Udi Dahan   Udi Dahan – The Software Simplist
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Archive for the ‘Life’ Category



OMG – 10 years of blogging

Tuesday, December 31st, 2013

birthday10As I was in the middle of writing a year’s summary post for NServiceBus, I got to wondering, how long have I actually been blogging?

I looked back in the archives and, all of sudden feeling much MUCH older, I realized that it’s now been 10 years.

A decade.

<Mind reeling />

Here’s a snippet from my first blog post:

“I’m not really sure I can say exactly what I’m going to be talking about, and, I must say, I find it to be somewhat unusual to start writing at some anonymous URL and hoping that somebody will find it and read what I have to say.”

What a journey it’s been – wow.

Thinking that there might actually be people who’ve been reading that long – that blows my mind.

Thank you for lending me your ears (and eyes) all this time.

<Humbled />



Leveraging irrationality towards success

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

irrationalWe’ve all seen good ideas emerge in the software space – from objects, to components, to services, to domain models, and the *DD approaches. Yet, in most organizations, it is very hard for these ideas to get traction.

I’ve heard from countless developers and architects over the years about their frustration in getting everybody else to go along with them. “Can’t they see how much better [new approach] is over what we’re doing now?!” they ask, believing that things could and actually would be evaluated on their merits, especially in a rational field like IT.

The usual explanation I give has a couple of parts.

Conway’s Law

In 1968 Melvin Conway penned what later became known as Conway’s Law which stated:

“organizations which design systems … are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”

An important corollary of that law is that if you wish to have a significant impact on the design of a system, you would need to have a similarly significant impact on the communication structure of the organization making that system.

The main problem is that the people that tend to be pushing for DDD, IoC, CQRS, SOA, etc are usually not as strong when it comes to the soft skills that are so necessary for bringing about organizational change. The thing is that, at a minimum, these types of changes take 3 to 5 years so it really takes a long-term commitment, both from the individual and the organization.

On the rationality of people in IT

First of all, people are a whole lot less rational than they’d like to believe – or that they’d like other people to notice. In fact, people will go to great lengths to maintain the appearance of consistency and rationality, even at the cost of harm to themselves. How’s that for irrational?

Don’t take my word for it – there’s a great book on the topic: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. The somewhat scary thing about it is that not only are we irrational beings, but that that irrationality can be predicted and, yes, even manipulated.

Once you can understand that the people you’re trying to convince aren’t Vulcan, you have a much better chance of being effective. I’d say that, for myself, understanding my own modes of irrationality increased my effectiveness as well, and made me quite a bit happier in life too.

Why you need to bring in a consultant

This isn’t me hawking my wares – believe me, I’m busy enough as it is, but let me know when this starts to sound familiar to you.

There’s a problem in your organization – could be that you’re not delivering software fast enough, high enough quality, whatever. Suffice it to say that Management isn’t happy. You’ve been living this pain for a while and know exactly what the source of the problem is (more often than not, management has at least a hand if not a whole arm in it). You come up with some recommendations, bring them to the higher-ups, but ultimately are ignored, dismissed, or don’t even get into the room.

Some time later, management brings in a Consultant (that’s right, with a capital ‘C’) who is there to figure out what’s wrong and come up with recommendations. In some cases, especially in larger organizations, they bring in a whole bunch of them from a brand name like McKinsey or Ernst & Young.

If these guys are smart, they listen to you, ultimately presenting your analysis and recommendations to management. Of course, those higher-ups are in awe of how quickly these guys were able to understand the inner workings of their organization. That awe lends instant credibility to their recommendations which are then adopted and given powerful political backing.

And you’re sitting there thinking, “but… but… but that’s what I was saying!!”.

It’s not the message – it’s the messenger.

Let me put it another way, explained from the perspective of management – we’re having problems, you work here, ergo you’re part of the problem. Also, you don’t make that much money (compared to management), so how smart could you be? Those brand-name consultants, well, they cost a LOT, so they MUST be good (good enough to know not to work here too).

Therefore the more the consultant costs, the more likely management is to listen, which ultimately creates the conditions for success, which makes the change happen, which proves to management that they were right to bring in an expensive consultant. A vicious (or virtuous) cycle – depending on how you look at it.

Now, it doesn’t always work this way, but it does often enough to perpetuate management’s world view.

