Tag Archives: interoperability

by | March 20, 2012 · 12:30 AM

Part 3 of 3: Building an Enterprise Architecture Value Proposition Using TOGAF® 9.1. and ArchiMate® 2.0

By Serge Thorn, Architecting the Enterprise

This is the third and final post in a three-part series by Serge Thorn. For more in this series, please see Part One and Part Two.

Value Management uses a combination of concepts and methods to create sustainable value for both organizations and their stakeholders. Some tools and techniques are specific to Value Management and others are generic tools that many organizations and individuals use. There exist many Value Management techniques such as cost-benefits analysis, SWOT analysis, value analysis, Pareto analysis, objectives hierarchy, function analysis system technique (FAST), and more…

The one I suggest to illustrate is close to the objectives hierarchy technique, which is a diagrammatic process for identifying objectives in a hierarchical manner and often used in conjunction with business functions. Close, because I will use a combination of the TOGAF® 9.1 metamodel with the ArchiMate® 2.0 Business Layer, Application Layer and Motivation Extensions Metamodels, consider core entities such as value, business goals, objectives, business processes and functions, business and application services, application functions and components. This approach was inspired by the presentation by Michael van den Dungen and Arjan Visser at The Open Group Conference in Amsterdam 2010, and here I’m also adding some ArchiMate 2.0 concepts.

First, the entities from the TOGAF 9.1 metamodel:

Then I will consider the entities from ArchiMate 2.0. Some may be identical to TOGAF 9.1. In the Business Layer, one key concept will obviously be the value. In this case I will consider the product (“A coherent collection of services, accompanied by a contract/set of agreements, which is offered as a whole to (internal or external) customers” according to ArchiMate 2.0), as the Enterprise Architecture program. In addition to that, I would refer to business services, functions, and processes.

In the Motivation Extension Metamodel, the goals. The objective entity in TOGAF 9.1 can also be represented using the concept of “goal.”

And in the Application Layer Metamodel, application services, functions, and components.

It is important to mention that when we deliver a value proposition, we must demonstrate to the business where the benefits will be with concrete examples. For example: the business sees Operational Excellence and Customer Intimacy as key drivers, and soon you will realize that BPM suites or CRM could support the business goals. These are the reasons why we consider the Application Layer Metamodel.

We could then use a combination of the ArchiMate 2.0 viewpoints such as: Stakeholder Viewpoint, Goal Realization Viewpoint, Motivation Viewpoint, or some other viewpoints to demonstrate the value of Enterprise Architecture for a specific business transformation program (or any other strategic initiative).

To be mentioned that the concept of benefit does not exist in any of the metamodels.

I have added the concept as an extension to ArchiMate in the following diagram which is the mapping of the value to a program related to the “improvement of customers’ relationships.” I also have intentionally limited the number of concepts or entities, such as processes, application services or measures.

Using these ArchiMate 2.0 modelling techniques can demonstrate to your stakeholders the value proposition for a business program, supported by an Enterprise Architecture initiative.

As a real example, if the expected key business benefit is operational excellence through process controls, which would represent a goal, you could present such a high level diagram to explain why application components like a BPM Suite could help (detecting fraud and errors, embedding preventive controls, continuously auditing and monitoring processes, and more).

There is definitely not a single way of demonstrating the value of Enterprise Architecture and you probably will have to adapt the process and the way you will present that value to all companies you will be working with. Without a doubt Enterprise Architecture contributes to the success of an organization and brings numerous benefits, but very often it needs to be able to demonstrate that value. Using some techniques as described previously will help to justify such an initiative.

The next steps will be the development of measures, metrics and KPIs to continuously monitor that value proposition.

Serge Thorn is CIO of Architecting the Enterprise.  He has worked in the IT Industry for over 25 years, in a variety of roles, which include; Development and Systems Design, Project Management, Business Analysis, IT Operations, IT Management, IT Strategy, Research and Innovation, IT Governance, Architecture and Service Management (ITIL). He is the Chairman of the itSMF (IT Service Management forum) Swiss chapter and is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Comments Off

Filed under ArchiMate®, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Transformation, TOGAF®

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by | March 15, 2012 · 12:30 AM

Part 2 of 3: Building an Enterprise Architecture Value Proposition Using TOGAF® 9.1. and ArchiMate® 2.0

By Serge Thorn, Architecting the Enterprise

This is the second post in a three-part series by Serge Thorn.

Continuing from Part One of this series, here are more examples of what an enterprise cannot achieve without Enterprise Architecture:

Reduce IT costs by consolidating, standardizing, rationalizing and integrating corporate information systems

Cost avoidance can be achieved by identifying overlapping functional scope of two or more proposed projects in an organization or the potential cost savings of IT support by standardizing on one solution.

Consolidation can happen at various levels for architectures — for shared enterprise services, applications and information, for technologies and even data centers.

This could involve consolidating the number of database servers, application or web servers and storage devices, consolidating redundant security platforms, or adopting virtualization, grid computing and related consolidation initiatives. Consolidation may be a by-product of another technology transformation or it may be the driver of these transformations.

Whatever motivates the change, the key is to be in alignment, once again, with the overall business strategy. Enterprise architects understand where the business is going, so they can pick the appropriate consolidation strategy. Rationalization, standardization and consolidation processes helps organizations understand their current enterprise maturity level and move forward on the appropriate roadmap.

More spending on innovation

Enterprise Architecture should serve as a driver of innovation. Innovation is highly important when developing a target Enterprise Architecture and in realizing the organization’s strategic goals and objectives. For example, it may help to connect the dots between business requirements and the new approaches SOA and cloud services can deliver.

Enabling strategic business goals via better operational excellence

Building Enterprise Architecture defines the structure and operation of an organization. The intent of Enterprise Architecture is to determine how an organization can most effectively achieve its current and future objectives. It must be designed to support an organization’s specific business strategies.

Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, David C. Robertson in “Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business” wrote “Companies with more-mature architectures reported greater success in achieving strategic goals” (p. 89). “This included better operational excellence, more customer intimacy, and greater product leadership” (p. 100).

Customer intimacy

Enterprises that are customer focused and aim to provide solutions for their customers should design their business model, IT systems and operational activities to support this strategy at the process level. This involves the selection of one or few high-value customer niches, followed by an obsessive effort at getting to know these customers in detail.

Greater product leadership

This approach enabled by Enterprise Architecture is dedicated to providing the best possible products from the perspective of the features and benefits offered to the customer. It is the basic philosophy about products that push performance boundaries. Products or services delivered by the business will be refined by leveraging IT to do the end customer’s job better. This will be accomplished by the delivery of new business capabilities (e.g. on-line websites, BI, etc.).

Comply with regulatory requirements

Enterprise Architecture helps companies to know and represent their processes and systems and how they correlate. This is fundamental for risk management and managing regulation requirements, such as those derived from Sarbanes-Oxley, COSO, HIPAA, etc.

This list could be continued as there are many other reasons why Enterprise Architecture brings benefits to organizations. Once your benefits have been documented you could also consider some value management techniques. TOGAF® 9.1 refers in the Architecture Vision phase to a target value proposition for a specific project.  In the next blog, we’ll address the issue of applying the value proposition to the Enterprise Architecture initiative as a whole.

The third and final part of this blog series will discuss value management. 

