Who is an Architect

I have been playing the role of a Technical Lead for over 2+ years now.
A couple of weeks back, I had an interview for an architect's role.
It was a very interesting interview and it showed that I still have some way to go before I'm ready to be an architect.
From the Arch Journals that I was reading, Arvindra SehmiArchitect, Developer and Platform Evangelism Group, Microsoft EMEA says that a typical architect will have the following responsibilities
" Support business visioning and scoping activities.
Translate between business and IT requirements.
Communicate with stakeholders, both within business and IT.
Weigh different interests.
Determine solution alternatives.
Create a viable and feasible design.
Choose solutions.
Manage quality.
Manage complexity.
Mitigate risks.
Communicate.

This requires a diverse range of skills, including knowledge of architecture
design, workgroup and communications skills, and consultancy skills. "

Ram, another Architect from MS, has these interesting things to say about an Architect.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ramkoth/archive/tags/Architecture/default.aspx

SaaS, SOA , Software + Services

The above terms are something that you will hear on a regular basis these days. I am going to go on a hunt. A hunt to find out what are these terms, what do they mean, and what impact do they have on the industry in the coming years. This is going to involve some amount of research so I will be updating this on a regular basis.
Till then ... time for a treasure hunt!

Update on 27 Mar 08
Found this image on the architecture journal article
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/arcjournal/bb906061.aspx

It gives a nice picture.




So far what I have think is
Software + Services is a Microsoft initiative. Talks about Software + cloud serices. I need to find out what is this cloud services.
SaaS is basically some applications that are ready to be used and are consumed over the internet. Now how is this different from WS..?
finding out...

Authentication in Web Services

Ismail and me were sitting and having a coffee the other day and Ismail asked me about security in Web Services. Though it was quite a while since I had worked on it, I remembered that we need to send some tokens. I quickly did a search and came across this article that kind of covers it well.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/webservices/WS-Security.aspx