In Closing

I do hope your organization and its leaders aren’t trapped in this kind of dysfunction, but if they are, know that you’re not alone and that you can get help – either via consulting or in some books:

Some good books include Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die and the grandfather of the field: How to Win Friends & Influence People. There are countless others and there isn’t any right place to start – the most important thing to do is to start.

It’s been over 40 years since Melvin Conway’s observation and, as an industry, we’re still relearning these things – usually through the school of hard knocks. But there is an upside here – I’m pretty sure that, knowing these patterns, you could pick up on some signals during the interviewing process and find a company that’s outgrown many of these issues – one that would be able to have more meritocratic discussions on technical choices.

In the worst case, you could become a consultant and make a living off of all this irrationality 🙂



Change is hard

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

diamondOrganizational change is hard – like the way a diamond is hard.

So, don’t try to change the organization. It’s too big anyway.
Instead, focus on changing one person at a time – that’s hard enough.

Don’t necessarily take the “one person as a time” too literally, though.
You don’t need to completely and utterly have one person won over before starting on the next.

Understand that for someone to change, that may require them admitting (either implicitly or explicitly) that the way they were doing things before was wrong. In some organizations, this can be suicide. Even if it isn’t, psychologically speaking, there are a huge number of barriers to overcome.

So, if at all possible, massage the situation in such a way that it’ll sound like they were right all along, and no-one really understood. It’s easy for someone to play along with the “misunderstood genius” story.

Next time – how to do just that.

Stay tuned.



It’s not about you

Monday, November 28th, 2011

its_totally_youThe first rule to keep in mind about getting what you want is:

It’s not about you.

How’s that for counter-intuitive.

In fact, the more you focus on yourself and trying to get what you want, the more you end up pushing away exactly the thing you’ve been trying to get.

A big part of the reason is:

If what you wanted was entirely under your control, well, you’d already have it.

The fact that you want it indicates that you don’t have full, or often any, control.

Attempting to gain control, as a way of getting what you want, ultimately results in some kind of power struggle (sometimes you may not even realize that this is happening). The thing is that it’s not very smart to engage in a power struggle when you’re not the one with much control/power.

To the outside world, this attempt may look, at best, futile and at worst, childish – and, if anything, indicates that you really aren’t ready to be given what you want.



How do I get what I want?

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

lotus_flowerSo, once again, it’s time for something a little different.

Through my work with clients over the years, a common theme has popped up that I haven’t been addressing on this blog up until now. I haven’t yet found a good word to describe this theme, as it is kind of on the nexus of organizational politics, personal development, power, authority, expertise, knowledge, emotional intelligence, and a bunch of other things.

Questions, questions

You see, whenever working with clients, or even when I do my public training courses, when everybody understands my recommendations – what needs to be done, and how that will address the problems they’ve been having – the question invariably pops up: how can we possibly get them (the rest of the organization, our boss, whoever) to let us do this?

I feel that, up until now, I haven’t been giving as much guidance on that side of the equation:

  • the “how do I do what I know to be right without getting fired?” question;
  • for consultants, the “how do I get my clients to listen to me – to act on my recommendations?” question;
  • for managers, the “how do I get my team on board – to follow where I lead?” question

So, in addition to my regular blogging topics I’m going to add the above topics as well.

In short, I’m going to be talking about the answer to the “how do I get what I want?” question.

How do I get what I want?

In the past decade or so, interacting with thousands of people in hundreds of organizations, and in the hundred or so books I’ve digested (and put into practice) on the topic, this seems to be the universal question. During this time, I’ve always shied away from getting into this with clients. It felt out of bounds – off limits, except for the things directly related to the work at hand – even though I knew I could do so much more for them.

In only a handful of cases did I actually go deep, and it was life-altering (for me as well as the client).

While I can’t say that I’ve got it all figured out, in my relatively short time on this planet I’ve managed to get quite a lot of boxes ticked (like finances and living my dream). It’s like I was pre-programmed for a lot of this stuff.

Some things are a never-ending balancing act like “how can I manage all the travel that living my dream entails while still being a loving husband and father?” In my case, it’s 4 little ones – 10, 8, 6, and 10 months, a wife who’s doing her masters in law in parallel to regular work, and me flying out at least twice a month (usually at least a week at a time).