Serge Thorn is CIO of Architecting the Enterprise.  He has worked in the IT Industry for over 25 years, in a variety of roles, which include; Development and Systems Design, Project Management, Business Analysis, IT Operations, IT Management, IT Strategy, Research and Innovation, IT Governance, Architecture and Service Management (ITIL). He is the Chairman of the itSMF (IT Service Management forum) Swiss chapter and is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

2 Comments

Filed under ArchiMate®, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Transformation, TOGAF®

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

by | March 13, 2012 · 12:30 AM

Part 1 of 3: Building an Enterprise Architecture Value Proposition Using TOGAF® 9.1. and ArchiMate® 2.0

By Serge Thorn, Architecting the Enterprise

This is the first post in a three-part series by Serge Thorn. 

When introducing Enterprise Architecture as a program or initiative, it is regularly done from an IT perspective rarely considering what the costs will be and if there will be any return on investment. This presents a particular challenge to Enterprise Architecture.

Generally speaking, IT departments have all sorts of criteria to justify projects and measure their performance. They use measurements, metrics and KPIs. Going to the solution level, they commonly use indicators such as percentage uptime for systems from the system management team, error rates for applications from the development support team or number of calls resolved on the first call from the service desk, etc. These KPIs usually are defined at an early stage and very often delivered in dashboards from various support applications.

On the other hand, it is much more difficult to define and implement a quantifiable measure for Enterprise Architecture. Many activities introduced with appropriate governance will enhance the quality of the delivered products and services, but it still will be a challenge to attribute results to the quality of Enterprise Architecture efforts.

This being said, Enterprise Architects should be able to define and justify the benefits of their activities to their stakeholders, and to help executives understand how Enterprise Architecture will contribute to the primary value-adding objectives and processes, before starting the voyage. The more it is described and understood, the more the Enterprise Architecture team will gain support from the management. There are plenty of contributions that Enterprise Architecture brings and they will have to be documented and presented at an early stage.

There won’t be just one single answer to demonstrate the value of an Enterprise Architecture but there seems to be a common pattern when considering feedback from various companies I have worked with.

Without Enterprise Architecture you can probably NOT fully achieve:

IT alignment with the business goals

As an example among others, the problem with most IT plans is that they do not indicate what the business value is and what strategic or tactical business benefit the organization is planning to achieve. The simple matter is that any IT plan needs also to have a business metric, not only an IT metric of delivery. Another aspect is the ability to create and share a common vision of the future shared by the business and IT communities.

Integration

With the rapid pace of change in business environment, the need to transform organizations into agile enterprises that can respond quickly to change has never been greater. Methodologies and computer technologies are needed to enable rapid business and system change. The solution also lies in enterprise integration (both business and technology integration).

For business integration, we use Enterprise Architecture methodologies and frameworks to integrate functions, processes, data, locations, people, events and business plans throughout an organization. Specifically, the unification and integration of business processes and data across the enterprise and potential linkage with external partners become more and more important.

To also have technology integration, we may use enterprise portals, enterprise application integration (EAI/ESB), web services, service-oriented architecture (SOA), business process management (BPM) and try to lower the number of interfaces.

Change management

In recent years the scope of Enterprise Architecture has expanded beyond the IT domain and enterprise architects are increasingly taking on broader roles relating to organizational strategy and change management. Frameworks such as TOGAF® 9.1 include processes and tools for managing both the business/people and the technology sides of an organization. Enterprise Architecture supports the creation of changes related to the various architecture domains, evaluating the impact on the enterprise, taking into account risk management, financial aspects (cost/benefit analysis), and most importantly ensuring alignment with business goals and objectives. Enterprise Architecture value is essentially tied to its ability to help companies to deal with complexity and changes.

Reduced time to market and increased IT responsiveness

Enterprise Architecture should reduce systems development, applications generation and modernization timeframes for legacy systems. It should also decrease resource requirements. All of this can be accomplished by re-using standards or existing components, such as the architecture and solution building blocks in TOGAF 9.1. Delivery time and design/development costs can also be decreased by the reuse of reference models. All that information should be managed in an Enterprise Architecture repository.

Better access to information across applications and improved interoperability

Data and information architectures manage the organization assets of information, optimally and efficiently. This supports the quality, accuracy and timely availability of data for executive and strategic business decision-making, across applications.

Readily available descriptive representations and documentation of the enterprise

Architecture is also a set of descriptive representations (i.e. “models”) that are relevant for describing an enterprise such that it can be produced to management’s requirements and maintained over the period of its useful life. Using an architecture repository, developing a variety of artifacts and modelling some of the key elements of the enterprise, will contribute to build this documentation.

The second part of the series will include more examples of what an enterprise cannot achieve without Enterprise Architecture. 

Serge Thorn is CIO of Architecting the Enterprise.  He has worked in the IT Industry for over 25 years, in a variety of roles, which include; Development and Systems Design, Project Management, Business Analysis, IT Operations, IT Management, IT Strategy, Research and Innovation, IT Governance, Architecture and Service Management (ITIL). He is the Chairman of the itSMF (IT Service Management forum) Swiss chapter and is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

3 Comments

Filed under ArchiMate®, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Transformation, TOGAF®

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

by | January 31, 2012 · 2:00 PM

Cloud Interoperability and Portability Project Findings to be Showcased in San Francisco

By Mark Skilton, Capgemini

Over the past year, The Open Group has been conducting a project to assess the current state of interoperability and portability in Cloud Computing. The findings from this work will be presented at The Open Group San Francisco Conference on Wednesday, February 1 by Mark Skilton (Capgemini) Kapil Bakshi (Cisco) and Chris Harding (The Open Group) – co-chairs and members of the project team.

The work has surveyed the current range of international standards development impacting interoperability. The project then developed a set of proposed architectural reference models targeting data, application, platform, infrastructure and environment portability and interoperability for Cloud ecosystems and connectivity to non-Cloud environments.

The Open Group plans to showcase the current findings and proposed areas of development within The Open Group using the organization’s own international architecture standards models and is also exploring the possibility of promoting work in this area  with other leading standards bodies as well.

If you’re interested in learning more about this project and if you’re at the San Francisco Conference, please come to the session, “The Benefits, Challenges and Survey of Cloud Computing Interoperability and Portability” on Wednesday, February 1 at 4:00 p.m.

Mark Skilton is Global Director for Capgemini, Strategy CTO Group, Global Infrastructure Services. His role includes strategy development, competitive technology planning including Cloud Computing and on-demand services, global delivery readiness and creation of Centers of Excellence. He is currently author of the Capgemini University Cloud Computing Course and is responsible for Group Interoperability strategy.

Comments Off

Filed under Cloud, Semantic Interoperability, Standards

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

by | January 9, 2012 · 1:47 PM

SF Conference to Explore Architecture Trends

By The Open Group Conference Team

In addition to exploring the theme of “Enterprise Transformation,” speakers at The Open Group San Francisco conference in January will explore a number of other trends related to enterprise architecture and the profession, including trends in service oriented architectures and business architecture. 

The debate about the role of EA in the development of high-level business strategy is a long running one. EA clearly contributes to business strategy, but does it formulate, plan or execute on business strategy?  If the scope of EA is limited to EA alone, it could have a diminutive role in business strategy and Enterprise Transformation going forward.

