Tag Archives: standards

by | April 16, 2013 · 5:00 AM

Flexibility, Agility and Open Standards

By Jose M. Sanchez Knaack, IBM

Flexibility and agility are terms used almost interchangeably these days as attributes of IT architectures designed to cope with rapidly changing business requirements. Did you ever wonder if they are actually the same? Don’t you have the feeling that these terms remain abstract and without a concrete link to the design of an IT architecture?

This post searches to provide clear definitions for both flexibility and agility, and explain how both relate to the design of IT architectures that exploit open standards. A ‘real-life’ example will help to understand these concepts and render them relevant to the Enterprise Architect’s daily job.

First, here is some context on why flexibility and agility are increasingly important for businesses. Today, the average smart phone has more computing power than the original Apollo mission to the moon. We live in times of exponential change; the new technological revolution seems to be always around the corner and is safe to state that the trend will continue as nicely visualized in this infographic by TIME Magazine.

The average lifetime of a company in the S&P 500 has fallen by 80 percent since 1937. In other words, companies need to adapt fast to capitalize on business opportunities created by new technologies at the price of loosing their leadership position.

Thus, flexibility and agility have become ever present business goals that need to be supported by the underlying IT architecture. But, what is the precise meaning of these two terms? The online Merriam-Webster dictionary offers the following definitions:

Flexible: characterized by a ready capability to adapt to new, different, or changing requirements.

Agile: marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace.

To understand how these terms relate to IT architecture, let us explore an example based on an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) scenario.

An ESB can be seen as the foundation for a flexible IT architecture allowing companies to integrate applications (processes) written in different programming languages and running on different platforms within and outside the corporate firewall.

ESB products are normally equipped with a set of pre-built adapters that allow integrating 70-80 percent of applications ‘out-of-the-box’, without additional programming efforts. For the remaining 20-30 percent of integration requirements, it is possible to develop custom adapters so that any application can be integrated with any other if required.

In other words, an ESB covers requirements regarding integration flexibility, that is, it can cope with changing requirements in terms of integrating additional applications via adapters, ‘out-of-the-box’ or custom built. How does this integration flexibility correlate to integration agility?

Let’s think of a scenario where the IT team has been requested to integrate an old manufacturing application with a new business partner. The integration needs to be ready within one month; otherwise the targeted business opportunity will not apply anymore.

The picture below shows the underlying IT architecture for this integration scenario.

jose diagram

Although the ESB is able to integrate the old manufacturing application, it requires an adapter to be custom developed since the application does not support any of the communication protocols covered by the pre-built adapters. To custom develop, test and deploy an adapter in a corporate environment is likely going to take longer that a month and the business opportunity will be lost because the IT architecture was not agile enough.

This is the subtle difference between flexible and agile.

Notice that if the manufacturing application had been able to communicate via open standards, the corresponding pre-built adapter would have significantly shortened the time required to integrate this application. Applications that do not support open standards still exist in corporate IT landscapes, like the above scenario illustrates. Thus, the importance of incorporating open standards when road mapping your IT architecture.

The key takeaway is that your architecture principles need to favor information technology built on open standards, and for that, you can leverage The Open Group Architecture Principle 20 on Interoperability.

Name Interoperability
Statement Software and hardware should conform to defined standards that promote interoperability for data, applications, and technology.

In summary, the accelerating pace of change requires corporate IT architectures to support the business goals of flexibility and agility. Establishing architecture principles that favor open standards as part of your architecture governance framework is one proven approach (although not the only one) to road map your IT architecture in the pursuit of resiliency.

linkedin - CopyJose M. Sanchez Knaack is Senior Manager with IBM Global Business Services in Switzerland. Mr. Sanchez Knaack professional background covers business aligned IT architecture strategy and complex system integration at global technology enabled transformation initiatives.

 

 

 

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by | March 25, 2013 · 5:00 AM

Why Business Needs Platform 3.0

By Chris Harding, The Open Group

The Internet gives businesses access to ever-larger markets, but it also brings more competition. To prosper, they must deliver outstanding products and services. Often, this means processing the ever-greater, and increasingly complex, data that the Internet makes available. The question they now face is, how to do this without spending all their time and effort on information technology.

Web Business Success

The success stories of giants such as Amazon are well-publicized, but there are other, less well-known companies that have profited from the Web in all sorts of ways. Here’s an example. In 2000 an English illustrator called Jacquie Lawson tried creating greetings cards on the Internet. People liked what she did, and she started an e-business whose website is now ranked by Alexa as number 2712 in the world, and #1879 in the USA. This is based on website traffic and is comparable, to take a company that may be better known, with toyota.com, which ranks slightly higher in the USA (#1314) but somewhat lower globally (#4838).

A company with a good product can grow fast. This also means, though, that a company with a better product, or even just better marketing, can eclipse it just as quickly. Social networking site Myspace was once the most visited site in the US. Now it is ranked by Alexa as #196, way behind Facebook, which is #2.

So who ranks as #1? You guessed it – Google. Which brings us to the ability to process large amounts of data, where Google excels.

The Data Explosion

The World-Wide Web probably contains over 13 billion pages, yet you can often find the information that you want in seconds. This is made possible by technology that indexes this vast amount of data – measured in petabytes (millions of gigabytes) – and responds to users’ queries.

The data on the world-wide-web originally came mostly from people, typing it in by hand. In future, we will often use data that is generated by sensors in inanimate objects. Automobiles, for example, can generate data that can be used to optimize their performance or assess the need for maintenance or repair.

The world population is measured in billions. It is estimated that the Internet of Things, in which data is collected from objects, could enable us to track 100 trillion objects in real time – ten thousand times as many things as there are people, tirelessly pumping out information. The amount of available data of potential value to businesses is set to explode yet again.

A New Business Generation

It’s not just the amount of data to be processed that is changing. We are also seeing changes in the way data is used, the way it is processed, and the way it is accessed. Following The Open Group conference in January, I wrote about the convergence of social, Cloud, and mobile computing with Big Data. These are the new technical trends that are taking us into the next generation of business applications.

We don’t yet know what all those applications will be – who in the 1990’s would have predicted greetings cards as a Web application – but there are some exciting ideas. They range from using social media to produce market forecasts to alerting hospital doctors via tablets and cellphones when monitors detect patient emergencies. All this, and more, is possible with technology that we have now, if we can use it.

The Problem

But there is a problem. Although there is technology that enables businesses to use social, Cloud, and mobile computing, and to analyze and process massive amounts of data of different kinds, it is not necessarily easy to use. A plethora of products is emerging, with different interfaces, and with no ability to work with each other.  This is fine for geeks who love to play with new toys, but not so good for someone who wants to realize a new business idea and make money.

The new generation of business applications cannot be built on a mish-mash of unstable products, each requiring a different kind of specialist expertise. It needs a solid platform, generally understood by enterprise architects and software engineers, who can translate the business ideas into technical solutions.

The New Platform

Former VMware CEO and current Pivotal Initiative leader Paul Maritz describes the situation very well in his recent blog on GigaOM. He characterizes the new breed of enterprises, that give customers what they want, when they want it and where they want it, by exploiting the opportunities provided by new technologies, as consumer grade. Paul says that, “Addressing these opportunities will require new underpinnings; a new platform, if you like. At the core of this platform, which needs to be Cloud-independent to prevent lock-in, will be new approaches to handling big and fast (real-time) data.”

The Open Group has announced its new Platform 3.0 Forum to help the industry define a standard platform to meet this need. As The Open Group CTO Dave Lounsbury says in his blog, the new Forum will advance The Open Group vision of Boundaryless Information Flow™ by helping enterprises to take advantage of these convergent technologies. This will be accomplished by identifying a set of new platform capabilities, and architecting and standardizing an IT platform by which enterprises can reap the business benefits of Platform 3.0.

Business Focus

A business set up to design greetings cards should not spend its time designing communications networks and server farms. It cannot afford to spend time on such things. Someone else will focus on its core business and take its market.

The Web provided a platform that businesses of its generation could build on to do what they do best without being overly distracted by the technology. Platform 3.0 will do this for the new generation of businesses.

Help It Happen!

To find out more about the Platform 3.0 Forum, and take part in its formation, watch out for the Platform 3.0 web meetings that will be announced by e-mail and twitter, and on our home page.