Can’t wait?

For those of you who can’t wait for the blog posts to slowly trickle out, I’m happy to offer one-on-one guidance and coaching similar in form to my regular remote consulting model. If you’re interested contact me at coaching@udidahan.com.

Anyway, I hope this additional aspect to what I do will help you successfully apply all the software things that I’ve been talking about in your current job as well as make the most out of the rest of your career, and your life.

Oh, and the answer to THE question? It’s “just ask”. 🙂

I’d really love to hear your comments and thoughts on this additional twist to our ongoing relationship.

Best regards,

— Udi



Nice to meet you

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

Among the readers of this blog are the technical leaders of companies all over the world. While tech keeps on evolving and we work to integrate into our already rich experience new tech and business trends, I wanted to take a moment to talk about that which is the same through all of this upheaval: you (as much as me).

We were the lucky ones.

We loved tech – a lot of us from a very early age. And then we found out (sooner or later) that we could get a job in tech. We could do what we loved and get paid for it (and paid pretty darn well). We were living the dream.

Not only that, we had a pretty good system in place – career advancement, changing the world with the tech we created, and sometimes even getting rich in the process (with the IT version of the lottery called “the startup”).

But something happened over the years – imperceptibly creeping up on us, until one day we noticed.

It was as if we’d woken up from the dream. Something was missing.

Just like in “The Matrix”

“That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”
– Morpheus

There’s the You when you go to work.
There’s the You when you go home to your family.
There’s the You when you’re out with your friends.

Like a closet of invisible suits you put on, and take off to suit the occasion.

You know that none of those Yous are really you, but on the other hand, have you ever stopped to think who you are underneath it all?

I know I didn’t – not for a long time.

Hold that thought – we’ll get back to it.

What does the at-work You want?

Beyond the providing food/shelter bottom of the Maslow pyramid (which is pretty much handled by default for anybody in IT) for you and your family, I’m guessing you want the project you’re working on to be successful. Everybody does.

But why is that?

Well, if the project is successful, that means that *you* were successful, and you will be recognized by your colleagues for that success – social status, more power/money (which is really just another kind of social status), etc.

The same is true for those of us who run our own business – just instead of colleagues, it’s more about customers, and products instead of projects. I *suspect* the same might be true of stay-at-home parents – replace colleagues for friends/family/neighborhood and products with home/children. My wife is a stay-at-home parent so my observations in this area are first-hand. We’ll talk some more about the at-home You in a bit.

Of course, it is not socially acceptable to admit that all we really want is recognition/social status. There’s a whole counter-cycle at play. We are afraid of being labeled as hungry for recognition:

Self-centered.

The kind of person that is “not a team player”. We would have our career advancement cut short, ultimately losing all possibility for getting any recognition. We’d be ostracized by society – a terrifying thought to our “lizard brain”.

Evolution has bred into us the need for social safety – don’t rock the boat; fit in; either be “one of us” or you’ll be eaten by a lion.

Nobody ever talks about it, but it looks like the culture we live in has slowly and gently infected us with a virus. This cultural system will pit our psyche against itself – striving for recognition and at the same time hating ourselves for it. The unconscious mind causing us to behave in ways which undermine the success we so want to achieve.

The individualistic theme found in our culture doesn’t seem to have changed any of it – or it might just be the perfect disguise. I don’t think I could come up with a more effective way of controlling masses of highly intelligent people if I spent my whole life trying.

But you aren’t the You who goes to work – maybe it’s that You who is trapped, but not the real you.

You and You and you

Out of the struggles of moving in with a significant other, marriage, building a family, you created an at-home You.

I don’t want to go into too much depth here, but suffice it to say that beyond the basic evolutionary need to have your progeny survive, the social aspects come into play again. For example, you want your kids to get a good education… so that one day they can have their own successful at-work Them.

But also, you want your kids to be happy – that’s you, not your at-home You.

You probably would also like your extended family and friends to be happy too. Come to think of it, you want everyone to be happy, don’t you?

Let’s talk some more about being happy.

Seeing as none of the other Yous are you – how much of your life is spent as you?

Of all the things you’ve striven for in your life, how many were really for you, rather than for any of the other Yous?

Now think carefully – is there anything that you need that you don’t already have?