EA professionals will have the opportunity to discuss and debate these questions and hear from peers about their practical experiences, including the following tracks:

  • Establishing Value Driven EA as the Enterprise Embarks on Transformation (EA & Enterprise Transformation Track)  - Madhav Naidu, Lead Enterprise Architedt, Ciena Corp., US; and Mark Temple, Chief Architect, Ciena Corp.
  • Building an Enterprise Architecture Practice Foundation for Enterprise Transformation Execution  (EA & Business Innovation Track) – Frank Chen, Senior Manager & Principal Enterprise Architect, Cognizant, US
  • Death of IT: Rise of the Machines (Business Innovation & Technological Disruption: The Challenges to EA Track) –  Mans Bhuller, Senior Director, Oracle Corporation, US
  • Business Architecture Profession and Case Studies  (Business Architecture Track) – Mieke Mahakena, Capgemini,; and Peter Haviland, Chief Architect/Head of Business Architecture, Ernst & Young
  • Constructing the Architecture of an Agile Enterprise Using the MSBI Method (Agile Enterprise Architecture Track) – Nick Malike, Senior Principal Enterprise Architect, Microsoft Corporation, US
  • There’s a SEA Change in Your Future: How Sustainable EA Enables Business Success in Times of Disruptive Change (Sustainable EA Track)  – Leo Laverdure & Alex Conn, Managing Partners, SBSA Partners LLC, US
  • The Realization of SOA’s Using the SOA Reference Architecture  (Tutorials) – Nikhil Kumar, President, Applied Technology Solutions, US
  • SOA Governance: Thinking Beyond Services (SOA Track) – Jed Maczuba, Senior Manager, Accenture, US

In addition, a number of conference tracks will explore issues and trends related to the enterprise architecture profession and role of enterprise architects within organizations.  Tracks addressing professional concerns include:

  • EA: Professionalization or Marketing Needed? (Professional Development Track)  - Peter Kuppen, Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting, BV, Netherlands
  • Implementing Capabilities With an Architecture Practice (Setting up a Successful EA Practice Track)  – Mike Jacobs, Director and Principal Architect, OmptumInsight; and Joseph May, Director, Architecture Center of Excellence, OmptumInsight
  • Gaining and Retaining Stakeholder Buy-In: The Key to a Successful EA Practice Practice (Setting up a Successful EA Practice Track)   – Russ Gibfried, Enterprise Architect, CareFusion Corporation, US
  • The Virtual Enterprise Architecture Team (Nature & Role of the Enterprise Architecture) – Nicholas Hill, Principal Enterprise Architect, Consulting Services, FSI, Infosys; and Musharal Mughal, Director of EA, Manulife Financials, Canada

 Our Tutorials track will also provide practical guidance for attendees interested in learning more about how to implement architectures within organizations.  Topics will include tutorials on subjects such as TOGAF®, Archimate®, Service Oriented Architectures,  and architecture methods and techniques.

For more information on EA conference tracks, please visit the conference program on our website.

Comments Off

Filed under Cloud/SOA, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Transformation, Semantic Interoperability, Service Oriented Architecture

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

by | January 5, 2012 · 12:30 AM

Security and Cloud Computing Themes to be explored at The Open Group San Francisco Conference

By The Open Group Conference Team

Cybersecurity and Cloud Computing are two of the most pressing trends facing enterprises today. The Open Group Conference San Francisco will feature tracks on both trends where attendees can learn about the latest developments in both disciplines as well as hear practical advice for implementing both secure architectures and for moving enterprises into the Cloud.  Below are some of the highlights and featured speakers from both tracks.

Security

The San Francisco conference will provide an opportunity for practitioners to explore the theme of “hacktivism,” the use and abuse of IT to drive social change, and its potential impact on business strategy and Enterprise Transformation.  Traditionally, IT security has focused on protecting the IT infrastructure and the integrity of the data held within.  However, in a rapidly changing world where hacktivism is an enterprise’s biggest threat, how can enterprise IT security respond?

Featured speakers and panels include:

  • Steve Whitlock, Chief Security Strategist, Boeing, “Information Security in the Internet Age”
  • Jim Hietala, Vice President, Security, The Open Group, “The Open Group Security Survey Results”
  • Dave Hornford, Conexiam, and Chair, The Open Group Architecture Forum, “Overview of TOGAF® and SABSA® Integration White Paper”
  • Panel – “The Global Supply Chain: Presentation and Discussion on the Challenges of Protecting Products Against Counterfeit and Tampering”

Cloud Computing

According to Gartner, Cloud Computing is now entering the “trough of disillusionment” on its hype cycle. It is critical that organizations better understand the practical business, operational and regulatory issues associated with the implementation of Cloud Computing in order to truly maximize its potential benefits.

Featured speakers and panels include:

  • David JW Gilmour, Metaplexity Associates, “Architecting for Information Security in a Cloud Environment”
  • Chris Lockhart, Senior Enterprise Architect, UnitedHeal, “Un-Architecture: How a Fortune 25 Company Solved the Greatest IT Problem”
  • Penelope Gordon, Cloud and Business Architect, 1Plug Corporation, “Measuring the Business Performance of Cloud Products”
  • Jitendra Maan, Tata Consultancy, “Mobile Intelligence with Cloud Strategy”
  • Panel – “The Benefits, Challenges and Survey of Cloud Computing Interoperability and Portability”
    • Mark Skilton, Capgemini; Kapil Bakshi, Cisco; Jeffrey Raugh, Hewlett-Packard

Please join us in San Francisco for these speaking tracks, as well as those on our featured them of Enterprise Transformation and the role of enterprise architecture. For more information, please go to the conference homepage:
http://www3.opengroup.org/sanfrancisco2012

2 Comments

Filed under Cloud, Cloud/SOA, Cybersecurity, Information security, Security Architecture, Semantic Interoperability, TOGAF

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | December 23, 2011 · 12:30 AM

2012 Open Group Predictions, Vol. 2

By The Open Group

Continuing on the theme of predictions, here are a few more, which focus on enterprise architecture, business architecture, general IT and Open Group events in 2012.

Enterprise Architecture – The Industry

By Leonard Fehskens, VP of Skills and Capabilities

Looking back at 2011 and looking forward to 2012, I see growing stress within the EA community as both the demands being placed on it and the diversity of opinions within it increase. While this stress is not likely to fracture the community, it is going to make it much more difficult for both enterprise architects and the communities they serve to make sense of EA in general, and its value proposition in particular.

As I predicted around this time last year, the conventional wisdom about EA continues to spin its wheels.  At the same time, there has been a bit more progress at the leading edge than I had expected or hoped for. The net effect is that the gap between the conventional wisdom and the leading edge has widened. I expect this to continue through the next year as progress at the leading edge is something like the snowball rolling downhill, and newcomers to the discipline will pronounce that it’s obvious the Earth is both flat and the center of the universe.

What I had not expected is the vigor with which the loosely defined concept of business architecture has been adopted as the answer to the vexing challenge of “business/IT alignment.” The big idea seems to be that the enterprise comprises “the business” and IT, and enterprise architecture comprises business architecture and IT architecture. We already know how to do the IT part, so if we can just figure out the business part, we’ll finally have EA down to a science. What’s troubling is how much of the EA community does not see this as an inherently IT-centric perspective that will not win over the “business community.” The key to a truly enterprise-centric concept of EA lies inside that black box labeled “the business” – a black box that accounts for 95% or more of the enterprise.

As if to compensate for this entrenched IT-centric perspective, the EA community has lately adopted the mantra of “enterprise transformation”, a dangerous strategy that risks promising even more when far too many EA efforts have been unable to deliver on the promises they have already made.

At the same time, there is a growing interest in professionalizing the discipline, exemplified by the membership of the Association of Enterprise Architects (AEA) passing 20,000, TOGAF® 9 certifications passing 10,000, and the formation of the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations (FEAPO). The challenge that we face in 2012 and beyond is bringing order to the increasing chaos that characterizes the EA space. The biggest question looming seems to be whether this should be driven by IT. If so, will we be honest about this IT focus and will the potential for EA to become a truly enterprise-wide capability be realized?

