S. "Soma" Somasegar is Corporate VP of the Developer Division at Microsoft, which is primarily responsible for all the developer-related languages, tools, and platforms within Microsoft, including Visual Studio, Web Platform and Tools, .NET Framework, Common Language Runtime (CLR), and other .NET Developer Platform technologies.

Connected Systems and Service Orientation
Dave Mendlen, Director of Web Services Technical Marketing, Microsoft
Monday, September 13, 10:30 a.m.
As Web Services capabilities become intrinsic across the various vendor platforms, the impact of Web Services is becoming more tangible. At the same time, the industry is beginning to understand that the Web Services “promise” of reduced integration and complexity will use Web Services as the foundation, but will likely require more in regards to overall architecture. Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs), an infrastructure and approach for IT that enables distributed computing environments, are at the core of this paradigm, and Web Services are one of the multiple technologies that will make the new infrastructure a reality. Attend this session to hear how Microsoft views Service Orientation and how you can get started delivering it in your solutions.

Dave Mendlen is the Director of Web Services Technical Marketing in the Developer Platform and Evangelism division at Microsoft. Previously he served as the communication manager for Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. He started at Microsoft in the Developer division and served as the lead product planner on Visual Studio .NET.

Data Access Panel Discussion
Andrew Brust , Citigate Hudson
Tuesday, September 15, 9 a.m.

Realizing SOA
John deVadoss, Solutions Architect and Director, Solutions Architecture Team, Microsoft
Wednesday, September 15, 9 a.m.
What does it mean to design and build service-oriented applications on the Microsoft .NET platform today? This session will address some fundamental design challenges with respect to realizing service-oriented architectures and discuss best practices towards addressing them. DeVadoss uses real-world examples from the projects that he and his team have engaged in over the past 12 months to discuss the technologies, the tools, and the framework for designing and building service-oriented applications. This session primarily targets applications and solutions architects and the focus is on design rather than analysis.

John deVadoss is a solutions architect and director of the Solutions Architecture team with the Developer & Platform Evangelism division at Microsoft. His team is chartered with working with leading-edge technology adopters in the Enterprise, GSI, and ISV space to generate architecture guidance and foster platform adoption. During this past fiscal year, John's team was focused on SOA, in particular on best practices and design principles for service aggregation (smart clients), entity aggregation and identity management among others. His team also collaborates with the patterns & practices group at Microsoft on a number of projects. John has 14 years of experience in the enterprise space having worked with customers and partners such as Reuters, Thomson, Bloomberg, ETrade, Siebel, Peoplesoft, Avanade, and Accenture among others. His areas of interest include data and metadata management and systems management but most importantly, he is concerned with driving business value from technology investments.