When you have a moment of true happiness, that is you, not any one of the other Yous – isn’t it?

There are other moments when you are you.

When courage is needed – whether that’s asking somebody out on a date, having an honest conversation with your spouse about an important or painful topic, standing up to your boss, whatever – you are the source of that courage, not any of the other Yous.

Maybe that’s why courage is often so hard – you don’t have much experience being you.

Wrapping up

What would happen if you consciously spent more time being you?

It might be scary to start being you in any kind of social context, so how about if you started when you were alone? Instead of distracting yourself with TV, facebook, etc – maybe it’s time we all got to know ourselves a bit better. Sometimes you are you when doing your hobby (I like running) – but anything that can bring you to that quiet contemplative space should work.

Maybe you’d also be less judging of others, as they’re not themselves around you.

How do you think others would react, how would they *be* around you, if you were you?

Imagine the cascading effects of it all.

Start now.

Nice to finally meet you.



   


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Recommendations

Bryan Wheeler, Director Platform Development at msnbc.com
Udi Dahan is the real deal.

We brought him on site to give our development staff the 5-day “Advanced Distributed System Design” training. The course profoundly changed our understanding and approach to SOA and distributed systems.

Consider some of the evidence: 1. Months later, developers still make allusions to concepts learned in the course nearly every day 2. One of our developers went home and made her husband (a developer at another company) sign up for the course at a subsequent date/venue 3. Based on what we learned, we’ve made constant improvements to our architecture that have helped us to adapt to our ever changing business domain at scale and speed If you have the opportunity to receive the training, you will make a substantial paradigm shift.

If I were to do the whole thing over again, I’d start the week by playing the clip from the Matrix where Morpheus offers Neo the choice between the red and blue pills. Once you make the intellectual leap, you’ll never look at distributed systems the same way.

Beyond the training, we were able to spend some time with Udi discussing issues unique to our business domain. Because Udi is a rare combination of a big picture thinker and a low level doer, he can quickly hone in on various issues and quickly make good (if not startling) recommendations to help solve tough technical issues.” November 11, 2010

Sam Gentile Sam Gentile, Independent WCF & SOA Expert
“Udi, one of the great minds in this area.
A man I respect immensely.”





Ian Robinson Ian Robinson, Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks
"Your blog and articles have been enormously useful in shaping, testing and refining my own approach to delivering on SOA initiatives over the last few years. Over and against a certain 3-layer-application-architecture-blown-out-to- distributed-proportions school of SOA, your writing, steers a far more valuable course."

Shy Cohen Shy Cohen, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft
“Udi is a world renowned software architect and speaker. I met Udi at a conference that we were both speaking at, and immediately recognized his keen insight and razor-sharp intellect. Our shared passion for SOA and the advancement of its practice launched a discussion that lasted into the small hours of the night.
It was evident through that discussion that Udi is one of the most knowledgeable people in the SOA space. It was also clear why – Udi does not settle for mediocrity, and seeks to fully understand (or define) the logic and principles behind things.
Humble yet uncompromising, Udi is a pleasure to interact with.”

Glenn Block Glenn Block, Senior Program Manager - WCF at Microsoft
“I have known Udi for many years having attended his workshops and having several personal interactions including working with him when we were building our Composite Application Guidance in patterns & practices. What impresses me about Udi is his deep insight into how to address business problems through sound architecture. Backed by many years of building mission critical real world distributed systems it is no wonder that Udi is the best at what he does. When customers have deep issues with their system design, I point them Udi's way.”

Karl Wannenmacher Karl Wannenmacher, Senior Lead Expert at Frequentis AG
“I have been following Udi’s blog and podcasts since 2007. I’m convinced that he is one of the most knowledgeable and experienced people in the field of SOA, EDA and large scale systems.
Udi helped Frequentis to design a major subsystem of a large mission critical system with a nationwide deployment based on NServiceBus. It was impressive to see how he took the initial architecture and turned it upside down leading to a very flexible and scalable yet simple system without knowing the details of the business domain. I highly recommend consulting with Udi when it comes to large scale mission critical systems in any domain.”

Simon Segal Simon Segal, Independent Consultant
“Udi is one of the outstanding software development minds in the world today, his vast insights into Service Oriented Architectures and Smart Clients in particular are indeed a rare commodity. Udi is also an exceptional teacher and can help lead teams to fall into the pit of success. I would recommend Udi to anyone considering some Architecural guidance and support in their next project.”