Enterprise Architecture – The Profession

By Steve Nunn, COO of The Open Group and CEO of the Association of Enterprise Architects

It’s an exciting time for enterprise architecture, both as an industry and as a profession. There are an abundance of trends in EA, but I wanted to focus on three that have emerged and will continue to evolve in 2012 and beyond.

  • A Defined Career Path for Enterprise Architects: Today, there is no clear career path for the enterprise architect. I’ve heard this from college students, IT and business professionals and current EAs. Up until now, the skills necessary to succeed and the roles within an organization that an EA can and should fill have not been defined. It’s imperative that we determine the skill sets EAs need and the path for EAs to acquire these skills in a linear progression throughout their career. Expect this topic to become top priority in 2012.
  • Continued EA Certification Adoption: Certification will continue to grow as EAs seek ways to differentiate themselves within the industry and to employers. Certifications and memberships through professional bodies such as the Association of Enterprise Architects will offer value to members and employers alike by identifying competent and capable architects. This growth will also be supported by EA certification adoption in emerging markets like India and China, as those countries continue to explore ways to build value and quality for current and perspective clients, and to establish more international credibility.
  • Greater Involvement from the Business: As IT investments become business driven, business executives controlling corporate strategy will need to become more involved in EA and eventually drive the process. Business executive involvement will be especially helpful when outsourcing IT processes, such as Cloud Computing. Expect to see greater interest from executives and business schools that will implement coursework and training to reflect this shift, as well as increased discussion on the value of business architecture.

Business Architecture – Part 2

By Kevin Daley, IBM and Vice-Chair of The Open Group Business Forum

Several key technologies have reached a tipping point in 2011 that will move them out of the investigation and validation by enterprise architects and into the domain of strategy and realization for business architects. Five areas where business architects will be called upon for participation and effort in 2012 are related to:

  • Cloud: This increasingly adopted and disruptive technology will help increase the speed of development and change. The business architect will be called upon to ensure the strategic relevancy of transformation in a repeatable fashion as cycle times and rollouts happen faster.
  • Social Networking / Mobile Computing: Prevalent consumer usage, global user adoption and improvements in hardware and security make this a trend that cannot be ignored. The business architect will help develop new strategies as organizations strive for new markets and broader demographic reach.
  • Internet of Things: This concept from 2000 is reaching critical mass as more and more devices become communicative. The business architect will be called on to facilitate the conversation and design efforts between operational efforts and technologies managing the flood of new and usable information.
  • Big Data and Business Intelligence: Massive amounts of previously untapped data are being exposed, analyzed and made insightful and useful. The business architect will be utilized to help contain the complexity of business possibilities while identifying tactical areas where the new insights can be integrated into existing technologies to optimize automation and business process domains.
  • ERP Resurgence and Smarter Software: Software purchasing looks to continue its 2011 trend towards broader, more intuitive and feature-rich software and applications.  The business architect will be called upon to identify and help drive getting the maximum amount of operational value and output from these platforms to both preserve and extend organizational differentiation.

The State of IT

By Dave Lounsbury, CTO

What will have a profound effect on the IT industry throughout 2012 are the twin horses of mobility and consumerization, both of which are galloping at full tilt within the IT industry right now. Key to these trends are the increased use of personal devices, as well as favorite consumer Cloud services and social networks, which drive a rapidly growing comfort among end users with both data and computational power being everywhere. This comfort brings a level of expectations to end users who will increasingly want to control how they access and use their data, and with what devices. The expectation of control and access will be increasingly brought from home to the workplace.

This has profound implications for core IT organizations. There will be less reliance on core IT services, and with that an increased expectation of “I’ll buy the services, you show me know to knit them in” as the prevalent user approach to IT – thus requiring increased attention to use of standards conformance. IT departments will change from being the only service providers within organizations to being a guiding force when it comes to core business processes, with IT budgets being impacted. I see a rapid tipping point in this direction in 2012.

What does this mean for corporate data? The matters of scale that have been a part of IT—the overarching need for good architecture, security, standards and governance—will now apply to a wide range of users and their devices and services. Security issues will loom larger. Data, apps and hardware are coming from everywhere, and companies will need to develop criteria for knowing whether systems are robust, secure and trustworthy. Governments worldwide will take a close look at this in 2012, but industry must take the lead to keep up with the pace of technology evolution, such as The Open Group and its members have done with the OTTF standard.

Open Group Events in 2012

By Patty Donovan, VP of Membership and Events

In 2012, we will continue to connect with members globally through all mediums available to us – our quarterly conferences, virtual and regional events and social media. Through coordination with our local partners in Brazil, China, France, Japan, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, we’ve been able to increase our global footprint and connect members and non-members who may not have been able to attend the quarterly conferences with the issues facing today’s IT professionals. These events in conjunction with our efforts in social media has led to a rise in member participation and helped further develop The Open Group community, and we hope to have continued growth in the coming year and beyond.

We’re always open to new suggestions, so if you have a creative idea on how to connect members, please let me know! Also, please be sure to attend the upcoming Open Group Conference in San Francisco, which is taking place on January 30 through February 3. The conference will address enterprise transformation as well as other key issues in 2012 and beyond.

9 Comments

Filed under Business Architecture, Cloud, Cloud/SOA, Data management, Enterprise Architecture, Semantic Interoperability, Standards

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by | December 20, 2011 · 12:30 AM

Save the Date—The Open Group Conference San Francisco!

By Patty Donovan, The Open Group

It’s that time again to start thinking ahead to The Open Group’s first conference of 2012 to be held in San Francisco, January 30 – February 3, 2012. Not only do we have a great venue for the event, the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins (home of the famous “Top of the Mark” sky lounge—with amazing views of all of San Francisco!), but we have stellar line up for our winter conference centered on the theme of Enterprise Transformation.

Enterprise Transformation is a theme that is increasingly being used by organizations of all types to represent the change processes they implement in response to internal and external business drivers. Enterprise Architecture (EA) can be a means to Enterprise Transformation, but most enterprises today because EA is still largely limited to the IT department and transformation must go beyond the IT department to be successful. The San Francisco conference will focus on the role that both IT and EA can play within the Enterprise Transformation process, including the following:

  • The differences between EA and Enterprise Transformation and how they relate  to one another
  • The use of EA to facilitate Enterprise Transformation
  • How EA can be used to create a foundation for Enterprise Transformation that the Board and business-line managers can understand and use to their advantage
  • How EA facilitates transformation within IT, and how does such transformation support the transformation of the enterprise as a whole
  • How EA can help the enterprise successfully adapt to “disruptive technologies” such as Cloud Computing and ubiquitous mobile access

In addition, we will be featuring a line-up of keynotes by some of the top industry leaders to discuss Enterprise Transformation, as well as themes around our regular tracks of Enterprise Architecture and Professional Certification, Cloud Computing and Cybersecurity. Keynoting at the conference will be:

  • Joseph Menn, author and cybersecurity correspondent for the Financial Times (Keynote: What You’re Up Against: Mobsters, Nation-States and Blurry Lines)
  • Celso Guiotoko, Corporate Vice President and CIO, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. (Keynote: How Enterprise Architecture is helping NISSAN IT Transformation)
  • Jeanne W. Ross, Director & Principal Research Scientist, MIT Center for Information Systems Research (Keynote: The Enterprise Architect: Architecting Business Success)
  • Lauren C. States, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Cloud Computing and Growth Initiatives, IBM Corp. (Keynote: Making Business Drive IT Transformation Through Enterprise Architecture)
  • Andy Mulholland, Chief Global Technical Officer, Capgemini (Keynote: The Transformed Enterprise)
  • William Rouse, Executive Director, Tennenbaum Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology (Keynote: Enterprise Transformation: An Architecture-Based Approach)

For more on the conference tracks or to register, please visit our conference registration page. And stay tuned throughout the next month for more sneak peeks leading up to The Open Group Conference San Francisco!

