Competition: Grid Solutions for a Greener Planet

This is a reminder that Grid Computing Now! is running a competition to find uses of grid technology to reduce human impact on climate change. The competition is open to anyone who is 18 or over and resident in the UK. So get your thinking caps on and submit your best ideas! The topic is deliberately wide, as is the interpretation of "grid", to allow a wide scope for proposals.

The deadline for entries has been extended to Friday October 17. This extension is particularly intended to give more time to university staff and students who wish to enter.

The initial proposal just requires 1,000 words describing the proposed solution. See the competition web page for background information and details of how to enter. There are two tracks, one for IT professionals and the other for everyone else (including students).

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Webinar: Powering your business with Cloud Computing

On October 14th, I will be hosting a Grid Computing Now! web seminar on the topic of Cloud Computing. We have lined up two very interesting speakers who are using Cloud now to make businesses work. Ross Cooney had a good technological solution to sell but couldn't make it economic until Cloud Computing allowed him to pay for his computation only when he needed it. He will discuss the instant benefits and long term impact of cloud computing to the development, competitiveness and scalability of your application. Alan Williamson created the BlueDragon Java CFML runtime engine that powers MySpace.com. He advises several businesses and will give an overview of the different types of services available and how to avoid being locked-in to a single supplier. You can register for this event here .

Business Model Canvas

A Business Model Canvas is a tool for mapping the core functions and capabilities of an organisation. Compared to the Core Diagrams that I described in an earlier post , the business model canvas attempts to present more aspects of the business, starting with the value proposition – a statement of what the organisation offers to its users (in the business world, to its customers). It shows the activities and resources, as Core Diagrams do, but also shows user relationships & channels, and also benefits and costs. I’m not aware of any universities that have used this tool but you can find examples from elsewhere on the web. We are considering business model canvases as a tool for mapping the strategic capabilities of units at the University of Edinburgh. Phil Taylor, our EA contractor, sketched an outline of what a business model canvas might begin to look like for HR: This is only intended to be suggestive: the real canvas would need to result from in-de...

"Just enough" Enterprise Architecture

I spent an informative and enjoyable day with a proto-community of people pursuing Enterprise Architecture in UK Higher Education. Many of the participants had been previously involved in JISC projects and have enjoyed similar events in the past, so I began the day as a bit of an outsider. In the University of Edinburgh, our progress in adopting "architectures" is mainly on the IT side, via our Applications Architecture and our use of Service-Oriented Architecture . Enterprise Architecture would integrate all this IT activity with the business processes and goals of the University (or what I sometimes call the administrative processes, for those readers who are unhappy with calling a university a "business"). I've tended to be a little sceptical of fully-fledged enterprise architecture (EA) because it sounds like a mammoth undertaking and the organisations doing it have often been very large corporations. The two main outcomes of the JISC experiences ar...

Distributed Thinking

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