Software Engineering Institute

May 22, 2017—The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) hosted its thirteenth annual SEI Architecture Technology User Network (SATURN) Conference May 1 through May 4 in Denver, Colorado. Participants in the conference, who represented 104 organizations and 18 countries, shared ideas, insights, and experiences about effective software architecture practices for developing and maintaining software-intensive systems.

The conference opened with three one-day SEI courses on big data architectures and technologies, secure DevOps process and implementation, and design guidelines and patterns for microservices. The technical program spanned three days and included keynote addresses by consultant Kevlin Henney, who presented Software Is Details; Chris Richardson, software developer and architect at Eventuate, Inc., who presented There is No Such Thing as a Microservice!; and Jeromy Carriere, engineering director for Google, who presented Velocity in Software Development.

“The keynote speakers not only delivered engaging, informative addresses,” said the SEI’s William Pollak, conference chair, “but they also were active participants in the conference and kindly devoted time to one-on-one discussions and Office Hours sessions.”

This year’s technical program featured more than 50 peer-reviewed talks, training courses, and the Software Architecture Boot Camp sessions presented by SEI staff members. The conference sessions explore a wide range of topics relevant to practicing architects, including DevOps, microservices, containers, serverless architectures, legacy systems, agility and architecture, cloud computing, continuous delivery, refactoring, technical debt, architecture evaluation, and technical leadership.
“The lectures have been fascinating and the conversations with lecturers and other attendees have been intellectually stimulating and relationally rewarding,” said Micah Thirey of Software Solutions, Inc. Thirey was attending SATURN for the first time. “I’ve enjoyed a high-quality, high-density of information, long-term-impactful experience.”

Returning attendee Eltjo Poort, Distinguished Solution Architect at CGI in The Netherlands, was equally enthusiastic. “This was my fifth SATURN conference,” said Poort, “and just like the previous years, I returned home full of new ideas and inspirations and with many useful new contacts.”

Continuing a practice begun in 2010, the SEI and IEEE conferred two attendee-selected awards at SATURN. The IEEE Software SATURN Architecture in Practice Presentation Award is given to the presenter who best describes experiences, methods, and lessons learned from the implementation of software architecture practices. This year’s award winner was Sebastian von Conrad of Envato for his presentation An In-Depth Look at Event Sourcing with Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS).

The second award, the IEEE Software SATURN New Directions Presentation Award, is given to the presenter who best describes innovative new approaches and thought leadership in the application of software architecture practices. This year’s award winner was George Fairbanks of Google for his presentation Functional Programming Invades Architecture.

Major sponsors of SATURN 2017 included Travelers, Gogo Business Aviation, Commerce Hub, Solidyn Solutions, Inc., and GE Digital.

SATURN 2018 will take place May 7–10, 2018, in Plano, Texas, near Dallas.

For more information about SATURN, and to download conference presentations, please visit the SATURN website.