1 Comment

Filed under Cloud, Cloud/SOA, Cybersecurity, Data management, Enterprise Architecture, Semantic Interoperability, Standards

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by | December 19, 2011 · 3:30 AM

2012 Open Group Predictions, Vol. 1

By The Open Group

Foreword

By Allen Brown, CEO

2011 was a big year for The Open Group, thanks to the efforts of our members and our staff – you all deserve a very big thank you. There have been so many big achievements, that to list them all here would mean we would never get to our predictions. Significantly though, The Open Group continues to grow and this year the number of enterprise members passed the 400 mark which means that around 30,000 people are involved, some more so than others, from all over the world.

Making predictions is always risky but we thought it might be fun anyway. Here are three trends that will wield great influence on IT in 2012 and beyond:

  • This year we experienced the consumerization of IT accelerating the pace of change for the enterprise at an astonishing rate as business users embraced new technologies that transformed their organizations. As this trend continues in 2012, the enterprise architect will play a critical role in supporting this change and enabling the business to realize their goals.
  • Enterprise architecture will continue its maturity in becoming a recognized profession. As the profession matures, employers of enterprise architects and other IT professionals, for that matter, will increasingly look for industry recognized certifications.
  • As globalization continues, security and compliance will be increasing issues for companies delivering products or services and there will be a growing spotlight on what might be inside IT products. Vendors will be expected to warrant that the products they purchase and integrate into their own products come from a trusted source and that their own processes can be trusted in order not to introduce potential threats to their customers. At the same time, customers will be increasingly sensitive to the security and dependability of their IT assets. To address this situation, security will continue to be designed in from the outset and be tightly coupled with enterprise architecture.

In addition to my predictions, Other Open Group staff members also wanted to share their predictions for 2012 with you:

Security

By Jim Hietala, VP of Security

Cloud security in 2012 becomes all about point solutions to address specific security pain points. Customers are realizing that to achieve an acceptable level of security, whether for IaaS, SaaS, or PaaS, they need to apply controls in addition to the native platform controls from the Cloud service provider. In 2012, this will manifest as early Cloud security technologies target specific and narrow security functionality gaps. Specific areas where we see this playing out include data encryption, data loss prevention, identity and access management, and others.

Cloud

By Chris Harding, Director of Interoperability

There is a major trend towards shared computing resources that are “on the Cloud” – accessed by increasingly powerful and mobile personal computing devices but decoupled from the users.

This may bring some much-needed economic growth in 2012, but history shows that real growth can only come from markets based on standards. Cloud portability and interoperability standards will enable development of re-usable components as commodity items, but the need for them is not yet appreciated. And, even if the vendors wanted these standards for Cloud Computing, they do not yet have the experience to create good ones.  But, by the end of the year, we should understand Cloud Computing better and will perhaps have made a start on the standardization that will lead to growth in the years ahead.

Here are some more Cloud predictions from my colleagues in The Open Group Cloud Work Group:
http://blog.opengroup.org/2011/12/19/cloud-computing-predictions-for-2012/

Business Architecture

By Steve Philp, Professional Certification

There are a number of areas for 2012 where Business Architects will be called upon to engage in transforming the business and applying technologies such as Cloud Computing, social networking and big data. Therefore, the need to have competent Business Architects is greater than ever. This year organizations have been recruiting and developing Business Architects and the profession as a whole is now starting to take shape. But how do you establish who is a practicing Business Architect?

In response to requests from our membership, next year The Open Group will incorporate a Business Architecture stream into The Open Group Certified Architect (Open CA) program. There has already been significant interest in this stream from both organizations and practitioners alike. This is because Open CA is a skills and experience based program that recognizes, at different levels, those individuals who are performing in a Business Architecture role. I believe this initiative will further help to develop the profession over the next few years and especially in 2012.

1 Comment

Filed under Business Architecture, Cloud, Cybersecurity, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Transformation, Semantic Interoperability, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by | · 12:30 AM

Cloud Computing predictions for 2012

By The Open Group Cloud Work Group Members 

With 2012 fast approaching, Cloud Computing will remain a hot topic for IT professionals everywhere. The Open Group Cloud Work Group worked on various initiatives in 2011, including the Cloud Computing Survey, which explored the business impact and primary drivers for Cloud within organizations, and the release of Cloud Computing for Business, a guide that examines how enterprises can derive the greatest business benefits from Cloud Computing from a business process standpoint.

As this year comes to an end, here are a few predictions from various Cloud Work Group members.

Non-IT executives will increasingly use the term “Cloud” in regular business conversations

By Penelope Gordon, 1 Plug

In 2012, the number of non-IT business executives seeking ways to leverage Cloud will increase, and consequently references to Cloud Computing will increasingly appear in general business publications.

This increase in Cloud references will in part be due to the availability of consumer-oriented Cloud services such as email and photo sharing. For example, the October 2011 edition of the Christian Science Monitor included an article titled “Five things you need to know about ‘the cloud’” by Chris Gaylord that discussed Cloud services in the same vein as mobile phone capabilities. Another factor behind the increase (unintentionally) highlighted in this article is the overuse – and consequent dilution – of the term “Cloud” – Web services and applications running on Cloud infrastructure are not necessarily themselves Cloud services.

The most important factor behind the increase will be due to the relevance of Cloud – especially the SaaS, BPaaS, and cloud-enabled BPO variants – to these executives. In contrast to SOA, Cloud Computing buying decisions related to business process enablement can be very granular and incremental and can thus be made independently of the IT Department – not that I advocate bypassing IT input. Good governance ensures both macro-level optimization and interoperability.

New business models in monetizing your Information-as–a-Service

By Mark Skilton, Capgemini

Personal data is rapidly become less restricted to individual control and management as we see exponential growth in the use of digital media and social networking to exchange ideas, conduct business and enable whole markets, products and services to be accessible. This has significant ramifications not only for individuals and organizations to maintain security and protection over what is public and private; it also represents a huge opportunity to understand both small and big data and the “interstitial connecting glue” – the metadata within and at the edge of Clouds that are like digital smoke trails of online community activities and behaviors.

At the heart of this is the “value of information” to organizations that can extract and understand how to maximize this information and, in turn, monetize it. This can be as simple as profiling customers who “like” products and services to creating secure backup Cloud services to retrieve in times of need and support of emergency services. The point is that new metadata combinations are possible through the aggregation of data inside and outside of organizations to create new value.

There are many new opportunities to create new business models that recognize this new wave of Information-as- a-Service (IaaS) as the Cloud moves further into new value model territories.

Small and large enterprise experiences when it comes to Cloud

By Pam Isom, IBM

The Cloud Business Use Case (CBUC) team is in the process of developing and publishing a paper that is focused on the subject of Cloud for Small-Medium-Enterprises (SME’s). The CBUC team is the same team that contributed to the book Cloud Computing for Business with a concerted focus on Cloud business benefits, use cases, and justification. When it comes to small and large enterprise comparisons of Cloud adoption, some initial observations are that the increased agility associated with Cloud helps smaller organizations with rapid time-to-market and, as a result, attracts new customers in a timely fashion. This faster time-to-market not only helps SME’s gain new customers who otherwise would have gone to competitors, but prevents those competitors from becoming stronger – enhancing the SME’s competitive edge. Larger enterprises might be more willing to have a dedicated IT organization that is backed with support staff and they are more likely to establish full-fledged data center facilities to operate as a Cloud service provider in both a public and private capacity, whereas SME’s have lower IT budgets and tend to focus on keeping their IT footprint small, seeking out IT services from a variety of Cloud service providers.