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, and the Platform 3.0 Forum. He is a member of the BCS, the IEEE and the AEA, and is a certified TOGAF practitioner.

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by | March 19, 2013 · 5:00 AM

Gaining Greater Cohesion: Bringing Business Analysis and Business Architecture into Focus

By Craig Martin, Enterprise Architects

Having delivered many talks on Business Architecture over the years, I’m often struck by the common vision driving many members in the audience – a vision of building cohesion in a business, achieving the right balance between competing forces and bringing the business strategy and operations into harmony.  However, as with many ambitious visions, the challenge in this case is immense.  As I will explain, many of the people who envision this future state of nirvana are, in practice, inadvertently preventing it from happening.

Standards Silos
There are a host of standards and disciplines that are brought into play by enterprises to improve business performance and capabilities. For example standards such as PRINCE2, BABOK, BIZBOK, TOGAF, COBIT, ITIL and PMBOK are designed to ensure reliability of team output and approach across various business activities. However, in many instances these standards, operating together, present important gaps and overlaps. One wonders whose job it is to integrate and unify these standards. Whose job is it to understand the business requirements, business processes, drivers, capabilities and so on?

Apples to Apples?
As these standards evolve they often introduce new jargon to support their view of the world. Have you ever had to ask your business to explain what they do on a single page? The diversity of the views and models can be quite astonishing:

  • The target operating model
  • The business model
  • The process model
  • The capability model
  • The value chain model
  • The functional model
  • The business services model
  • The component business model
  • The business reference model
  • Business anchor model

The list goes on and on…

Each has a purpose and brings value in isolation. However, in the common scenario where they are developed using differing tools, methods, frameworks and techniques, the result is usually greater fragmentation, not more cohesion – and consequently we can end up with some very confused and exacerbated business stakeholders who care less about what standard we use and more about finding clarity to just get the job done.

The Convergence of Business Architecture and Business Analysis
Ask a room filled with business analysts and business architects how their jobs differ and relate, and I guarantee that would receive a multitude of alternative and sometimes conflicting perspectives.

Both of these disciplines try to develop standardised methods and frameworks for the description of the building blocks of an organization. They also seek to standardise the means by which to string them together to create better outcomes.

In other words, they are the disciplines that seek to create balance between two important business goals:

  • To produce consistent, predictable outcomes
  • To produce outcomes that meet desired objectives

In his book, “The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage,” Roger Martin describes the relationships and trade-offs between analytical thinking and intuitive thinking in business. He refers to the “knowledge funnel,” which charts the movement of business focus from solving business mysteries using heuristics to creating algorithms that increase reliability, reducing business complexity and costs and improving business performance.

The disciplines of Business Architecture and business analysis are both currently seeking to address this challenge. Martin refers to this as ”design thinking.”

Thinking Types v2

Vision Vs. Reality For Business Analysts and Business Architects

When examining the competency models for business analysis and Business Architecture, the desire is to position these two disciplines right across the spectrum of reliability and validity.

The reality is that both the business architect and the business analyst spend a large portion of their time in the reliability space, and I believe I’ve found the reason why.

Both the BABOK and the BIZBOK provide a body of knowledge focused predominantly around the reliability space. In other words, they look at how we define the building blocks of an organization, and less so at how we invent better building blocks within the organization.

Integrating the Disciplines

While we still have some way to go to integrate, the Business Architecture and business analysis disciplines are currently bringing great value to business through greater reliability and repeatability.

However, there is a significant opportunity to enable the intuitive thinkers to look at the bigger picture and identify opportunities to innovate their business models, their go-to-market, their product and service offerings and their operations.

Perhaps we might consider introducing a new function to bridge and unify the disciplines?

This newly created function might integrate a number of incumbent roles and functions and cover:

  • A holistic structural view covering the business model and the high-level relationships and interactions between all business systems
  • A market model view in which the focus is on understanding the market dynamics, segments and customer need
  • A products and services model view focusing on customer experience, value proposition, product and service mix and customer value
  • An operating model view – this is the current focus area of the business architect and business analyst. You need these building blocks defined in a reliable, repeatable and manageable structure. This enables agility within the organization and will support the assembly and mixing of building blocks to improve customer experience and value

At the end of the day, what matters most is not business analysis or Business Architecture themselves, but how the business will bridge the reliability and validity spectrum to reliably produce desired business outcomes.

I will discuss this topic in more detail at The Open Group Conference in Sydney, April 15-18, which will be the first Open Group event to be held in Australia.

Craig-MARTIN-ea-updated-3Craig Martin is the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Architect at Enterprise Architects, which is a specialist Enterprise Architecture firm operating in the U.S., UK, Asia and Australia. He is presenting the Business Architecture plenary at the upcoming Open Group conference in Sydney. 

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by | March 7, 2013 · 5:00 AM

Beyond Big Data

By Chris Harding, The Open Group

The big bang that started The Open Group Conference in Newport Beach was, appropriately, a presentation related to astronomy. Chris Gerty gave a keynote on Big Data at NASA, where he is Deputy Program Manager of the Open Innovation Program. He told us how visualizing deep space and its celestial bodies created understanding and enabled new discoveries. Everyone who attended felt inspired to explore the universe of Big Data during the rest of the conference. And that exploration – as is often the case with successful space missions – left us wondering what lies beyond.

The Big Data Conference Plenary

The second presentation on that Monday morning brought us down from the stars to the nuts and bolts of engineering. Mechanical devices require regular maintenance to keep functioning. Processing the mass of data generated during their operation can improve safety and cut costs. For example, airlines can overhaul aircraft engines when it needs doing, rather than on a fixed schedule that has to be frequent enough to prevent damage under most conditions, but might still fail to anticipate failure in unusual circumstances. David Potter and Ron Schuldt lead two of The Open Group initiatives, Quantum Lifecycle management (QLM) and the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF). They explained how a semantic approach to product lifecycle management can facilitate the big-data processing needed to achieve this aim.

Chris Gerty was then joined by Andras Szakal, vice-president and chief technology officer at IBM US Federal IMT, Robert Weisman, chief executive officer of Build The Vision, and Jim Hietala, vice-president of Security at The Open Group, in a panel session on Big Data that was moderated by Dana Gardner of Interarbor Solutions. As always, Dana facilitated a fascinating discussion. Key points made by the panelists included: the trend to monetize data; the need to ensure veracity and usefulness; the need for security and privacy; the expectation that data warehouse technology will exist and evolve in parallel with map/reduce “on-the-fly” analysis; the importance of meaningful presentation of the data; integration with cloud and mobile technology; and the new ways in which Big Data can be used to deliver business value.

More on Big Data

In the afternoons of Monday and Tuesday, and on most of Wednesday, the conference split into streams. These have presentations that are more technical than the plenary, going deeper into their subjects. It’s a pity that you can’t be in all the streams at once. (At one point I couldn’t be in any of them, as there was an important side meeting to discuss the UDEF, which is in one of the areas that I support as forum director). Fortunately, there were a few great stream presentations that I did manage to get to.

On the Monday afternoon, Tom Plunkett and Janet Mostow of Oracle presented a reference architecture that combined Hadoop and NoSQL with traditional RDBMS, streaming, and complex event processing, to enable Big Data analysis. One application that they described was to trace the relations between particular genes and cancer. This could have big benefits in disease prediction and treatment. Another was to predict the movements of protesters at a demonstration through analysis of communications on social media. The police could then concentrate their forces in the right place at the right time.

Jason Bloomberg, president of Zapthink – now part of Dovel – is always thought-provoking. His presentation featured the need for governance vitality to cope with ever changing tools to handle Big Data of ever increasing size, “crowdsourcing” to channel the efforts of many people into solving a problem, and business transformation that is continuous rather than a one-time step from “as is” to “to be.”

Later in the week, I moderated a discussion on Architecting for Big Data in the Cloud. We had a well-balanced panel made up of TJ Virdi of Boeing, Mark Skilton of Capgemini and Tom Plunkett of Oracle. They made some excellent points. Big Data analysis provides business value by enabling better understanding, leading to better decisions. The analysis is often an iterative process, with new questions emerging as answers are found. There is no single application that does this analysis and provides the visualization needed for understanding, but there are a number of products that can be used to assist. The role of the data scientist in formulating the questions and configuring the visualization is critical. Reference models for the technology are emerging but there are as yet no commonly-accepted standards.

