By The Open Group
Continuing on the theme of predictions, here are a few more, which focus on global IT trends, business architecture, OTTF and Open Group events in 2013.
Global Enterprise Architecture
By Chris Forde, Vice President of Enterprise Architecture and Membership Capabilities
Cloud is no longer a bleeding edge technology – most organizations are already well on their way to deploying cloud technology. However, Cloud implementations are resurrecting a perennial problem for organizations—integration. Now that Cloud infrastructures are being deployed, organizations are having trouble integrating different systems, especially with systems hosted by third parties outside their organization. What will happen when two, three or four technical delivery systems are hosted on AND off premise? This presents a looming integration problem.
As we see more and more organizations buying into cloud infrastructures, we’ll see an increase in cross-platform integration architectures globally in 2013. The role of the enterprise architect will become more complex. Architectures must not only ensure that systems are integrated properly, but architects also need to figure out a way to integrate outsourced teams and services and determine responsibility across all systems. Additionally, outsourcing and integration will lead to increased focus on security in the coming year, especially in healthcare and financial sectors. When so many people are involved, and responsibility is shared or lost in the process, gaping holes can be left unnoticed. As data is increasingly shared between organizations and current trends escalate, security will also become more and more of a concern. Integration may yield great rewards architecturally, but it also means greater exposure to vulnerabilities outside of your firewall.
Within the Architecture Forum, we will be working on improvements to the TOGAF® standard throughout 2013, as well as an effort to continue to harmonize the TOGAF specification with the ArchiMate® modelling language. The Forum also expects to publish a whitepaper on application portfolio management in the new year, as well as be involved in the upcoming Cloud Reference Architecture.
In China, The Open Group is progressing well. In 2013, we’ll continue translating The Open Group website, books and whitepapers from English to Chinese. Partnerships and Open CA certification will remain in the forefront of global priorities, as well as enrolling TOGAF trainers throughout Asia Pacific as Open Group members. There are a lot of exciting developments arising, and we will keep you updated as we expand our footprint in China and the rest of Asia.
Open Group Events in 2013
By Patty Donovan, Vice President of Membership and Events
In 2013, the biggest change for us will be our quarterly summit. The focus will shift toward an emphasis on verticals. This new focus will debut at our April event in Sydney where the vertical themes include Mining, Government, and Finance. Additional vertical themes that we plan to cover throughout the year include: Healthcare, Transportation, Retail, just to name a few. We will also continue to increase the number of our popular Livestream sessions as we have seen an extremely positive reaction to them as well as all of our On-Demand sessions – listen to best selling authors and industry leaders who participated as keynote and track speakers throughout the year.
Regarding social media, we made big strides in 2012 and will continue to make this a primary focus of The Open Group. If you haven’t already, please “like” us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, join the chat on (#ogchat) one of our Security focused Tweet Jams, and join our LinkedIn Group. And if you have the time, we’d love for you to contribute to The Open Group blog.
We’re always open to new suggestions, so if you have a creative idea on how we can improve your membership, Open Group events, webinars, podcasts, please let me know! Also, please be sure to attend the upcoming Open Group Conference in Newport Beach, Calif., which is taking place on January 28-31. The conference will address Big Data.
Business Architecture
By Steve Philp, Marketing Director for Open CA and Open CITS
Business Architecture is still a relatively new discipline, but in 2013 I think it will continue to grow in prominence and visibility from an executive perspective. C-Level decision makers are not just looking at operational efficiency initiatives and cost reduction programs to grow their future revenue streams; they are also looking at market strategy and opportunity analysis.
Business Architects are extremely valuable to an organization when they understand market and technology trends in a particular sector. They can then work with business leaders to develop strategies based on the capabilities and positioning of the company to increase revenue, enhance their market position and improve customer loyalty.
Senior management recognizes that technology also plays a crucial role in how organizations can achieve their business goals. A major role of the Business Architect is to help merge technology with business processes to help facilitate this business transformation.
There are a number of key technology areas for 2013 where Business Architects will be called upon to engage with the business such as Cloud Computing, Big Data and social networking. Therefore, the need to have competent Business Architects is a high priority in both the developed and emerging markets and the demand for Business Architects currently exceeds the supply. There are some training and certification programs available based on a body of knowledge, but how do you establish who is a practicing Business Architect if you are looking to recruit?
The Open Group is trying to address this issue and has incorporated a Business Architecture stream into The Open Group Certified Architect (Open CA) program. There has already been significant interest in this stream from both organizations and practitioners alike. This is because Open CA is a skills- and experience-based program that recognizes, at different levels, those individuals who are actually performing in a Business Architecture role. You must complete a candidate application package and be interviewed by your peers. Achieving certification demonstrates your competency as a Business Architect and therefore will stand you in good stead for both next year and beyond.