A recent study conducted by Microsoft surveyed more than 3000 small businesses across 16 countries with the objective of understanding whether they have an appetite for adopting Cloud Computing. One of the findings was that within three years, “43 percent of workloads will become paid cloud services.” This is one of many statistics that stress the significance of Cloud on small businesses in this example and the predictions for larger enterprise as Cloud providers and consumers are just as profound.

Penelope Gordon specializes in adoption strategies for emerging technologies, and portfolio management of early stage innovation. While with IBM, she led innovation, strategy, and product development efforts for all of IBM’s product and service divisions; and helped to design, implement, and manage one of the world’s first public clouds.

Mark Skilton is Global Director for Capgemini, Strategy CTO Group, Global Infrastructure Services. His role includes strategy development, competitive technology planning including Cloud Computing and on-demand services, global delivery readiness and creation of Centers of Excellence. He is currently author of the Capgemini University Cloud Computing Course and is responsible for Group Interoperability strategy.

Pamela K. Isom is the Chief Architect for complex cloud integration and application innovation services such as serious games. She joined IBM in June 2000 and currently leads efforts that drive Smarter Planet efficiencies throughout client enterprises using, and often times enhancing, its’ Enterprise Architecture (EA). Pamela is a Distinguished Chief/Lead IT Architect with The Open Group where she leads the Cloud Business Use Cases Work Group.

3 Comments

Filed under Cloud, Cloud/SOA, Enterprise Transformation, Semantic Interoperability

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | December 2, 2011 · 12:30 AM

The Open Group Surpasses 400 Member Milestone

By Allen Brown, The Open Group

I’m pleased to announce The Open Group has recently surpassed the 400 member mark. Reaching this milestone is a true testament to the commitment our members and staff have made to promoting open standards over the past 25 years.

The Open Group’s strategy has been shaped by IT users through the development of open, vendor-neutral standards and certifications. Today’s milestone validates that this strategy is continuing to resonate, particularly with global organizations that demand greater interoperability, trusted ways to architect their information systems and qualified IT people to lead the effort.

Our members continue to collaborate on developing long term, globally accepted solutions surrounding the most critical IT issues facing business today. Some of the work areas include Enterprise Architecture, Cloud Computing, real-time and embedded systems, operating platform, semantic interoperability and cyber-security to name a few. The members’ leadership around these issues is increasingly global through a larger roster of regional events and local offices now based in China, France, Japan, South Africa, South America, Sweden, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the UK and US. As a result, we now have more than 30,000 individual members participating from 400 global organizations in more than 85 countries worldwide.

This is a great milestone to end the year on, and we’re looking forward to celebrating more occasions like it resulting from the members’ hard work and contributions in 2012.

2 Comments

Filed under Enterprise Transformation, Semantic Interoperability, Standards

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

by | August 15, 2011 · 12:30 AM

The future – ecosystems and standards

By Mark Skilton, Capgemini

This article is a continuation of a series on standards by Mark Stilton. Read his previous posts on “Why standards in information technology are critical“ and “Innovation in the Cloud needs open standards.”

The evolution of standards has become a big domain issue. The world has moved from the individual languages of resources and transactions into architectural standards that seek to describe how different sets of resources, interfaces and interactions can be designed to work together. But this concept has now gone further in networked societies.

In this new “universe” of online and physical services, new channels, portals, devices and services are emerging that create new integration and compositions of services. New business models are emerging as a result, which are impacting existing markets and incumbents as well as creating new rules and standards.  Old standards and policies such as digital privacy and cross-border intellectual property are being challenged by these new realities. Ignoring these is not an option, as companies and whole countries are realizing the need to keep up-to-date and aware of these developments that impact their own locations and economies.

This means the barriers and accelerators to individual markets and new markets are evolving and in constant dynamic change. Standards and interoperability are at the center of these issues and affect the very levers of change in markets.

Cloud Computing is one such phenomenon rewriting the rules on information exchange and business models for provisioning and delivery of products and services. The impact of Cloud Computing on competitive advantage is significant in the way it has lowered barriers to access of markets and collaboration. It has increased speed of provisioning and potential for market growth and expansion through the distributed power of the Internet. The connectivity and extensions of business models brought about by these trends is changing previously held beliefs and competitive advantages of ownership and relationships.

The following diagram was presented at The Open Group Conference, Amsterdam in the fall  of 2010.

The Internet of Things (IOT) is an example of this trend that is seen in the area of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags of materials and products for automatic tracking. But this is just one example of interoperability emerging across industries. Large-scale telecommunications networks now have the ability to reach and integrate large areas of the marketplace through fixed and now wireless mobile communications networks.

This vision can create new possibilities beyond just tagging and integration of supply chains; it hints towards a possibility of social networks, business networks and value chains being able to create new experiences and services through interconnectedness.

Mark Skilton, Director, Capgemini, is the Co-Chair of The Open Group Cloud Computing Work Group. He has been involved in advising clients and developing of strategic portfolio services in Cloud Computing and business transformation. His recent contributions include the publication of Return on Investment models on Cloud Computing widely syndicated that achieved 50,000 hits on CIO.com and in the British Computer Society 2010 Annual Review. His current activities include development of a new Cloud Computing Model standards and best practices on the subject of Cloud Computing impact on Outsourcing and Off-shoring models and contributed to the second edition of the Handbook of Global Outsourcing and Off-shoring published through his involvement with Warwick Business School UK Specialist Masters Degree Program in Information Systems Management.

1 Comment

Filed under Cloud, Standards

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | February 9, 2011 · 7:30 AM

FACE™: Exchanging proprietary avionics solutions for a standardized computing environment

By Judy Cerenzia, The Open Group

It’s hard to believe that only eight months ago we kicked off The Open Group Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) Consortium, a collaborative group of avionics industry and U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force contributors who are working to develop standards for a common operating environment to support portable capability applications across Department of Defense (DoD) avionics systems. Our goal is to create an avionics software environment on installed computing hardware of war-fighting platforms that enables FACE™ applications to be deployed on different platforms without impact to the FACE™ applications. This approach to portable applications and interoperability will reduce development and integration costs and reduce time to field new avionics capabilities.

The  FACE™ Technical Working Group is rapidly developing Version 1 of our technical standard, scheduled to be released later this year. The FACE™ Consortium strategy is changing the way government and industry do business by breaking down barriers to portability – exchanging proprietary solutions for a common and standardized computing environment and components. To enable this climate change, the Consortium’s Business Working Group is developing a Business Model Guide, defining stakeholders and their roles within a new business model, developing business scenarios and defining how stakeholders will impact or be impacted by business drivers in each, and investigating how contract terms, software licensing agreements, and IP rights may need to change to support procuring common components with standardized interfaces vs. a proprietary black-box solution from a prime contractor.  They’re also using TOGAF™ checklists from Phases A and B of the ADM process to ensure they’ve addressed all required business issues for the avionics enterprise.