The New Enterprise Platform

Jogging is a great way of taking exercise at conferences, and I was able to go for a run most mornings before the meetings started at Newport Beach. Pacific Coast Highway isn’t the most interesting of tracks, but on Tuesday morning I was soon up in Castaways Park, pleasantly jogging through the carefully-nurtured natural coastal vegetation, with views over the ocean and its margin of high-priced homes, slipways, and yachts. I reflected as I ran that we had heard some interesting things about Big Data, but it is now an established topic. There must be something new coming over the horizon.

The answer to what this might be was suggested in the first presentation of that day’s plenary, Mary Ann Mezzapelle, security strategist for HP Enterprise Services, talked about the need to get security right for Big Data and the Cloud. But her scope was actually wider. She spoke of the need to secure the “third platform” – the term coined by IDC to describe the convergence of social, cloud and mobile computing with Big Data.

Securing Big Data

Mary Ann’s keynote was not about the third platform itself, but about what should be done to protect it. The new platform brings with it a new set of security threats, and the increasing scale of operation makes it increasingly important to get the security right. Mary Ann presented a thoughtful analysis founded on a risk-based approach.

She was followed by Adrian Lane, chief technology officer at Securosis, who pointed out that Big Data processing using NoSQL has a different architecture from traditional relational data processing, and requires different security solutions. This does not necessarily mean new techniques; existing techniques can be used in new ways. For example, Kerberos may be used to secure inter-node communications in map/reduce processing. Adrian’s presentation completed the Tuesday plenary sessions.

Service Oriented Architecture

The streams continued after the plenary. I went to the Distributed Services Architecture stream, which focused on SOA.

Bill Poole, enterprise architect at JourneyOne in Australia, described how to use the graphical architecture modeling language ArchiMate® to model service-oriented architectures. He illustrated this using a case study of a global mining organization that wanted to consolidate its two existing bespoke inventory management applications into a single commercial off-the-shelf application. It’s amazing how a real-world case study can make a topic come to life, and the audience certainly responded warmly to Bill’s excellent presentation.

Ali Arsanjani, chief technology officer for Business Performance and Service Optimization, and Heather Kreger, chief technology officer for International Standards, both at IBM, described the range of SOA standards published by The Open Group and available for use by enterprise architects. Ali was one of the brains that developed the SOA Reference Architecture, and Heather is a key player in international standards activities for SOA, where she has helped The Open Group’s Service Integration Maturity Model and SOA Governance Framework to become international standards, and is working on an international standard SOA reference architecture.

Cloud Computing

To start Wednesday’s Cloud Computing streams, TJ Virdi, senior enterprise architect at The Boeing Company, discussed use of TOGAF® to develop an Enterprise Architecture for a Cloud ecosystem. A large enterprise such as Boeing may use many Cloud service providers, enabling collaboration between corporate departments, partners, and regulators in a complex ecosystem. Architecting for this is a major challenge, and The Open Group’s TOGAF for Cloud Ecosystems project is working to provide guidance.

Stuart Boardman of KPN gave a different perspective on Cloud ecosystems, with a case study from the energy industry. An ecosystem may not necessarily be governed by a single entity, and the participants may not always be aware of each other. Energy generation and consumption in the Netherlands is part of a complex international ecosystem involving producers, consumers, transporters, and traders of many kinds. A participant may be involved in several ecosystems in several ways: a farmer for example, might consume energy, have wind turbines to produce it, and also participate in food production and transport ecosystems.

Penelope Gordon of 1-Plug Corporation explained how choice and use of business metrics can impact Cloud service providers. She worked through four examples: a start-up Software-as-a-Service provider requiring investment, an established company thinking of providing its products as cloud services, an IT department planning to offer an in-house private Cloud platform, and a government agency seeking budget for government Cloud.

Mark Skilton, director at Capgemini in the UK, gave a presentation titled “Digital Transformation and the Role of Cloud Computing.” He covered a very broad canvas of business transformation driven by technological change, and illustrated his theme with a case study from the pharmaceutical industry. New technology enables new business models, giving competitive advantage. Increasingly, the introduction of this technology is driven by the business, rather than the IT side of the enterprise, and it has major challenges for both sides. But what new technologies are in question? Mark’s presentation had Cloud in the title, but also featured social and mobile computing, and Big Data.

The New Trend

On Thursday morning I took a longer run, to and round Balboa Island. With only one road in or out, its main street of shops and restaurants is not a through route and the island has the feel of a real village. The SOA Work Group Steering Committee had found an excellent, and reasonably priced, Italian restaurant there the previous evening. There is a clear resurgence of interest in SOA, partly driven by the use of service orientation – the principle, rather than particular protocols – in Cloud Computing and other new technologies. That morning I took the track round the shoreline, and was reminded a little of Dylan Thomas’s “fishing boat bobbing sea.” Fishing here is for leisure rather than livelihood, but I suspected that the fishermen, like those of Thomas’s little Welsh village, spend more time in the bar than on the water.

I thought about how the conference sessions had indicated an emerging trend. This is not a new technology but the combination of four current technologies to create a new platform for enterprise IT: Social, Cloud, and Mobile computing, and Big Data. Mary Ann Mezzapelle’s presentation had referenced IDC’s “third platform.” Other discussions had mentioned Gartner’s “Nexus of forces,” the combination of Social, Cloud and Mobile computing with information that Gartner says is transforming the way people and businesses relate to technology, and will become a key differentiator of business and technology management. Mark Skilton had included these same four technologies in his presentation. Great minds, and analyst corporations, think alike!

I thought also about the examples and case studies in the stream presentations. Areas as diverse as healthcare, manufacturing, energy and policing are using the new technologies. Clearly, they can deliver major business benefits. The challenge for enterprise architects is to maximize those benefits through pragmatic architectures.

Emerging Standards

On the way back to the hotel, I remarked again on what I had noticed before, how beautifully neat and carefully maintained the front gardens bordering the sidewalk are. I almost felt that I was running through a public botanical garden. Is there some ordinance requiring people to keep their gardens tidy, with severe penalties for anyone who leaves a lawn or hedge unclipped? Is a miserable defaulter fitted with a ball and chain, not to be removed until the untidy vegetation has been properly trimmed, with nail clippers? Apparently not. People here keep their gardens tidy because they want to. The best standards are like that: universally followed, without use or threat of sanction.

Standards are an issue for the new enterprise platform. Apart from the underlying standards of the Internet, there really aren’t any. The area isn’t even mapped out. Vendors of Social, Cloud, Mobile, and Big Data products and services are trying to stake out as much valuable real estate as they can. They have no interest yet in boundaries with neatly-clipped hedges.

This is a stage that every new technology goes through. Then, as it matures, the vendors understand that their products and services have much more value when they conform to standards, just as properties have more value in an area where everything is neat and well-maintained.

It may be too soon to define those standards for the new enterprise platform, but it is certainly time to start mapping out the area, to understand its subdivisions and how they inter-relate, and to prepare the way for standards. Following the conference, The Open Group has announced a new Forum, provisionally titled Open Platform 3.0, to do just that.

The SOA and Cloud Work Groups

Thursday was my final day of meetings at the conference. The plenary and streams presentations were done. This day was for working meetings of the SOA and Cloud Work Groups. I also had an informal discussion with Ron Schuldt about a new approach for the UDEF, following up on the earlier UDEF side meeting. The conference hallways, as well as the meeting rooms, often see productive business done.

The SOA Work Group discussed a certification program for SOA professionals, and an update to the SOA Reference Architecture. The Open Group is working with ISO and the IEEE to define a standard SOA reference architecture that will have consensus across all three bodies.

The Cloud Work Group had met earlier to further the TOGAF for Cloud ecosystems project. Now it worked on its forthcoming white paper on business performance metrics. It also – though this was not on the original agenda – discussed Gartner’s Nexus of Forces, and the future role of the Work Group in mapping out the new enterprise platform.

Mapping the New Enterprise Platform

At the start of the conference we looked at how to map the stars. Big Data analytics enables people to visualize the universe in new ways, reach new understandings of what is in it and how it works, and point to new areas for future exploration.