You can view the conformance criteria for the Open CA Business Architecture stream at https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/catalog/X120.
Trusted Technology
By Sally Long, Director of Consortia Services
The interdependency of all countries on global technology providers and technology providers’ dependencies on component suppliers around the world is more certain than ever before. The need to work together in a vendor-neutral, country-neutral environment to assure there are standards for securing technology development and supply chain operations will become increasingly apparent in 2013. Securing the global supply chain can not be done in a vacuum, by a few providers or a few governments, it must be achieved by working together with all governments, providers, component suppliers and integrators and it must be done through open standards and accreditation programs that demonstrate conformance to those standards and are available to everyone.
The Open Group’s Trusted Technology Forum is providing that open, vendor and country-neutral environment, where suppliers from all countries and governments from around the world can work together in a trusted collaborative environment, to create a standard and an accreditation program for securing the global supply chain. The Open Trusted Technology Provider Standard (O-TTPS) Snapshot (Draft) was published in March of 2012 and is the basis for our 2013 predictions.
We predict that in 2013:
- Version 1.0 of the O-TTPS (Standard) will be published.
- Version 1.0 will be submitted to the ISO PAS process in 2013, and will likely become part of the ISO/IEC 27036 standard, where Part 5 of that ISO standard is already reserved for the O-TTPS work
- An O-TTPS Accreditation Program – open to all providers, component suppliers, and integrators, will be launched
- The Forum will continue the trend of increased member participation from governments and suppliers around the world
I think that the text above about “Business Architecture” by Steve Philp is an excellent example of the confusion referred to by Leonard Fehskens in the previous (Part 1) post. Everything Steve asserts as being the challenges for “Business Architects” are exactly the same things that every self-respecting Enterprise Architect recognizes as his concerns and responsibilities.
Leonard Fehskens said: “In fact, I think in many respects the confusion about what Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Business Architecture are about has gotten worse.” Well, who could give a more compelling example of this confusion?
If this confusion is so obvious even inside The Open Group’s Executive Team, there is real ground for concern and discouragement.
In TOGAF parlance, a “business architect” is a “domain architect”, and “business architecture” is a subset of the “enterprise architecture”. Having one of TOG’s directors undermining this understanding and contributing to this confusion is very frustrating.
Of course Enterprise Architecture needs to let go its IT-centric focus, and I have been very vocal in this regard in my participation in the TOGAF Next project, But simply to re-baptize EA with “Business Architecture” is surely not the way to go.
I am also very concerned that the Open CA program is creating a Business Architecture stream where this confusion seems not to be addressed. I did not have the time to read the linked PDF in detail, but I could see that the word “enterprise” only occurs there twice (in one instance, along with “business architecture”, as if it were a parallel, same-level-of-abstraction thing). This smells of inconsistency. If Open CA will be defining a “Business Architect” as someone doing what the Enterprise Architect is supposed to do, we are in for even greater confusion!
Atila, I understand your confusion, but I think you misunderstand the situation. When Len comments on EA and BA it is more the ontology he means is bad in his efforts to “Re-Think Architecture”. I fully agree with that, even more as I am Swedish, trying to relate to our Swedish vocabulary.
But that is not the same thing as saying “Business Architecture” (or whatever we call it) is not needed. It is in Togaf 9 as Phase B; but has so far not been developed. We need a business oriented description of our Enterprise to be able to continue with the more IT oriented phases.
You may read more at http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/16478 .
Eskil Swende at eskil.swende@irm.se
I agree with Atila that the article on Business Architecture is discouraging.
Perhaps the companies I have worked with are less than mature in this discipline, but I have not observed yet business architects working with business leaders developing business strategies and positioning companies (as a matter of fact I think I would be concerned if I did observe that…).
More likely, to Len’s points, I have seen Business Architects struggling to articulate the value proposition of their contribution to CIOs and senior IT leaders. And perhaps the very reason for that is that they do not have a clear distinct role.
For a role to be understood and valued, it is necessary for it to have a clear distinct value proposition. In other words it needs to be clear what you do, who you do it for, and how what you do is different from what others do.
When I see a statement like: “A major role of the Business Architect is to help merge technology with business processes to help facilitate business transformation”, I try to substitute Business Architect with other roles like CIO, Enterprise Architect, IT Manager. For any of these role, you could argue that they help merge technology with business processes etc etc.
Hence, I think, the confusion and the struggle to articulate the value proposition….
Perhaps a way to work around that is to describe what a role is, but also what it is not, and how it differs from other related roles…. just a thought.