We’ve grown from 74 individuals representing 14 organizations in June 2010 to over 200 participants from 20 government and industry partners to date. We’ve scheduled face-to-face meetings every 6 weeks, rotating among member locations to host the events and averaged over 70 attendees at each. Our next consortium meeting will be in the DC area March 2-3, 2011, hosted by the Office of Naval Research. I’m looking forward to seeing FACE™ colleagues, facilitating their working meeting, and forging ahead toward our mission to develop, evolve and publish a realistic open FACE™ architecture, standards and business model, and robust industry conformance program that will be supported and adopted by FACE™ customers, vendors, and integrators.

Judy Cerenzia is a Director of Collaboration Services for The Open Group, currently providing project management and facilitation support to the Future Airborn Capabilities Environment (FACE™) Consortium.  She has 10+ years experience leading cross-functional and cross-organizational development teams to reach consensus, using proven business processes and best practices to achieve strategic and technical goals.

2 Comments

Filed under FACE™

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | February 8, 2011 · 3:59 PM

The golden thread of interoperability

By Dr. Chris Harding, The Open Group

There are so many things going on at every Conference by The Open Group that it is impossible to keep track of all of them, and this week’s Conference in San Diego, California, is no exception. The main themes are Cybersecurity, Enterprise Architecture, SOA and Cloud Computing. Additional topics range from Real-Time and Embedded Systems to Quantum Lifecycle Management. But there are a number of common threads running through all of those themes, relating to value delivered to IT customers through open systems. One of those threads is Interoperability.

Interoperability Panel Session

The interoperability thread showed strongly in several sessions on the opening day of the conference, Monday Feb. 7, starting with a panel session on Interoperability Challenges for 2011 that I was fortunate to have been invited to moderate.

The panelists were Arnold van Overeem of Capgemini, chair of the Architecture Forum’s Interoperability project, Ron Schuldt, the founder of UDEF-IT and chair of the Semantic Interoperability Work Group’s UDEF project, TJ Virdi of Boeing, co-chair of The Open Group Cloud Computing Work Group, and Bob Weisman of Build-the-Vision, chair of The Open Group Architecture Forum’s Information Architecture project. The audience was drawn from many companies, both members and non-members of The Open Group, and made a strong contribution to the debate.

What is interoperability? The panel described several essential characteristics:

  • Systems with different owners and governance models work together;
  • They exchange and understand data automatically;
  • They form an information-sharing environment in which business information is available in the right context, to the right person, and at the right time; and
  • This environment enables processes, as well as information, to be shared.

Interoperability is not just about the IT systems. It is also about the ecosystem of user organizations, and their cultural and legislative context.

Semantics is an important component of interoperability. It is estimated that 65% of data warehouse projects fail because of their inability to cope with a huge number of data elements, differently defined.

There is a constant battle for interoperability. Systems that lock customers in by refusing to interoperate with those of other vendors can deliver strong commercial profit. This strategy is locally optimal but globally disastrous; it gives benefits to both vendors and customers in the short term, but leads in the longer term to small markets and siloed systems.  The front line is shifting constantly. There are occasional resounding victories – as with the introduction of the Internet – but the normal state is trench warfare with small and painful gains and losses.

Blame for lack of interoperability is often put on the vendors, but this is not really fair. Vendors must work within what is commercially possible. Customer organizations can help the growth of interoperability by applying pressure and insisting on support for standards. This is in their interests; integration required by lack of interoperability is currently estimated to account for over 25% of IT spend.

SOA has proved a positive force for interoperability. By embracing SOA, a customer organization can define its data model and service interfaces, and tender for competing solutions that conform to its interfaces and meet its requirements. Services can be shared processing units forming part of the ecosystem environment.

The latest IT phenomenon is Cloud Computing. This is in some ways reinforcing SOA as an interoperability enabler. Shared services can be available on the Cloud, and the ease of provisioning services in a Cloud environment speeds up the competitive tendering process.

But there is one significant area in which Cloud computing gives cause for concern: lack of interoperability between virtualization products. Virtualization is a core enabling technology for Cloud Computing, and virtualization products form the basis for most private Cloud solutions. These products are generally vendor-specific and without interoperable interfaces, so that it is difficult for a customer organization to combine different virtualization products in a private Cloud, and easy for it to become locked in to a single vendor.

There is a need for an overall interoperability framework within which standards can be positioned, to help customers express their interoperability requirements effectively. This framework should address cultural and legal aspects, and architectural maturity, as well as purely technical aspects. Semantics will be a crucial element.

Such a framework could assist the development of interoperable ecosystems, involving multiple organizations. But it will also help the development of architectures for interoperability within individual organizations – and this is perhaps of more immediate concern.

The Open Group can play an important role in the development of this framework, and in establishing it with customers and vendors.

SOA/TOGAF Practical Guide

SOA is an interoperability enabler, but establishing SOA within an enterprise is not easy to do. There are many stakeholders involved, with particular concerns to be addressed. This presents a significant task for enterprise architects.

TOGAF® has long been established as a pragmatic framework that helps enterprise architects deliver better solutions. The Open Group is developing a practical guide to using TOGAF® for SOA, as a joint project of its SOA Work Group and The Open Group Architecture Forum.

This work is now nearing completion. Ed Harrington of Architecting-the-Enterprise had overcome the considerable difficulty of assembling and adding to the material created by the project to form a solid draft. This was discussed in detail by a small group, with some participants joining by teleconference. As well as Ed, this group included Mats Gejnevall of Capgemini and Steve Bennett of Oracle, and it was led by project co-chairs Dave Hornford of Integritas and Awel Dico of the Bank of Montreal.

The discussion resolved all the issues, enabling the preparation of a draft for review by The Open Group, and we can expect to see this valuable guide published at the conclusion of the review process.

UDEF Deployment Workshop

The importance of semantics for interoperability was an important theme of the interoperability panel discussion. The Open Group is working on a specific standard that is potentially a key enabler for semantic interoperability: the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF).

It had been decided at the previous conference, in Amsterdam, that the next stage of UDEF development should be a deployment workshop. This was discussed by a small group, under the leadership of UDEF project chair Ron Schuldt, again with some participation by teleconference.

The group included Arnold van Overeem of Capgemini, Jayson Durham of the US Navy, and Brand Niemann of the Semantic Community. Jayson is a key player in the Enterprise Lexicon Services (ELS) initiative, which aims to provide critical information interoperability capabilities through common lexicon and vocabulary services. Brand is a major enthusiast for semantic interoperability with connections to many US semantic initiatives, and currently to the Air Force OneSource project in particular, which is evolving a data analysis tool used internally by the USAF Global Cyberspace Integration Center (GCIC) Vocabulary Services Team, and made available to general data management community.  The participation of Jayson and Brand provided an important connection between the UDEF and other semantic projects.

As a result of the discussions, Ron will draft an interoperability scenario that can be the basis of a practical workshop session at the next conference, which is in London.

Complex Cloud Environments

Cloud Computing is the latest hot technology, and its adoption is having some interesting interoperability implications, as came out clearly in the Interoperability panel session. In many cases, an enterprise will use, not a single Cloud, but multiple services in multiple Clouds. These services must interoperate to deliver value to the enterprise. The Complex Cloud Environments conference stream included two very interesting presentations on this.

The first, by Mark Skilton and Vladimir Baranek of Capgemini, explained how new notations for Cloud can help explain and create better understanding and adoption of new Cloud-enabled services and the impact of social and business networks. As Cloud environments become increasingly complex, the need to explain them clearly grows. Consumers and vendors of Cloud services must be able to communicate. Stakeholders in consumer organizations must be able to discuss their concerns about the Cloud environment. The work presented by Mark and Vladimir grew from discussions in a CloudCamp that was held at a previous Conference by The Open Group. We hope that it can now be developed by The Open Group Cloud Computing Work Group to become a powerful and sophisticated language to address this communication need.