Ohad Israeli Ohad Israeli, Chief Architect at Hewlett-Packard, Indigo Division
“When you need a man to do the job Udi is your man! No matter if you are facing near deadline deadlock or at the early stages of your development, if you have a problem Udi is the one who will probably be able to solve it, with his large experience at the industry and his widely horizons of thinking , he is always full of just in place great architectural ideas.
I am honored to have Udi as a colleague and a friend (plus having his cell phone on my speed dial).”

Ward Bell Ward Bell, VP Product Development at IdeaBlade
“Everyone will tell you how smart and knowledgable Udi is ... and they are oh-so-right. Let me add that Udi is a smart LISTENER. He's always calibrating what he has to offer with your needs and your experience ... looking for the fit. He has strongly held views ... and the ability to temper them with the nuances of the situation.
I trust Udi to tell me what I need to hear, even if I don't want to hear it, ... in a way that I can hear it. That's a rare skill to go along with his command and intelligence.”

Eli Brin, Program Manager at RISCO Group
“We hired Udi as a SOA specialist for a large scale project. The development is outsourced to India. SOA is a buzzword used almost for anything today. We wanted to understand what SOA really is, and what is the meaning and practice to develop a SOA based system.
We identified Udi as the one that can put some sense and order in our minds. We started with a private customized SOA training for the entire team in Israel. After that I had several focused sessions regarding our architecture and design.
I will summarize it simply (as he is the software simplist): We are very happy to have Udi in our project. It has a great benefit. We feel good and assured with the knowledge and practice he brings. He doesn’t talk over our heads. We assimilated nServicebus as the ESB of the project. I highly recommend you to bring Udi into your project.”

Catherine Hole Catherine Hole, Senior Project Manager at the Norwegian Health Network
“My colleagues and I have spent five interesting days with Udi - diving into the many aspects of SOA. Udi has shown impressive abilities of understanding organizational challenges, and has brought the business perspective into our way of looking at services. He has an excellent understanding of the many layers from business at the top to the technical infrstructure at the bottom. He is a great listener, and manages to simplify challenges in a way that is understandable both for developers and CEOs, and all the specialists in between.”

Yoel Arnon Yoel Arnon, MSMQ Expert
“Udi has a unique, in depth understanding of service oriented architecture and how it should be used in the real world, combined with excellent presentation skills. I think Udi should be a premier choice for a consultant or architect of distributed systems.”

Vadim Mesonzhnik, Development Project Lead at Polycom
“When we were faced with a task of creating a high performance server for a video-tele conferencing domain we decided to opt for a stateless cluster with SQL server approach. In order to confirm our decision we invited Udi.

After carefully listening for 2 hours he said: "With your kind of high availability and performance requirements you don’t want to go with stateless architecture."

One simple sentence saved us from implementing a wrong product and finding that out after years of development. No matter whether our former decisions were confirmed or altered, it gave us great confidence to move forward relying on the experience, industry best-practices and time-proven techniques that Udi shared with us.
It was a distinct pleasure and a unique opportunity to learn from someone who is among the best at what he does.”

Jack Van Hoof Jack Van Hoof, Enterprise Integration Architect at Dutch Railways
“Udi is a respected visionary on SOA and EDA, whose opinion I most of the time (if not always) highly agree with. The nice thing about Udi is that he is able to explain architectural concepts in terms of practical code-level examples.”

Neil Robbins Neil Robbins, Applications Architect at Brit Insurance
“Having followed Udi's blog and other writings for a number of years I attended Udi's two day course on 'Loosely Coupled Messaging with NServiceBus' at SkillsMatter, London.

I would strongly recommend this course to anyone with an interest in how to develop IT systems which provide immediate and future fitness for purpose. An influential and innovative thought leader and practitioner in his field, Udi demonstrates and shares a phenomenally in depth knowledge that proves his position as one of the premier experts in his field globally.

The course has enhanced my knowledge and skills in ways that I am able to immediately apply to provide benefits to my employer. Additionally though I will be able to build upon what I learned in my 2 days with Udi and have no doubt that it will only enhance my future career.

