Is architecture dependent on infrastructure? (sponsored by IBM)

How much do you as an architect know about infrastructureand how much do you think you should know? As we transition from physical systems to virtual machines to containers, the way we build systems is also changing radically, influenced by the new paradigms. James Bottomley explores the relationship between the systems we build and the infrastructure we build them from.

There’s always been a deep connection between the systems we build and the materials we use to build them. Even in computer architecture, how something is built—its architecture—depends to some extent on the tools used to build it and the software that runs underneath. Effectively, this means there’s information leakage between the layers. This leakage is both good, as it allows us to see new ways of building things, and bad, in that sometimes the thing we build is so tied to the infrastructure that it doesn’t survive when the infrastructure paradigm changes. James Bottomley examines simple architecture principles, some of which survived the paradigm shifts and some of which didn’t, explores how the infrastructure change from virtual machines to containers has influenced the way we build things, and investigates which of these new patterns might survive into future paradigm shifts and which will get left behind. This session is sponsored by IBM.