The second presentation, from Soobaek Jang of IBM, addressed the issue of managing and coordinating across a large number of instances in a Cloud Computing environment. He explained an architecture for “Multi-Node Management Services” that acts as a framework for auto-scaling in a SaaS lifecycle, putting structure around self-service activity, and providing a simple and powerful web service orientation that allows providers to manage and orchestrate deployments in logical groups.

SOA Conference Stream

The principal presentation in this stream picked up on one of the key points from the Interoperability panel session in a very interesting way. It showed how a formal ontology can be a practical basis for common operation of SOA repositories. Semantic interoperability is at the cutting edge of interoperability, and is more often the subject of talk than of action. The presentation included a demonstration, and it was great to see the ideas put to real use.

The presentation was given jointly by Heather Kreger, SOA Work Group Co-chair, and Vince Brunssen, Co-chair of SOA Repository Artifact Model and Protocol (S-RAMP) at OASIS. Both presenters are from IBM. S-Ramp is an emerging standard from OASIS that enables interoperability between tools and repositories for SOA. It uses the formal SOA Ontology that was developed by The Open Group, with extensions to enable a common service model as well as an interoperability protocol.

This presentation illustrated how S-RAMP and the SOA Ontology work in concert with The Open Group SOA Governance Framework to enable governance across vendors. It contained a demonstration that included defining new service models with the S-RAMP extensions in one SOA repository and communicating with another repository to augment its service model.

To conclude the session, I gave a brief presentation on SOA in the Cloud – the Next Challenge for Enterprise Architects. This discussed how the SOA architectural style is widely accepted as the style for enterprise architecture, and how Cloud Computing is a technical possibility that can be used in enterprise architecture. Architectures using Cloud computing should be service-oriented, but this poses some key questions for the architect. Architecture governance must change in the context of Cloud-based ecosystems. It may take some effort to keep to the principles of the SOA style – but it will be important to do this. And the organization of the infrastructure – which may migrate from the enterprise to the Cloud – will present an interesting challenge.

Enabling Semantic Interoperability Through Next Generation UDEF

The day was rounded off by an evening meeting, held jointly with the local chapter of the IEEE, on semantic interoperability. The meeting featured a presentation by Ron Schuldt, UDEF Project Chair, on the history, current state, and future goals of the UDEF.

The importance of semantics as a component of interoperability was clear in the morning’s panel discussion. In this evening session, Ron explained how the UDEF can enable semantic interoperability, and described the plans of the UDEF Project Team to expand the framework to meet the evolving needs of enterprises today and in the future.

This meeting was arranged through the good offices of Jayson Durham, and it was great that local IEEE members could join conference participants for an excellent session.

Cloud is a topic of discussion at The Open Group Conference, San Diego, which is currently underway.

Dr Chris Harding is Director for Interoperability and SOA at The Open Group. He has been with The Open Group for more than ten years, and is currently responsible for managing and supporting its work on interoperability, including SOA and interoperability aspects of Cloud Computing. Before joining The Open Group, he was a consultant, and a designer and development manager of communications software. With a PhD in mathematical logic, he welcomes the current upsurge of interest in semantic technology, and the opportunity to apply logical theory to practical use. He has presented at Open Group and other conferences on a range of topics, and contributes articles to on-line journals. He is a member of the BCS, the IEEE, and the AOGEA, and is a certified TOGAF practitioner.

3 Comments

Filed under Cloud/SOA, TOGAF®

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

by | February 2, 2011 · 9:29 AM

Open Group conference next week focuses on role and impact of enterprise architecture amid shifting sands for IT and business

by Dana Gardner, Interarbor Solutions

Republished from his blog, BriefingsDirect, originally published Feb. 2, 2011

Next week’s The Open Group Conference in San Diego comes at an important time in the evolution of IT and business. And it’s not too late to attend the conference, especially if you’re looking for an escape from the snow and ice.

From Feb. 7 through 9 at the Marriott San Diego Mission Valley, the 2011 conference is organized around three key themes: architecting cyber security, enterprise architecture (EA) and business transformation, and the business and financial impact of cloud computing. CloudCamp San Diego will be held in conjunction with the conference on Wednesday, Feb. 9. [Disclosure: The Open Group is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Registration is open to both members and non-members of The Open Group. For more information, or to register for the conference in San Diego please visit:
http://www.opengroup.org/sandiego2011/register.htm
. Registration is free for members of the press and industry analysts.

The Open Group is a vendor- and technology-neutral consortium, whose vision ofBoundaryless Information Flow™ will enable access to integrated information within and between enterprises based on open standards and global interoperability.

I’ve found these conferences over the past five years an invaluable venue for meeting and collaborating with CIOs, enterprise architects, standards stewards and thought leaders on enterprise issues. It’s one of the few times when the mix of technology, governance and business interests mingle well for mutual benefit.

The Security Practitioners Conference, being held on Feb. 7, provides guidelines on how to build trusted solutions; take into account government and legal considerations; and connects architecture and information security management. Confirmed speakers include James Stikeleather, chief innovation officer, Dell Services; Bruce McConnell, cybersecurity counselor, National Protection and Programs Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; and Ben Calloni, Lockheed Martin Fellow, Software Security, Lockheed Martin Corp.

Change management processes requiring an advanced, dynamic and resilient EA structure will be discussed in detail during The Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference on Feb. 8. The Cloud Computing track, on Feb. 9, includes sessions on the business and financial impact of cloud computing; cloud security; and how to architect for the cloud — with confirmed speakers Steve Else, CEO, EA Principals; Pete Joodi, distinguished engineer, IBM; and Paul Simmonds, security consultant, the Jericho Forum.

General conference keynote presentation speakers include Dawn Meyerriecks, assistant director of National Intelligence for Acquisition, Technology and Facilities, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; David Mihelcic, CTO, the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency; and Jeff Scott, senior analyst, Forrester Research.

I’ll be moderating an on-stage panel on Wednesday on the considerations that must be made when choosing a cloud solution — custom or “shrink-wrapped” — and whether different forms of cloud computing are appropriate for different industry sectors. The tension between plain cloud offerings and enterprise demands for customization is bound to build, and we’ll work to find a better path to resolution.

I’ll also be hosting and producing a set of BriefingsDirect podcasts at the conference, on such topics as the future of EA groups, EA maturity and future roles, security risk management, and on the new Trusted Technology Forum (OTTF) established in December. Look for those podcasts, blog summaries and transcripts here over the next few days and weeks.

For the first time, The Open Group Photo Contest will encourage the members and attendees to socialize, collaborate and share during Open Group conferences, as well as document and share their favorite experiences. Categories include best photo on the conference floor, best photo of San Diego, and best photo of the conference outing (dinner aboard the USS Midway in San Diego Harbor). The winner of each category will receive a $125 Amazon gift card. The winners will be announced on Monday, Feb. 14 via social media communities.

It’s not too late to join in, or to plan to look for the events and presentations online. Registration is open to both members and non-members of The Open Group. For more information, or to register for the conference in San Diego please visit:
http://www.opengroup.org/sandiego2011/register.htm
. Registration is free for members of the press and industry analysts.

You may also be interested in:

Dana Gardner is the Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, which identifies and interprets the trends in Services-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and enterprise software infrastructure markets. Interarbor Solutions creates in-depth Web content and distributes it via BriefingsDirect™ blogs, podcasts and video-podcasts to support conversational education about SOA, software infrastructure, Enterprise 2.0, and application development and deployment strategies.

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,