As the conference progressed, we found that Big Data is part of a convergence of forces. Social, mobile, and Cloud Computing are being combined with Big Data to form a new enterprise platform. The development of this platform, and its roll-out to support innovative applications that deliver more business value, is what lies beyond Big Data.

At the end of the conference we were thinking about mapping the new enterprise platform. This will not require sophisticated data processing and analysis. It will take discussions to create a common understanding, and detailed committee work to draft the guidelines and standards. This work will be done by The Open Group’s new Open Platform 3.0 Forum.

The next Open Group conference is in the week of April 15, in Sydney, Australia. I’m told that there’s some great jogging there. More importantly, we’ll be reflecting on progress in mapping Open Platform 3.0, and thinking about what lies ahead. I’m looking forward to it already.

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. He is a member of the BCS, the IEEE and the AEA, and is a certified TOGAF practitioner.

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by | · 5:00 AM

The Open Group Approves EMMM Technical Standard for Natural Resources Industry

By The Open Group Staff

The Open Group, a vendor- and technology-neutral consortium, which is represented locally by Real IRM, has approved the Exploration and Mining Business Reference Model (EM Model) as an Open Group Technical Standard. This is the first approved standard for the natural resources industry developed by the Exploration, Mining, Metals and Minerals (EMMM™) Forum, a Forum of The Open Group.

The development of the EM Model was overseen by The Open Group South Africa, and is the first step toward establishing a blueprint for organisations in the natural resources industry, providing standard operating practices and support for vendors delivering technical and business solutions to the industry.

“Designed to cater to business activities across a variety of different types of mining organisations, the model is helping companies align both their business and technical procedures to provide better measures for shared services, health, safety and environmental processes,” says Sarina Viljoen, senior consultant at Real IRM and Forum Director of The Open Group EMMM Forum. “I can confirm that the business reference model was accepted as an Open Group standard and will now form part of the standards information base.”

This is a significant development as the EMMM Forum aims to enable sustainable business value through collaboration around a common reference framework, and to support vendors in their delivery of technical and business solutions. Its outputs are common reference deliverables such as mining process, capability and information models. The first technical standard in the business space, the EM Model focuses on business processes within the exploration and mining sectors.

“Using the EM Model as a reference with clients allows us to engage with any client and any mining method. Since the model first went public I have not used anything else as a basis for discussion,” says Mike Woodhall, a mining executive with MineRP, one of the world’s largest providers of mining technical software, support and mining consulting services. “The EM Model captures the mining business generically and allows us and the clients to discuss further levels of detail based on understanding the specifics of the mining method. This is one of the two most significant parts of the exercise: the fact we have a multiparty definition – no one person could have produced the model – and the fact that we could capture it legibly on one page.”

Viljoen adds that Forum member organisations find the collaboration especially useful as it drives insight and clarity on shared challenges: “The Forum has built on the very significant endorsement of its first business process model by Gartner in its report ‘Process for Defining Architecture in an Integrated Mining Enterprise, 2020.’

“In the report, Gartner suggests that companies in the mining industry look to enterprise architectures as a way of creating better efficiencies and integration across the business, information and technology processes within mining companies,” says Viljoen.

Gartner highlights the following features of the EM Model as being particularly important in its approach, differing from many traditional models that have been developed by mining companies themselves:

  • Breadth – covers all aspects of mining and mining-related activities
  • Scale-Independent –suitable for any size businesses, even the largest of enterprise corporations
  • Product and Mining-Method Neutral – supports all products and mining methods
  • Extended and Extensible Model –provides a general level of process detail that can be extended by organisations to the activity or task level, as appropriate

The EM Model is available for download from The Open Group Bookstore here.

About The Open Group Exploration, Mining, Metals and Minerals Forum

The Open Group Exploration, Mining, Metals and Minerals (EMMM™) Forum is a global, vendor-neutral collaboration where members work to create a reference framework containing applicable standards for the exploration and  mining industry focused on all metals and minerals. The EMMM Forum functions to realize sustainable business value for the organisations within the industry through collaboration, and to support vendors in their delivery of technical and business solutions.

About Real IRM Solutions

Real IRM is the leading South African enterprise architecture specialist, offering a comprehensive portfolio of products and services to local and international organisations. www.realirm.com.

About The Open Group

The Open Group is an international vendor- and technology-neutral consortium upon which organizations rely to lead the development of IT standards and certifications, and to provide them with access to key industry peers, suppliers and best practices. The Open Group provides guidance and an open environment in order to ensure interoperability and vendor neutrality. Further information on The Open Group can be found at www.opengroup.org.

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by | February 26, 2013 · 5:00 AM

The Open Group works with Microsoft to create Open Management Infrastructure

By Martin Kirk, The Open Group

Most data centers are comprised of many different types and kinds of hardware, often including a mish-mash of products made by various vendors and manufacturers in various stages of their product lifecycle. This makes data center management a bit of a nightmare for administrators because it has been difficult to centralize management on one common platform. In the past, this conundrum has forced companies to do one of two things – write their own proprietary abstraction layer to manage the different types of hardware or buy of all the same type of hardware and be subject to vendor lock-in.

Today, building cloud infrastructures has exasperated the problem of datacenter management and automation. To solve this, the notion of a datacenter abstraction layer (DAL) has evolved that will allow datacenter elements (network, storage, server, power and platform) to be managed and administered in a standard and consistent manner. Additionally, this will open up datacenter infrastructure management to any management application that chooses to support this standards-based management approach.

The Open Group has been working with a number of industry-leading companies for more than 10 years on the OpenPegasus Project, an open-source implementation of Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Common Information Model (CIM) as well as the DMTF Web Services for Management (WS-Management) standard. The OpenPegasus Project led the industry in implementing the DMTF CIM/WS-Management standards and has been provided as the standard solution on a very wide variety of IT platforms.  Microsoft has been a sponsor of the OpenPegasus Project for 4 years and has contributed greatly to the project.

Microsoft has also developed another implementation of the DMTF CIM/WS-Management standards and, based on their work together on the OpenPegasus Project, has brought this to The Open Group where it has become the Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) Project. Both Projects are now organized under the umbrella of the Open Management Project as a collection of open-source management projects.

OMI is a highly portable, easy to implement, high performance CIM/WS-Management Object Manager in OMI, designed specifically to implement the DMTF standards. OMI is written to be easy to implement in Linux and UNIX® systems. It will empower datacenter device vendors to compile and implement a standards-based management service into any device or platform in a clear and consistent way. The Open Group has made the source code for OMI available under an Apache 2 license.

OMI provides the following benefits (from Microsoft’s blog post on the announcement):

  • DMTF Standards Support: OMI implements its CIMOM server according to the DMTF standard.
  • Small System Support: OMI is designed to also be implemented in small systems (including embedded and mobile systems).
  • Easy Implementation: Greatly shortened path to implementing WS-Management and CIM in your devices/platforms.
  • Remote Manageability: Instant remote manageability from Windows and non-Windows clients and servers as well as other WS-Management-enabled platforms.
  • API compatibility with WMI:  Providers and management applications can be written on Linux and Windows by using the same APIs.
  • Support for CIM IDE: Tools for generating and developing CIM providers using tools, such as Visual Studio’s CIM IDE.

Making OMI available to the public as an open-source package allows companies of all sizes to more easily implement standards-based management into any device or platform. The long-term vision for the project is to provide a standard that allows any device to be managed clearly and consistently, as well as create an ecosystem of products that are based on open standards that can be more easily managed.

To read Microsoft’s blog on the announcement, please go to: http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/06/28/open-management-infrastructure.aspx

If you are interested in getting involved in OMI or OpenPegasus, please email omi-interest@opengroup.org.

mkMartin Kirk is a Program Director at The Open Group. Previously the head of the Operating System Technology Centre at British Telecom Research Labs, Mr. Kirk has been with The Open Group since 1990.

 

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by | February 8, 2013 · 5:00 AM

Three Best Practices for Successful Implementation of Enterprise Architecture Using the TOGAF® Framework and the ArchiMate® Modeling Language

By Henry Franken, Sven van Dijk and Bas van Gils, BiZZdesign

The discipline of Enterprise Architecture (EA) was developed in the 1980s with a strong focus on the information systems landscape of organizations. Since those days, the scope of the discipline has slowly widened to include more and more aspects of the enterprise as a whole. This holistic perspective takes into account the concerns of a wide variety of stakeholders. Architects, especially at the strategic level, attempt to answer the question: “How should we organize ourselves in order to be successful?”

