I attended the Microsoft ArcReady session in Mason Ohio just outside of Cincinnati.  Brian Prince from MSFT delivered a great session.  The topic was Blueprints for success, Architecting Modern Distributed Applications.  Get Session 1 Sides and Session 2 Slides.

The term "Modern", my take-away, was ~2010 picture of industry trends.  The slide below tells the story.  The SaaS element has many interesting opportunities - same with the Cloud.

Brian introduced the "Architecture Blueprint".  He used several examples, also in the slides, to show how to use the blueprint.  The slide below shows how an architect should first define which boxes are involved in architecting the project.  The process is to select all boxes involved in your application/project and draw lines to show the high level architecture.

Step 1: Use the "blueprint" to decompose and recompose application
Step 2: Get the right people involved
Step 3: Understand the Technology Mappings
Step 4: Document Repeatable Patterns
Step 5: Resources

The second session covered role based security.  It covered some of the security issues from the "Industry Trends".  Brian introduced Microsoft Security Token Service (STS) to authenticate clients in a heterogeneous environment.  Looks like try 3 for Passport.