I cannot recommend Udi, and his courses, highly enough.”

Nick Malik Nick Malik, Enterprise Architect at Microsoft Corporation
You are an excellent speaker and trainer, Udi, and I've had the fortunate experience of having attended one of your presentations. I believe that you are a knowledgable and intelligent man.”

Sean Farmar Sean Farmar, Chief Technical Architect at Candidate Manager Ltd
“Udi has provided us with guidance in system architecture and supports our implementation of NServiceBus in our core business application.

He accompanied us in all stages of our development cycle and helped us put vision into real life distributed scalable software. He brought fresh thinking, great in depth of understanding software, and ongoing support that proved as valuable and cost effective.

Udi has the unique ability to analyze the business problem and come up with a simple and elegant solution for the code and the business alike.
With Udi's attention to details, and knowledge we avoided pit falls that would cost us dearly.”

Børge Hansen Børge Hansen, Architect Advisor at Microsoft
“Udi delivered a 5 hour long workshop on SOA for aspiring architects in Norway. While keeping everyone awake and excited Udi gave us some great insights and really delivered on making complex software challenges simple. Truly the software simplist.”

Motty Cohen, SW Manager at KorenTec Technologies
“I know Udi very well from our mutual work at KorenTec. During the analysis and design of a complex, distributed C4I system - where the basic concepts of NServiceBus start to emerge - I gained a lot of "Udi's hours" so I can surely say that he is a professional, skilled architect with fresh ideas and unique perspective for solving complex architecture challenges. His ideas, concepts and parts of the artifacts are the basis of several state-of-the-art C4I systems that I was involved in their architecture design.”

Aaron Jensen Aaron Jensen, VP of Engineering at Eleutian Technology
Awesome. Just awesome.

We’d been meaning to delve into messaging at Eleutian after multiple discussions with and blog posts from Greg Young and Udi Dahan in the past. We weren’t entirely sure where to start, how to start, what tools to use, how to use them, etc. Being able to sit in a room with Udi for an entire week while he described exactly how, why and what he does to tackle a massive enterprise system was invaluable to say the least.

We now have a much better direction and, more importantly, have the confidence we need to start introducing these powerful concepts into production at Eleutian.”

Gad Rosenthal Gad Rosenthal, Department Manager at Retalix
“A thinking person. Brought fresh and valuable ideas that helped us in architecting our product. When recommending a solution he supports it with evidence and detail so you can successfully act based on it. Udi's support "comes on all levels" - As the solution architect through to the detailed class design. Trustworthy!”

Chris Bilson Chris Bilson, Developer at Russell Investment Group
“I had the pleasure of attending a workshop Udi led at the Seattle ALT.NET conference in February 2009. I have been reading Udi's articles and listening to his podcasts for a long time and have always looked to him as a source of advice on software architecture.
When I actually met him and talked to him I was even more impressed. Not only is Udi an extremely likable person, he's got that rare gift of being able to explain complex concepts and ideas in a way that is easy to understand.
All the attendees of the workshop greatly appreciate the time he spent with us and the amazing insights into service oriented architecture he shared with us.”

Alexey Shestialtynov Alexey Shestialtynov, Senior .Net Developer at Candidate Manager
“I met Udi at Candidate Manager where he was brought in part-time as a consultant to help the company make its flagship product more scalable. For me, even after 30 years in software development, working with Udi was a great learning experience. I simply love his fresh ideas and architecture insights.
As we all know it is not enough to be armed with best tools and technologies to be successful in software - there is still human factor involved. When, as it happens, the project got in trouble, management asked Udi to step into a leadership role and bring it back on track. This he did in the span of a month. I can only wish that things had been done this way from the very beginning.
I look forward to working with Udi again in the future.”

Christopher Bennage Christopher Bennage, President at Blue Spire Consulting, Inc.
“My company was hired to be the primary development team for a large scale and highly distributed application. Since these are not necessarily everyday requirements, we wanted to bring in some additional expertise. We chose Udi because of his blogging, podcasting, and speaking. We asked him to to review our architectural strategy as well as the overall viability of project.
I was very impressed, as Udi demonstrated a broad understanding of the sorts of problems we would face. His advice was honest and unbiased and very pragmatic. Whenever I questioned him on particular points, he was able to backup his opinion with real life examples. I was also impressed with his clarity and precision. He was very careful to untangle the meaning of words that might be overloaded or otherwise confusing. While Udi's hourly rate may not be the cheapest, the ROI is undoubtedly a deal. I would highly recommend consulting with Udi.”