An architecture framework is a foundational structure or set of structures for developing a broad range of architectures and consists of a process and a modeling component. The TOGAF® framework and the ArchiMate® modeling language – both maintained by The Open Group – are two leading and widely adopted standards in this field.

TA 

While both the TOGAF framework and the ArchiMate modeling language have a broad (enterprise-wide) scope and provide a practical starting point for an effective EA capability, a key factor is the successful embedding of EA standards and tools in the organization. From this perspective, the implementation of EA means that an organization adopts processes for the development and governance of EA artifacts and deliverables. Standards need to be tailored, and tools need to be configured in the right way in order to create the right fit. Or more popularly stated, “For an effective EA, it has to walk the walk, and talk the talk of the organization!”

EA touches on many aspects such as business, IT (and especially the alignment of these two), strategic portfolio management, project management and risk management. EA is by definition about cooperation and therefore it is impossible to operate in isolation. Successful embedding of an EA capability in the organization is typically approached as a change project with clearly defined goals, metrics, stakeholders, appropriate governance and accountability, and with assigned responsibilities in place.

With this in mind, we share three best practices for the successful implementation of Enterprise Architecture:

Think big, start small

The potential footprint of a mature EA capability is as big as the entire organization, but one of the key success factors for being successful with EA is to deliver value early on. Experience from our consultancy practice proves that a “think big, start small” approach has the most potential for success. This means that the process of implementing an EA capability is a process with iterative and incremental steps, based on a long term vision. Each step in the process must add measurable value to the EA practice, and priorities should be based on the needs and the change capacity of the organization.

Combine process and modeling

The TOGAF framework and the ArchiMate modeling language are a powerful combination. Deliverables in the architecture process are more effective when based on an approach that combines formal models with powerful visualization capabilities.

The TOGAF standard describes the architecture process in detail. The Architecture Development Method (ADM) is the core of the TOGAF standard. The ADM is a customer-focused and value-driven process for the sustainable development of a business capability. The ADM specifies deliverables throughout the architecture life-cycle with a focus on the effective communication to a variety of stakeholders. ArchiMate is fully complementary to the content as specified in the TOGAF standard. The ArchiMate standard can be used to describe all aspects of the EA in a coherent way, while tailoring the content for a specific audience. Even more, an architecture repository is a valuable asset that can be reused throughout the enterprise. This greatly benefits communication and cooperation of Enterprise Architects and their stakeholders.

Use a tool!

It is true, “a fool with a tool is still a fool.” In our teaching and consulting practice we have found; however, that adoption of a flexible and easy to use tool can be a strong driver in pushing the EA initiative forward.

EA brings together valuable information that greatly enhances decision making, whether on a strategic or more operational level. This knowledge not only needs to be efficiently managed and maintained, it also needs to be communicated to the right stakeholder at the right time, and even more importantly, in the right format. EA has a diverse audience that has business and technical backgrounds, and each of the stakeholders needs to be addressed in a language that is understood by all. Therefore, essential qualifications for EA tools are: rigidity when it comes to the management and maintenance of knowledge and flexibility when it comes to the analysis (ad-hoc, what-if, etc.), presentation and communication of the information to diverse audiences.

So what you are looking for is a tool with solid repository capabilities, flexible modeling and analysis functionality.

Conclusion

EA brings value to the organization because it answers more accurately the question: “How should we organize ourselves?” Standards for EA help monetize on investments in EA more quickly. The TOGAF framework and the ArchiMate modeling language are popular, widespread, open and complete standards for EA, both from a process and a language perspective. EA becomes even more effective if these standards are used in the right way. The EA capability needs to be carefully embedded in the organization. This is usually a process based on a long term vision and has the most potential for success if approached as “think big, start small.” Enterprise Architects can benefit from tool support, provided that it supports flexible presentation of content, so that it can be tailored for the communication to specific audiences.

More information on this subject can be found on our website: www.bizzdesign.com. Whitepapers are available for download, and our blog section features a number of very interesting posts regarding the subjects covered in this paper.

If you would like to know more or comment on this blog, or please do not hesitate to contact us directly!

Henry Franken

Henry Franken is the managing director of BiZZdesign and is chair of The Open Group ArchiMate Forum. As chair of The Open Group ArchiMate Forum, Henry led the development of the ArchiMate Version 2.o standard. Henry is a speaker at many conferences and has co-authored several international publications and Open Group White Papers. Henry is co-founder of the BPM-Forum. At BiZZdesign, Henry is responsible for research and innovation.

 

 

sven Sven van Dijk Msc. is a consultant and trainer at BiZZdesign North America. He worked as an application consultant on large scale ERP implementations and as a business consultant in projects on information management and IT strategy in various industries such as finance and construction. He gained nearly eight years of experience in applying structured methods and tools for Business Process Management and Enterprise Architecture.

 

basBas van Gils is a consultant, trainer and researcher for BiZZdesign. His primary focus is on strategic use of enterprise architecture. Bas has worked in several countries, across a wide range of organizations in industry, retail, and (semi)governmental settings.  Bas is passionate about his work, has published in various professional and academic journals and writes for several blogs.

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by | January 24, 2013 · 5:00 AM

Successful Enterprise Architecture using the TOGAF® and ArchiMate® Standards

By Henry Franken, BiZZdesign

The discipline of Enterprise Architecture was developed in the 1980s with a strong focus on the information systems landscape of organizations. Since those days, the scope of the discipline has slowly widened to include more and more aspects of the enterprise as a whole. This holistic perspective takes into account the concerns of a wide variety of stakeholders. Architects, especially at the strategic level, attempt to answer the question “How should we organize ourselves in order to be successful?”

An architecture framework is a foundational structure, or set of structures, which can be used for developing a broad range of different architectures and consists of a process and a modeling component. TOGAF® framework and the ArchiMate® modeling language – both maintained by The Open Group® – are the two leading standards in this field.

TA

Much has been written on this topic in online forums, whitepapers, and blogs. On the BiZZdesign blog we have published several series on EA in general and these standards in particular, with a strong focus on the question: what should we do to be successful with EA using TOGAF framework and the ArchiMate modeling language? I would like to summarize some of our findings here:

Tip 1 One of the key success factors for being successful with EA is to deliver value early on. We have found that organizations who understand that a long-term vision and incremental delivery (“think big, act small”) have a larger chance of developing an effective EA capability
 
Tip 2 Combine process and modeling: TOGAF framework and the ArchiMate modeling language are a powerful combination. Deliverables in the architecture process are more effective when based on an approach that combines formal models with powerful visualization capabilities. Even more, an architecture repository is an valuable asset that can be reused throughout the enterprise
 
Tip 3 Use a tool! It is true that “a fool with a tool is still a fool”. In our teaching and consulting practice we have found, however, that adoption of a flexible and easy to use tool can be a strong driver in pushing the EA-initiative forward.

There will be several interesting presentations on this subject at the upcoming Open Group conference (Newport Beach, CA, USA, January 28 – 31: Look here), ranging from theory to case practice, focusing on getting started with EA as well as on advanced topics.

I will also present on this subject and will elaborate on the combined use of The Open Group standards for EA. I also gladly invite you to join me at the panel sessions. Look forward to see you there!

Henry FrankenHenry Franken is the managing director of BiZZdesign and is chair of The Open Group ArchiMate Forum. As chair of The Open Group ArchiMate Forum, Henry led the development of the ArchiMate Version 2.o standard. Henry is a speaker at many conferences and has co-authored several international publications and Open Group White Papers. Henry is co-founder of the BPM-Forum. At BiZZdesign, Henry is responsible for research and innovation.

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by | December 10, 2012 · 5:00 AM

Operational Resilience through Managing External Dependencies

By Ian Dobson & Jim Hietala, The Open Group

These days, organizations are rarely self-contained. Businesses collaborate through partnerships and close links with suppliers and customers. Outsourcing services and business processes, including into Cloud Computing, means that key operations that an organization depends on are often fulfilled outside their control.

