SOSA (Software Operations, Security and Architecture)

Hi Guys,

Long time no blog entry. I think this is a good time as any. In this entry, I want to talk about my team at Convey Health Solutions. which is I am currently working with as Software Architect. I want to focus especially on my team's name "SOSA". I think it is a good subject for this entry. 

When I google "SOSA meaning" I don't see any result meaning Computer Science (CS). Maybe I can explain this term in this blog and help folks in the CS community to embrace it. SOSA like DevOps term invented the term because of need. Convey Health is a small-mid-scale company that operates in the USA in the health care sector. Mostly focuses on Medicare-related CRM solutions. In recent years, the company acquired different companies but still the main operation field is Medicare.

A year ago when we try to build our team we have discussed what we should be called ourselves. The new boss Chris Tonkinson was thinking that we are doing DevOps. After a couple of discussions, we come up with the name SOSA (Software Operations, Security, and Architecture). Why? because DevOps wasn't good enough to cover what we do. We were the central team was evangelizing and implementing the DevOps, Security, and Architecture. Our vision was to be helpful to the organization to have good DevOps, Security, and Architecture practices. This vision wasn't a coincidence but the scale of the company enforce us to take these roles. as we realize more and more the interconnectivity of these roles the name fits perfectly.  These roles are feeding each other in Software development and teams helping other teams to achieve it have to have understood and played the roles each of them. Security without Architecture is not possible because of the Secure by Design principle. Security risk management and Architectural models feed DevOps operations etc. 

Thinking about different aspects of the software system in different layers is very important for creating and maintaining good software systems. I believe my team SOSA has good positions to consider all of them and serves App Dev, IT, Security, and Management teams as a Hub to increase awareness, collaboration.

Maybe this term can be used in different organizations to achieve similar outcomes.  

Best wishes and stay safe. 

Bulent Coskun

Hi Everyone,

It's been very long time since my last blog has been posted and so much things happened in my life since then. I have changed my job and it was a big challenge for me to find a good place to work with. I was about to move to Seattle but it didn't happen. Anyway, I don't want to bother you with these details, lets jump on technology stuff.

Actually I would like to share my toughs about the movie called "Indie Game:The Movie" (http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/) I watched it recently. It was a very exciting movie that shows the challenges for indie developers who want to develop games with very small teams. It was realistic and reflecting how much people can be passionate about game development. I respect them but It makes me think about myself and my dreams about game development. I know that game development is not easy and takes long time. Actually it is correct for any of the project we do as well. I think the issue with Indie game development is mostly on financial stand point. It is very hard to support your life and work on your dream job at the same time. Especially, if you have other responsibilities like taking care of a family. Because these responsibilities force you to find stable bare income while you are developing the game. This means you need to sponsorship your ideas. So, it turns chicken egg paradox. It will defer your dreams if you find a job and make money to support your project or you can take a big risk and suppress your responsibilities to act now. It is a tough choose. Whatever you choose there are some impacts. Actually, some of these implications are not so bad. When I watched the move I noticed that they were working on their own game engines ( I am not sure but I got that feeling ). Creating the game engine which your game idea runs on it is one of the time consuming and tough job. It is very enlighten experience you can have in game development because you are experiencing on every single level but It is very hard to justify with your precious time and money. In the past like 5 years ago, money was the factor because of there was no engines to afford for indie game developers but this situation keeps changing very rapidly. When I started interesting in game development I thought the same way and I felt that I had to learn how to write game engine. In time, I realized that the writing game engine actually is not serving you to reach your game dreams as much as I thought. You need to think about the game engine as the system programming language for you to implement your application top of it. It takes care of all your low level things and make your application work on hardware. In this perspective there has been a lot of development in game development sector in recent years. Big companies like Epic and Crytech (Unreal Engine and CryEngine ) opened their technologies to public. Whoever wants to use and expose these technologies can access them very easily. These companies charge you after your project comes to life. If you have a game that can sell very large amounts and needs power of these engines than you should go with them. But there are some other alternatives like Torque Game Engine (http://www.garagegames.com), Unity3D (http://unity3d.com/) or A8 (http://www.3dgamestudio.com/) with more acceptable royalty fees. I am happy to say that there are also so many training companies provide good content to those who want to learn about these engines. In the end, I am little bit jealous about new comers who wants to develop a game with these tools. So much think to learn and very little time.

Anyway, I would like to cut short and say that there are existing opportunities out there. If you have time, money and dreams, start to pursing them right away. I will continue to my journey at a little bit slow pace. There is no rush because there is no winner or loser in the end, just the dream to pursue.

Bulent

Hi All,

How are you guys, It has been long time no new entry ha.
I was working hard to finish this Freaseryachts CRM project. We come to far a way, but still there are many thing to do. www.fraseryachts.com

Meanwhile I bought Torque 3D Game engine. Still in beta 1 state but it will be very good product I think. So and I also was reading book about AI. It is very close to Industrial Engineer concepts so I like it.

www.graragegames.com

for now, take care.
BYE

At last I am in vacation!

Hi Everyone,

Long time has been I couldn't writing anything on blog.

At last, After 5 years i am in vacation now. Right now, I am in Istanbul.

I see a lot of old friends. I have good feelings. I Just got one concern about Turkiye political and economical situation. But There are many thing bad and good in my county. Good to be with old friends. I see my parents. Every one is fine right now. Thanks to Allah.

By the way, I have some game projects.

• Amiral Batti ( Test Project )
• Keloglan
• Nasrettin Hoca
• Canakkale Gecilmez

I will use Torque (TGEA) Game engine. Biggest problem is about game content. I couldn't find best work flow for game content yet but i am working on :)

Around this time I am waiting new TGEA version. I hope soon we can see new 1.7 version of TGAE. In that time I will upgrade my engine license to TGEA.

This times I study different 3D Applications for content. like;

• Blender
• Wings 3D
• Constructor ( Torque )
• XSI 6.0 MOD Tool
• Silo 2
• ZBrush 3
• GIMP
• Photoshop CS3
• Photoshop 5.0
• etc.

I am working develop my modelling and 2D skills. I'm interested in Manga Style Drawing.
Anyway That's all for now.

Have a great day.

Nowadays,

I study Math again. Engineering Math and 3D Match a little bit different. I suggests this Math book who want to refresh memory about 3D Math. Specially Matrix Section is good for illustrate Matrix transformations. So when I refresh my memory I start to develop my own Math Lib too. I think best way to learning is implementation.

My Dear Love ( Istanbul )

I miss you. My Home Land, I love you. I miss your air, rocks, trees, birds and sea. Just one more thing I don't miss, your traffic :D

First Post

Hi Everyone,

I post first Message on my English Language based Blog.
Sorry for my English but I will trying my best.

I have blog in my language and you can see in here...
Okey, See you soon.
Bye.