Robert Lewkovich, Product / Development Manager at Eggs Overnight
“Udi's advice and consulting were a huge time saver for the project I'm responsible for. The $ spent were well worth it and provided me with a more complete understanding of nServiceBus and most importantly in helping make the correct architectural decisions earlier thereby reducing later, and more expensive, rework.”

Ray Houston Ray Houston, Director of Development at TOPAZ Technologies
“Udi's SOA class made me smart - it was awesome.

The class was very well put together. The materials were clear and concise and Udi did a fantastic job presenting it. It was a good mixture of lecture, coding, and question and answer. I fully expected that I would be taking notes like crazy, but it was so well laid out that the only thing I wrote down the entire course was what I wanted for lunch. Udi provided us with all the lecture materials and everyone has access to all of the samples which are in the nServiceBus trunk.

Now I know why Udi is the "Software Simplist." I was amazed to find that all the code and solutions were indeed very simple. The patterns that Udi presented keep things simple by isolating complexity so that it doesn't creep into your day to day code. The domain code looks the same if it's running in a single process or if it's running in 100 processes.”

Ian Cooper Ian Cooper, Team Lead at Beazley
“Udi is one of the leaders in the .Net development community, one of the truly smart guys who do not just get best architectural practice well enough to educate others but drives innovation. Udi consistently challenges my thinking in ways that make me better at what I do.”

Liron Levy, Team Leader at Rafael
“I've met Udi when I worked as a team leader in Rafael. One of the most senior managers there knew Udi because he was doing superb architecture job in another Rafael project and he recommended bringing him on board to help the project I was leading.
Udi brought with him fresh solutions and invaluable deep architecture insights. He is an authority on SOA (service oriented architecture) and this was a tremendous help in our project.
On the personal level - Udi is a great communicator and can persuade even the most difficult audiences (I was part of such an audience myself..) by bringing sound explanations that draw on his extensive knowledge in the software business. Working with Udi was a great learning experience for me, and I'll be happy to work with him again in the future.”

Adam Dymitruk Adam Dymitruk, Director of IT at Apara Systems
“I met Udi for the first time at DevTeach in Montreal back in early 2007. While Udi is usually involved in SOA subjects, his knowledge spans all of a software development company's concerns. I would not hesitate to recommend Udi for any company that needs excellent leadership, mentoring, problem solving, application of patterns, implementation of methodologies and straight out solution development.
There are very few people in the world that are as dedicated to their craft as Udi is to his. At ALT.NET Seattle, Udi explained many core ideas about SOA. The team that I brought with me found his workshop and other talks the highlight of the event and provided the most value to us and our organization. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to recommend him.”

Eytan Michaeli Eytan Michaeli, CTO Korentec
“Udi was responsible for a major project in the company, and as a chief architect designed a complex multi server C4I system with many innovations and excellent performance.”


Carl Kenne Carl Kenne, .Net Consultant at Dotway AB
“Udi's session "DDD in Enterprise apps" was truly an eye opener. Udi has a great ability to explain complex enterprise designs in a very comprehensive and inspiring way. I've seen several sessions on both DDD and SOA in the past, but Udi puts it in a completly new perspective and makes us understand what it's all really about. If you ever have a chance to see any of Udi's sessions in the future, take it!”

Avi Nehama, R&D Project Manager at Retalix
“Not only that Udi is a briliant software architecture consultant, he also has remarkable abilities to present complex ideas in a simple and concise manner, and...
always with a smile. Udi is indeed a top-league professional!”

Ben Scheirman Ben Scheirman, Lead Developer at CenterPoint Energy
“Udi is one of those rare people who not only deeply understands SOA and domain driven design, but also eloquently conveys that in an easy to grasp way. He is patient, polite, and easy to talk to. I'm extremely glad I came to his workshop on SOA.”

