By Loren K. Baynes, Director, Global Marketing Communications at The Open Group.
On Monday, July 15th, we kicked off our conference in Philadelphia. As Allen Brown, CEO of The Open Group, commented in his opening remarks, Philadelphia is the birthplace of American democracy. This is the first time The Open Group has hosted a conference in this historical city.
Today’s plenary sessions featured keynote speakers covering topics ranging from an announcement of a new Open Group standard, appointment of a new Fellow, Enterprise Architecture and Transformation, Big Data and spotlights on The Open Group forums, Real-time Embedded Systems and Open Trusted Technology, as well as a new initiative on Healthcare.
Allen Brown noted that The Open Group has 432 member organizations with headquarters in 32 countries and over 40,000 individual members in 126 countries.
The Open Group Vision is Boundaryless Information Flow™ achieved through global interoperability in a secure, reliable and timely manner. But as stated by Allen, “Boundaryless does not mean there are no boundaries. It means that boundaries are permeable to enable business”
Allen also presented an overview of the new “Dependability Through Assuredness™ Standard. The Open Group Real-time Embedded Systems Forum is the home of this standard. More news to come!
Allen introduced Dr. Mario Tokoro, (CEO of Sony Computer Systems Laboratories) who began this project in 2006. Dr. Tokoro stated, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for understanding the need for this standard.”
Eric Sweden, MSIH MBA, Program Director, Enterprise Architecture & Governance\National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) offered a presentation entitled “State of the States – NASCIO on Enterprise Architecture: An Emphasis on Cross-Jurisdictional Collaboration across States”. Eric noted “Enterprise Architecture is a blueprint for better government.” Furthermore, “Cybersecurity is a top priority for government”.
Dr. Michael Cavaretta, Technical Lead and Data Scientist with Ford Motor Company discussed “The Impact of Big Data on the Enterprise”. The five keys, according to Dr. Cavaretta, are “perform, analyze, assess, track and monitor”. Please see the following transcript from a Big Data analytics podcast, hosted by The Open Group, Dr. Cavaretta participated in earlier this year. http://blog.opengroup.org/2013/01/28/the-open-group-conference-plenary-speaker-sees-big-data-analytics-as-a-way-to-bolster-quality-manufacturing-and-business-processes/
The final presentation during Monday morning’s plenary was “Enabling Transformation Through Architecture” by Lori Summers (Director of Technology) and Amit Mayabhate (Business Architect Manager) with Fannie Mae Multifamily.
Lori stated that their organization had adopted Business Architecture and today they have an integrated team who will complete the transformation, realize value delivery and achieve their goals.
Amit noted “Traceability from the business to architecture principles was key to our design.”
In addition to the many interesting and engaging presentations, several awards were presented. Joe Bergmann, Director, Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum, The Open Group, was appointed Fellow by Allen Brown in recognition of Joe’s major achievements over the past 20+ years with The Open Group.
Other special recognition recipients include members from Oracle, IBM, HP and Red Hat.
In addition to the plenary session, we hosted meetings on Finance, Government and Healthcare industry verticals. Today is only Day One of The Open Group conference in Philadelphia. Please stay tuned for more exciting conference highlights over the next couple days.