key agreement protocols, TGDH and STR protocol, which are integrated with Secure Spread. He received the NSF career award on storage security and the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Award from University of Minnesota in 2005. His research interests include security issues for distributed systems such as P2P systems, storage systems, sensor and ad hoc networks.