Scott C. Reynolds Scott C. Reynolds, Director of Software Engineering at CBLPath
“Udi is consistently advancing the state of thought in software architecture, service orientation, and domain modeling.
His mastery of the technologies and techniques is second to none, but he pairs that with a singular ability to listen and communicate effectively with all parties, technical and non, to help people arrive at context-appropriate solutions. Every time I have worked with Udi, or attended a talk of his, or just had a conversation with him I have come away from it enriched with new understanding about the ideas discussed.”

Evgeny-Hen Osipow, Head of R&D at PCLine
“Udi has helped PCLine on projects by implementing architectural blueprints demonstrating the value of simple design and code.”

Rhys Campbell Rhys Campbell, Owner at Artemis West
“For many years I have been following the works of Udi. His explanation of often complex design and architectural concepts are so cleanly broken down that even the most junior of architects can begin to understand these concepts. These concepts however tend to typify the "real world" problems we face daily so even the most experienced software expert will find himself in an "Aha!" moment when following Udi teachings.
It was a pleasure to finally meet Udi in Seattle Alt.Net OpenSpaces 2008, where I was pleasantly surprised at how down-to-earth and approachable he was. His depth and breadth of software knowledge also became apparent when discussion with his peers quickly dove deep in to the problems we current face. If given the opportunity to work with or recommend Udi I would quickly take that chance. When I think .Net Architecture, I think Udi.”

Sverre Hundeide Sverre Hundeide, Senior Consultant at Objectware
“Udi had been hired to present the third LEAP master class in Oslo. He is an well known international expert on enterprise software architecture and design, and is the author of the open source messaging framework nServiceBus. The entire class was based on discussion and interaction with the audience, and the only Power Point slide used was the one showing the agenda.
He started out with sketching a naive traditional n-tier application (big ball of mud), and based on suggestions from the audience we explored different solutions which might improve the solution. Whatever suggestions we threw at him, he always had a thoroughly considered answer describing pros and cons with the suggested solution. He obviously has a lot of experience with real world enterprise SOA applications.”

Raphaël Wouters Raphaël Wouters, Owner/Managing Partner at Medinternals
“I attended Udi's excellent course 'Advanced Distributed System Design with SOA and DDD' at Skillsmatter. Few people can truly claim such a high skill and expertise level, present it using a pragmatic, concrete no-nonsense approach and still stay reachable.”

Nimrod Peleg Nimrod Peleg, Lab Engineer at Technion IIT
“One of the best programmers and software engineer I've ever met, creative, knows how to design and implemet, very collaborative and finally - the applications he designed implemeted work for many years without any problems!

Jose Manuel Beas
“When I attended Udi's SOA Workshop, then it suddenly changed my view of what Service Oriented Architectures were all about. Udi explained complex concepts very clearly and created a very productive discussion environment where all the attendees could learn a lot. I strongly recommend hiring Udi.”

Daniel Jin Daniel Jin, Senior Lead Developer at PJM Interconnection
“Udi is one of the top SOA guru in the .NET space. He is always eager to help others by sharing his knowledge and experiences. His blog articles often offer deep insights and is a invaluable resource. I highly recommend him.”

Pasi Taive Pasi Taive, Chief Architect at Tieto
“I attended both of Udi's "UI Composition Key to SOA Success" and "DDD in Enterprise Apps" sessions and they were exceptionally good. I will definitely participate in his sessions again. Udi is a great presenter and has the ability to explain complex issues in a manner that everyone understands.”

Eran Sagi, Software Architect at HP
“So far, I heard about Service Oriented architecture all over. Everyone mentions it – the big buzz word. But, when I actually asked someone for what does it really mean, no one managed to give me a complete satisfied answer. Finally in his excellent course “Advanced Distributed Systems”, I got the answers I was looking for. Udi went over the different motivations (principles) of Services Oriented, explained them well one by one, and showed how each one could be technically addressed using NService bus. In his course, Udi also explain the way of thinking when coming to design a Service Oriented system. What are the questions you need to ask yourself in order to shape your system, place the logic in the right places for best Service Oriented system.

I would recommend this course for any architect or developer who deals with distributed system, but not only. In my work we do not have a real distributed system, but one PC which host both the UI application and the different services inside, all communicating via WCF. I found that many of the architecture principles and motivations of SOA apply for our system as well. Enough that you have SW partitioned into components and most of the principles becomes relevant to you as well. Bottom line – an excellent course recommended to any SW Architect, or any developer dealing with distributed system.”

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