The challenge here is how to manage the dependencies your operations have on factors that are outside your control. The goal is to perform your risk management so it optimizes your operational success through being resilient against external dependencies.

The Open Group’s Dependency Modeling (O-DM) standard specifies how to construct a dependency model to manage risk and build trust over organizational dependencies between enterprises – and between operational divisions within a large organization. The standard involves constructing a model of the operations necessary for an organization’s success, including the dependencies that can affect each operation. Then, applying quantitative risk sensitivities to each dependency reveals those operations that have highest exposure to risk of not being successful, informing business decision-makers where investment in reducing their organization’s exposure to external risks will result in best return.

O-DM helps you to plan for success through operational resilience, assured business continuity, and effective new controls and contingencies, enabling you to:

  • Cut costs without losing capability
  • Make the most of tight budgets
  • Build a resilient supply chain
  •  Lead programs and projects to success
  • Measure, understand and manage risk from outsourcing relationships and supply chains
  • Deliver complex event analysis

The O-DM analytical process facilitates organizational agility by allowing you to easily adjust and evolve your organization’s operations model, and produces rapid results to illustrate how reducing the sensitivity of your dependencies improves your operational resilience. O-DM also allows you to drill as deep as you need to go to reveal your organization’s operational dependencies.

O-DM support training on the development of operational dependency models conforming to this standard is available, as are software computation tools to automate speedy delivery of actionable results in graphic formats to facilitate informed business decision-making.

The O-DM standard represents a significant addition to our existing Open Group Risk Management publications:

The O-DM standard may be accessed here.

Ian Dobson is the director of the Security Forum and the Jericho Forum for The Open Group, coordinating and facilitating the members to achieve their goals in our challenging information security world.  In the Security Forum, his focus is on supporting development of open standards and guides on security architectures and management of risk and security, while in the Jericho Forum he works with members to anticipate the requirements for the security solutions we will need in future.

Jim Hietala, CISSP, GSEC, is the Vice President, Security for The Open Group, where he manages all IT security and risk management programs and standards activities. He participates in the SANS Analyst/Expert program and has also published numerous articles on information security, risk management, and compliance topics in publications including The ISSA Journal, Bank Accounting & Finance, Risk Factor, SC Magazine, and others.

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by | November 21, 2012 · 5:00 AM

Discover the World’s First Technical Cloud Computing Standard… for the Second Time

By E.G. Nadhan, HP

Have you heard of the first technical standard for Cloud Computing—SOCCI (pronounced “saw-key”)? Wondering what it stands for? Well, it stands for Service Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure, or SOCCI.

Whether you are just beginning to deploy solutions in the cloud or if you already have existing cloud solutions deployed, SOCCI can be applied in terms of each organization’s different situation. Where ever you are on the spectrum of cloud adoption, the standard offers a well-defined set of architecture building blocks with specific roles outlined in detail. Thus, the standard can be used in multiple ways including:

  • Defining the service oriented aspects of your infrastructure in the cloud as part of your reference architecture
  • Validating your reference architecture to ensure that these building blocks have been appropriately addressed

The standard provides you an opportunity to systematically perform the following in the context of your environment:

  • Identify synergies between service orientation and the cloud
  • Extend adoption of  traditional and service-oriented infrastructure in the cloud
  • Apply the consumer, provider and developer viewpoints on your cloud solution
  • Incorporate foundational building blocks into enterprise architecture for infrastructure services in the cloud
  • Implement cloud-based solutions using different infrastructure deployment models
  • Realize business solutions referencing the business scenario analyzed in this standard

Are you going to be SOCCI’s first application? Are you among the cloud innovators—opting not to wait when the benefits can be had today?

Incidentally, I will be presenting this standard for the second time at the HP Discover Conference in Frankfurt on 5th Dec 2012.   I plan on discussing this standard, as well as its application in a hypothetical business scenario so that we can collectively brainstorm on how it could apply in different business environments.

In an earlier tweet chat on cloud standards, I tweeted: “Waiting for standards is like waiting for Godot.” After the #DT2898 session at HP Discover 2012, I expect to tweet, “Waiting for standards may be like waiting for Godot, but waiting for the application of a standard does not have to be so.”

A version of this blog post originally appeared on the Journey through Enterprise IT Services Blog.

HP Distinguished Technologist and Cloud Advisor, E.G.Nadhan has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry across the complete spectrum of selling, delivering and managing enterprise level solutions for HP customers. He is the founding co-chair for The Open Group SOCCI project and is also the founding co-chair for the Open Group Cloud Computing Governance project. Connect with Nadhan on: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Journey Blog.

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by | May 17, 2012 · 8:00 AM

UNIX® is Still as Relevant as Ever

By Andrew Josey, The Open Group

Despite being as old as man landing on the moon, the UNIX® operating system is still as relevant today as it was in 1969. UNIX is older than the PC, microprocessor and video display at 43. In fact, few software technologies since have since proved more durable or adaptable than the UNIX operating system. The operating system’s durability lies its stability – this is why the UNIX programming standard is crucially important. Since 1995, any operating system wishing to use the UNIX trademark has to conform to the Single UNIX Specification, a standard of The Open Group. In this blog we identify some of the reasons why this standard is still relevant today.

One of the key reasons is that the UNIX standard programming interfaces are an integral and scalable foundation for today’s infrastructure from embedded systems, mobile devices, internet routers, servers and workstations, all the way up to distributed supercomputers. The standard provides portability across related operating systems such as Linux and the BSD systems and many parts of the standard are present in embedded and server systems from HP, Oracle, IBM, Fujitsu, Silicon Graphics and SCO Group as well as desktop systems from Apple.

The Single UNIX Specification provides a level of openness which those without the standard cannot, ensuring compatibility across all these platforms. Because the standard establishes a baseline of core functionality above which suppliers can innovate, applications written to the standard can be easily moved across a wide range of platforms. It enables suppliers to focus on offering added value and guarantee the underlying durability of their products with the core interfaces standardised. UNIX interfaces have found use on more machines than any other operating system of its kind, demonstrating why having a single, maintained standard is incredibly important. The UNIX standard enables customers to buy with increased confidence, backed with certification.

The Open Group works closely with the community to further the development of standards conformant systems by evolving and maintaining the value of the UNIX standard. This includes making the standard freely available on the web, permitting reuse of the standard documentation in open source projects, providing test tools, and developing the POSIX and UNIX certification programmes.

The open source movement has brought new vitality to UNIX and its user community is larger than ever including commercial vendors, operating system developers and an entirely new generation of programmers. Forty years after it was first created, UNIX is still here, long after Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong hung up their moon boots. With the right standards in place to protect it, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t continue to grow in the future.

 UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.

Andrew Josey is Director of Standards within The Open Group. He is currently managing the standards process for The Open Group, and has recently led the standards development projects for TOGAF 9.1, ArchiMate 2.0, IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (POSIX), and the core specifications of the Single UNIX Specification, Version 4. Previously, he has led the development and operation of many of The Open Group certification development projects, including industry-wide certification programs for the UNIX system, the Linux Standard Base, TOGAF, and IEEE POSIX. He is a member of the IEEE, USENIX, UKUUG, and the Association of Enterprise Architects.

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by | May 8, 2012 · 12:30 AM

The Right Way to Transform to the World of Cloud Computing

By E.G. Nadhan, HP Enterprise Services

There are myriad options available for moving to cloud computing today involving the synthetic realization and integration of different components that enable the overall solution. It is important that the foundational components across the compute, network, storage and facility domains are realized and integrated the right way for enterprises to realize the perceived benefits of moving to the cloud. To that end, this post outlines the key factors to be addressed when embarking on this transformation journey to the cloud:

  • Right Cloud. There are multiple forces at play when the CIOs of today consider moving to the cloud, further complicated by the availability of various deployment models — private, public, hybrid, etc. It is important that enterprises deploy solutions to the right mix of cloud environments. It is not a one-environment-fits-all scenario. Enterprises need to define the criteria that enable the effective determination of the optimal mix of environments that best addresses their scenarios.
  • Right Architecture. While doing so, it is important that there is a common reference architecture across various cloud deployment models that is accommodative of the traditional environments. This needs to be defined factoring in the overall IT strategy for the enterprise in alignment with the business objectives. A common reference architecture addresses the over-arching concepts across the various environments while accommodating nuances specific to each one.
  • Right Services. I discussed in one of my earlier posts that the foundational principles of cloud have evolved from SOA. Thus, it is vital that enterprises have a well-defined SOA strategy in place that includes the identification of services used across the various architectural layers within the enterprise, as well as the services to be availed from external providers.
  • Right Governance. While governance is essential within the enterprise, it needs to be extended to the extra-enterprise that includes the ecosystem of service providers in the cloud. This is especially true if the landscape comprises a healthy mix of various types of cloud environments. Proper governance ensures that the right solutions are deployed to the right environments while addressing key areas of concern like security, data privacy, compliance regulations, etc.
  • Right Standard. Conformance to industry standards is always a prudent approach for any solution — especially for the cloud. The Open Group recently published the first Cloud Computing Technical Standard — Service Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure which bears strong consideration in addition to other standards from NIST and other standards bodies.

