By Loren K. Baynes, Director, Global Marketing Communications, The Open Group
After a fantastic first day in Central Hall Westminster, The Open Group London 2016 continued on Tuesday, April 26 as attendees looked forward to another excellent line-up of speakers and topics. The Open Group President and CEO Steve Nunn welcomed the audience and announced that a day after launch, the IT4IT™ Certification Program already had over 50 certified people signed up. The certification is achieved by individuals who demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, Version 2.0 standard. Steve was then joined on stage by The Open Group CTO Dave Lounsbury, to discuss digital transformation and enabling digital business, with a focus on IT’s critical role in helping to achieve this.
Tuesday’s plenary sessions then got underway, with a highly entertaining presentation from Ron Tolido, Senior VP, Group CTO Office, Global Insights & Data Practice, CapGemini. Ron used numerous Game of Thrones references to explain how the open business data lake could be a blueprint for agile, data-driven businesses. He was quick to point out though that data ran the risk of appearing to a business in many elephant-themed guises; be it the “white elephant” driving up costs, the “Dumbo”, i.e. a fantasy, or the ”elephant in the room” than nobody wants to mention. To summarize, Ron, continuing his Game of Thrones-themed talk, argued that we need “burning [big data] platforms that are the pièce de résistance of Enterprise Architecture”.
Steve Nunn, Ron Tolido
It was then the turn of Sven van Wilpen, Business Architect, Fokker Industries, and Stuart Boardman, Enterprise Architect, Resilient EA, to discuss digitization in the aerospace industry and more specifically, the Fokker Factory. Coincidentally, elephants reared their collective trunks for the second time in the morning, when Stuart described the role of the architect as herding elephants.
One of the most interesting discussion points that emerged from this presentation was around change management, and it became clear that Fokker was putting some great process in place to support stakeholders who have to deal with the change. Not only that, but it needed to be made clear to them why change would make their lives better. Stuart also talked about implementing the right kind of change, highlighting the fact that when you make a process digital, it works differently. Don’t just digitize that manual process, but change the process itself.
After the coffee break, Steve Nunn made a presentation to Serge Thorn with HSBC, in recognition of his tireless work on The Open Group Architecture Forum TOGAF Localization Committee. TOGAF® is an Open Group standard.
Serge Thorn, Steve Nunn
At this point, Steve handed the reins over to Wipro’s Chief Enterprise Architect & Head of Academy of EA, Pallab Saha for the rest of the morning session, to talk first about the relevance of Enterprise Architecture for India, and then about how it is helping to turn aspiration into inspiration to make digital government a reality.
Pallab talked in great detail about the e-Pragati project, which was designed to bring all government services under one roof to illustrate this. He described it as a new paradigm in governance, based on a whole-of-government framework that transcends departmental boundaries. Helpfully, Pallab also showcased a great video that explained the initiative in more detail and it is interesting to note that this regional project is being championed as best practice for other provinces in India.
The afternoon saw the conversations split into separate tracks, focused on Healthcare, Open Platform 3.0™, ArchiMate®, and a series of TOGAF® 9 tutorials, including:
- History of The Open Group Healthcare Forum, Jason Lee, Director, Healthcare Forum, The Open Group
- Architecting Customer Experience: Driving Transformative Digital Business, Trishit Baran Sengupta, Enterprise Architect, Wipro
- Using TOGAF®, ArchiMate® and Open FAIR for Business Driven InfoSec, Thorbjørn Ellefsen, Managing Business Analyst, Capgemini
- Creating an EA for Genesis Housing Association, Michelle Supper, Enterprise and System Architect, Science Inspired Ltd
The second day of the London event concluded with a networking dinner at Emirates Stadium – home of the Arsenal Football Club. In addition to a private tour of the stadium, guests enjoyed live music and a scrumptious dinner. Allen Brown, former CEO of The Open Group, was announced as a Fellow, an honor bestowed upon only a select few for their immense dedication and body of work at The Open Group.
@theopengroup #ogLON
Loren K. Baynes, Director, Global Marketing Communications, joined The Open Group in 2013 and spearheads corporate marketing initiatives, primarily the website, blog, media relations and social media. Loren has over 20 years experience in brand marketing and public relations and, prior to The Open Group, was with The Walt Disney Company for over 10 years. Loren holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Texas A&M University. She is based in the US.