Yesterday I attended the Microsoft UK 4th Architect forum day on Connected Systems, there have been previous ones on modelling, software tools and interoperability.
The speakers were mainly non-Microsoft people and they did a great job of covering a wide ranging subject.
There were the usual buzzwords; SOA (Service-Orientated Architecture), BPM (Business Process Management), EIB (Enterprise Information Bus), etc. where people's concrete understandings sometimes differ.
One of the most interesting sessions was the work done by Conchango on combining SO and BI (Business Intelligence), the format of their dual presenting worked well. Also great real-world case study of how House of Fraser consolidated a complex set of inter-related systems together and moved many of their partners from EDI to WebServices.
Benjamin Mitchell was there as an independent consultant to give the Microsoft view on WSE and Indigo; looking forward to his talk next week at the London .NET Usergroup, as I'm interested in the peer to peer support available that's going to be available in Indigo.
Richard Godfrey was answering lots of questions regarding the new Microsoft Certified Architect.