These factors come together to define the “Right” way of transforming to the cloud. In addition, there are other factors that are unique to the transformation of applications as I outline in the Cloud Computing Transformation Bill of RIghts.

In addition to the publication of the SOCCI standard, the Cloud Work Group within The Open Group is addressing several aspects in this space including the Reference Architecture, Governance and Security.

How is your Transformation to the cloud going? Are there other factors that come to your mind? Please let me know.

HP Distinguished Technologist, E.G.Nadhan has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry across the complete spectrum of selling, delivering and managing enterprise level solutions for HP customers. He is the founding co-chair for The Open Group SOCCI project and is also the founding co-chair for the Open Group Cloud Computing Governance project. Twitter handle @NadhanAtHP.

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by | April 18, 2012 · 2:24 PM

Tweet Jam Summary: Identity Management #ogChat

By Patty Donovan, The Open Group

Over 300 tweets were posted during The Open Group’s initial tweet jam, which took place this week on Tuesday morning! The hour of spirited conversation included our expert panel, as well as other participants who joined in the spirited discussion including:

If you missed the event this time, here’s a snapshot of how the discussion went:

Q1: What are the biggest challenges of #idM today? #ogChat

Many agreed that regulations at the federal and business levels are inadequate today. Other big challenges include the lack of funding, managing people not affiliated to an organization and the various contexts surrounding the issue. Here’s a sampling of some of the tweets that drove the discussion:

  • @jim_hietala: For users, managing multiple identities with strong auth credentials across myriad systems #ogChat
  • @ErickaChick: Q1 Even when someone writes a check, no one usually measures effectiveness of the spend  #ogChat
  • @dazzagreenwood: #ogchat biggest challenges of #IdM are complexity of SSO, and especially legal and business aspects. #NSTIC approach can help.
  • @Dana_Gardner: Biggest challenges of ID mgmt today are same ones as 10 years ago, that’s the problem. #ogchat #IdM
Q2: What should be the role of governments and private companies in creating #idM standards? #ogChat

Although our participants agreed that governments should have a central role in creating standards, questions about boundaries, members and willingness to adopt emerged. Dana Gardner pointed out the need for a neutral hub, but will competitors be willing to share identities with rival providers?

  • @JohnFontana: Q2 NISTIC is 1 example of how it might work. They intend to facilitate, then give way to private sector. Will it work? #ogchat
  • @Dana_Gardner: This is clearly a government role, but they dropped the ball. And now the climate is anti-regulation. So too late? #ogChat #IdM
  • @gbrunkhorst: Corps have the ability to span geopolitical boundaries. any solution has to both allow this, and ‘respect borders’ (mutually Excl?)
Q3: What are the barriers to developing an identity ecosystem? #ogChat 

The panelists opposed the idea of creating a single identity ecosystem, but the key issues to developing one rest on trust and assurance between provider and user. Paul Simmonds from the Jericho Forum noted that there are no intersections between the providers of identity management (providers, governments and vendors).

  • @ErickaChick: Q3 So many IT pros forget that #IdM isn’t a tech prob, it’s a biz process prob #ogChat
    • Response from @NadhanAtHP: @wikidsystems Just curious why you “want” multiple ecosystems? What is wrong if we have one even though it may be idealist? #ogChat #idM
    • Response from @wikidsystems: Q3 to be clear, I don’t want one identity eco system, I want many, at least some of which I control (consumer). #ogChat
  • @451wendy: Q3 Context validation for identity attributes. We all use the Internet as citizens, customers, employees, parents, students etc. #ogChat
  • @451wendy: ‘@TheRealSpaf: regulation of minimal standards for interoperability and (sometimes) safety are reasonable. Think NIST vs Congress.” #ogChat

Q4: Identity attributes may be valuable and subject to monetization. How will this play out? #ogChat

The issue of trust continued in the discussion, along with the idea that many consumers are unaware that the monetization of identity attributes occurs.

  • @Technodad: Q4: How about portability? Should I be able to pick up my identity and move to another #idm provider, like I can move my phone num? #ogchat
  • @NadhanAtHP: Q4 Identify attributes along with information analytics & context will allow for prediction and handling of security violations #idM #ogChat

Q5: How secure are single sign-on (#SSO) schemes through Web service providers such as #Google and #Facebook? #ogChat

There was an almost unanimous agreement on the insecurity of these providers, but other questions were also raised.

  • @simmonds_paul: Q5. Wrong question, instead ask why you should trust a self-asserted identity? #ogchat
  • @dazzagreenwood: Q5  #ogchat The real question is not about FB and Google, but how mass-market sso could work with OpenID Connect with *any* provider
  • @Dana_Garnder: Q5. Issue isn’t security, it’s being locked in, and then them using your meta data against you…and no alternatives. #SSO  #ogChat #IdM
  • @NadhanAtHP: Q5 Tracking liability for security violations is a challenge with #SSO schemes across Web Service Providers #idM #ogChat 

Q6: Is #idM more or less secure on #mobile devices (for users, businesses and identity providers)? #ogChat

Even though time edged its way in and we could not devote the same amount of attention to the final question, our participants painted interesting perspectives on how we actually feel about mobile security.

  • @jim_hietala: Q6. Mobile device (in)security is scary, period, add in identity credentials buried in phones, bad news indeed #ogChat
  • @simmonds_paul: Q6. I lose my SecureID card I worry in a week, I lose Cell Phone I may worry in an hour (mins if under 25) – which is more secure? #ogchat
  • @dazzagreenwood: Q6 #ogchat Mobile can be more OR less secure for #ID – depends on 1) implementation, 2) applicable trust framework(s).
  • @Technodad: @jim_hietala Q6: Mobile might make it better through physical control – similar to passport. #ogChat

Thank you to all the participants who made this a possibility, and please stay tuned for our next tweet jam!

Patricia Donovan is Vice President, Membership & Events, at The Open Group and a member of its executive management team. In this role she is involved in determining the company’s strategic direction and policy as well as the overall management of that business area. Patricia joined The Open Group in 1988 and has played a key role in the organization’s evolution, development and growth since then. She also oversees the company’s marketing, conferences and member meetings. She is based in the U.S.

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by | March 30, 2012 · 12:30 AM

Enterprise Transformation Takes the French Riviera

By The Open Group Conference Team

The Open Group Conference in Cannes, France is just around the corner. Taking place April 23-27, the conference will bring together leading minds in technology to discuss the process of Enterprise Transformation, and the role of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and IT in Enterprise Transformation.

The French Riviera is a true playground for the rich and famous. As the location of the next Open Group Conference, (not to mention the next Open Cannes Awards) it seems only fitting that we not only have an incredible venue for the event, the JW Marriott Cannes, but have our own star-studded lineup of speakers, sessions and activities that are sure to make the conference an unforgettable experience.

In addition to tutorial sessions on TOGAF and ArchiMate, the conference offers roughly 60 sessions on a varied of topics, including:

  • Enterprise Transformation, including Enterprise Architecture and SOA
  • Cybersecurity, Cloud Security and Trusted Technology for the Supply Chain
  • Cloud Computing for Business, Collaborative Cloud Frameworks and Cloud Architectures

The conference theme “Enterprise Transformation” will highlight how Enterprise Architecture can be used to truly change how companies do business and create models and architectures that help them make those changes. Keynote speakers include:

  • Dr. Alexander Osterwalder, Best-selling Author and Entrepreneur

Dr. Osterwalder is a renowned thought leader on business model design and innovation. Many executives and entrepreneurs and world-leading organizations have applied Dr. Osterwalderʼs approach to strengthen their business model and achieve a competitive advantage through business model innovation. His keynote session at the conference, titled: “Business Models, IT, and Enterprise Transformation,” will discuss how to use the Business Model Canvas approach to better align IT and business strategy, empower multi-disciplinary teams and contribute to Enterprise Transformation.

  • Herve Gouezel, Advisor to the CEO at BNP Paribas & Eric Boulay, Founder and CEO of Arismore

Keynote: “EA and Transformation: An Enterprise Issue, a New Role for the CIO?” will examine governance within the Enterprise and what steps need to take place to create a collaborative Enterprise.

  • Peter Haviland, Chief Architect and Head of Business Architecture Advisory Services at Ernst & Young, US

Keynote: “World Class EA 2012: Putting Your Architecture Team in the Middle of Enterprise Transformation,” will identify and discuss key activities leading practice architecture teams are performing to create and sustain value, to remain at the forefront of enterprise transformation.

  • Kirk Avery, Software Architect at Lockheed Martin & Robert Sweeney, MSMA Lead Systems Engineer at Naval Air Systems Command

Keynote: “FACE: Transforming the DoD Avionics Software Industry Through the Use of Open Standards,” will address the DoD Avionics Industry’s need for providing complex mission capability in less time and in an environment of shrinking government budgets

The Common Criteria Workshop and the European Commission

We are also pleased to be hosting the first Common Criteria Workshop during the Cannes Conference. This two-day event – taking place April 25 to 26 – offers a rich opportunity to hear from distinguished speakers from the Common Criteria Security community, explore viewpoints through panel discussions and work with minded people towards common goals.

One of the keynote speakers during the workshop is Andrea Servida, the Deputy Head of the Internet, Network and Information Security unit with the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium. With extensive experience defining and implementing strategies and policies on network and information security and critical information infrastructure protection, Mr. Servida is an ideal speaker as we kick-off the first workshop.

The Open Cannes Awards

What trip would be complete to Cannes without an awards ceremony? Presented by The Open Group, The Open Cannes Awards is an opportunity for our members to recognize each other’s accomplishments within The Open Group with a little fun during the gala ceremony on the night of Tuesday, April 24. The goal is to acknowledge the success stories, the hard work and dedication that members, either as individuals or as organizations, have devoted to The Open Group’s ideals and vision over the past decade.

We hope to see you in Cannes! For more information on the conference tracks or to register, please visit our conference registration page, and please stay tuned throughout the next month as we continue to release blog posts and information leading up to The Open Group Conference in Cannes, France!

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by | January 30, 2012 · 5:00 AM

FACE Consortium Publishes First Standard for Defense Avionics Systems

By Judy Cerenzia, The Open Group FACE Consortium

I’m amazed that only 19 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 and components 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 the time to field new avionics capabilities.

I’m particularly proud of the consortium’s Technical Working Group, authors of Version 1.0 of The Technical Standard for Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) Reference Architecture, which was just approved for official publication as an Open Group Standard. What they have accomplished in a year and a half is nothing less than phenomenal. The publication is available at The Open Group’s Bookstore.

The FACE Consortium’s unique strategy and structure 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 has also published the FACE Business Guide, which defines stakeholders and their roles within a new business model; discusses business scenarios and defines how stakeholders will impact or be impacted by business drivers in each; and investigates how contract terms, software licensing agreements and IP rights may need to change to support procuring common components with standardized interfaces versus a proprietary black-box solution from a prime contractor. The Business Guide is also available at The Open Group’s Bookstore.

We’ve grown from 74 individuals representing 14 organizations in June 2010 to over 375 participants from 39 government and industry partners to date. Our next consortium members’ meeting will be in Baltimore, MD February 29 – March 1 2012, hosted by Northrop Grumman. I’m looking forward to seeing FACE colleagues, facilitating their working meeting, and continuing 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 currently The Open Group’s Program Director for the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Consortium. Judy has 10+ years senior program management experience leading cross-functional and cross-organizational teams to reach consensus, define, and meet business and technical goals during project lifecycles. 

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by | January 26, 2012 · 12:30 AM

SOCCI: Behind the Scenes

By E.G. Nadhan, HP

Cloud Computing standards, like other standards go through a series of evolutionary phases similar to the ones I outlined in the Top 5 phases of IaaS standards evolution. IaaS standards, in particular, take longer than their SaaS and PaaS counterparts because a balance is required between the service-orientation of the core infrastructure components in Cloud Computing.

This balance is why today’s announcement of the release of the industry’s first technical standard, Service Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure (SOCCI) is significant.

As one of the co-chairs of this project, here is some insight into the manner in which The Open Group went about creating the definition of this standard:

  • Step One: Identify the key characteristics of service orientation, as well as those for the cloud as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Analyze these characteristics and the resulting synergies through the application of service orientation in the cloud. Compare and contrast their evolution from the traditional environment through service orientation to the Cloud.
  • Step Two: Identify the key architectural building blocks that enable the Operational Systems Layer of the SOA Reference Architecture and the Cloud Reference Architecture that is in progress.
  • Step Three: Map these building blocks across the architectural layers while representing the multi-faceted perspectives of various viewpoints including those of the consumer, provider and developer.
  • Step Four: Define a Motor Cars in the Cloud business scenario: You, the consumer  are downloading auto-racing videos through an environment managed by a Service Integrator which requires the use of services for software, platform and infrastructure along with  traditional technologies. Provide a behind-the-curtains perspective on the business scenario where the SOCCI building blocks slowly but steadily come to life.
  • Step Five: Identify the key connection points with the other Open Group projects in the areas of architecture, business use cases, governance and security.

The real test of a standard is in its breadth of adoption. This standard can be used in multiple ways by the industry at large in order to ensure that the architectural nuances are comprehensively addressed. It could be used to map existing Cloud-based deployments to a standard architectural template. It can also serve as an excellent set of Cloud-based building blocks that can be used to build out a new architecture.

Have you taken a look at this standard? If not, please do so. If so, where and how do you think this standard could be adopted? Are there ways that the standard can be improved in future releases to make it better suited for broader adoption? Please let me know your thoughts.

This blog post was originally posted on HP’s Grounded in the Cloud Blog.

HP Distinguished Technologist, E.G.Nadhan has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry across the complete spectrum of selling, delivering and managing enterprise level solutions for HP customers. He is the founding co-chair for The Open Group SOCCI project and is also the founding co-chair for the Open Group Cloud Computing Governance project.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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by | August 5, 2011 · 12:30 AM

Innovation in the Cloud needs open standards

By Mark Skilton, Capgemini

This article is a continuation of a series on standards by Mark Stilton. Read his previous post on “Why standards in information technology are critical“.

The forces of innovation are seen in the power of broadband, mass computing power, dynamic new mobile cell devices and tablets, new social networking software and new advanced technologies in fields such as medical scanners, multi-media, education, robotics and electronics. These disruptions are jumps that can make huge leaps in societal quality of life and benefit for all. And with every advance there can be counterproductive and emergent issues that result which may be detrimental to markets, and to personal liberty and safety. There is a continuing debate over standards and policies that may or may not prejudice the legitimate rights of consumers, providers and governments that seek these benefits.

Standards evolve as a means for description and commonality as well as differentiation. Common utility services in the gas, electricity, and water amenities industry are examples that trade and provide services to mass markets. Likewise, in consumer electronics markets and network standards, we see interests in common interface and connector standards to enable consumer and providers to access and gain use of the products and services marketplaces. Without standards in areas that enable trade exchange, markets would be fragmented, limiting potential growth and evolution of new opportunities.

But equally, standards can create challenges to barriers in trade and adoption. Protection of intellectual property, closed technology platforms and protectionist and legislative control policies are consequences that can been seen as building competitive advantages; but equally can be limiting access and competition to existing and new markets.

This is a concern from large multi-national corporations to the plethora of SMBs, and to the individual. It can also be seen as a wider economic, societal and environmental issue, where disproportionate activities and resource consumption can affect green sustainability and intergovernmental and marketplace balance of power and growth.

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.

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