By Loren K. Baynes, Director, Global Marketing Communications, The Open Group

The Open Group hosted its latest virtual event January 29-31, 2024. Across three days, the event addressed three different, vital topics, bringing together leading speakers and a global audience for a series of sessions which enlightened, inspired, and motivated us about the leading edge of enterprise technology thinking.

On Day One, we live-streamed sessions from the Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference, being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in association with Nozom Consulting, with focuses on the transformative potential of Enterprise Architecture in the Middle East, as well as its broader role in the public sector, sustainability, and the future of business technology.

On Day Two, we gathered virtually for a special agenda on Enterprise Architecture in the age of AI, introducing new ways of thinking about the discipline in light of the current technological moment’s dominant story.

On Day Three, we welcomed news of the latest developments from The Open Group Open Footprint™ Forum, learning about the current snapshot of the Forum’s data model and how it is positioned to help accelerate businesses’ decarbonization journeys.

Here are highlights from across the three deeply varied, but consistently stimulating days of discussion.

Day One – The Open Group Riyadh Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference

Following warm welcomes and introductions from Steve Nunn, President & CEO of The Open Group, and Dr Mohsin S Alhilal, Governing Board Member of Nozom Consulting, the Riyadh event kicked off with a guided tour of Saudi Arabia’s National Enterprise Architecture from Deena AlBrikeet, Director of National Enterprise Architecture at the Digital Government Authority. Her talk was an important demonstration of a what a well-considered governmental approach to Enterprise Architecture (EA) can look like, spanning from understanding current capabilities up to alignment with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Vision 2030 policy.

This was followed by a panel discussion with Wejdan Ayed Alenzi, Enterprise Architecture Specialist at the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, Ameerah Mohammed AlZelaie of the Saudi Ministry of Sport, and Dr Pallab Saha, GM India, The Open Group, & President of the AEA India. Armed with a diverse set of perspectives, the panel discussed key issues in public sector adoption of EA, including how to navigate the disruptive potential of digital technology in different contexts.

We then moved on to a close look at the power Enterprise Architecture holds to drive accelerated progress on sustainability while fostering innovation, customer loyalty, and long-term viability in a talk from Renju Kuriakose, Energy, Manufacturing & Sustainability Innovation Lead at Microsoft. While taking a frank and transparent approach to the scale of the task ahead, Renju offered an optimistic vision of how Enterprise Architects can create mutually beneficial change across organizations.

Looking towards the future of Enterprise Architecture in a session on ‘Shaping Tomorrow’s Landscape’, Mohamed A Yusuf, Senior Principal at EY, then enriched the detail from earlier in the day on public sector adoption with a view from the consultancy sector, particularly in the MENA region.

To bring together the various strands of day one, we then welcomed a group session with four members of Nozom Consulting, our co-hosts for the day: Mostafa Atef, EA Practice Head, Amr Gaber, Senior EA Consultant, Ahmed Imam, EA Consultant, and Ahmed Wafeek, IT Technical Consultant. Among other things, this session explored in more depth the ways Enterprise Architecture is contributing to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious Saudi Vision 2030 initiative.

Day Two – Ecosystems Architecture: New Thinking for Practitioners in the Age of AI

For the second day of the virtual conference, we turned our attention to exploring the concept of Ecosystems Architecture as a method for approaching the new generation of AI applications, as well as a broader look at the many ways that AI is impacting the profession of Enterprise Architecture.

Following the traditional welcome and introduction from Steve Nunn, the virtual stage was taken for a pair of sessions from Phil Tetlow, CTO Data Ecosystems at IBM, Neal Fishman, Distinguished Engineer at IBM, and Rahul, Senior Research Engineer for the Emerging Technology Lab at Honda R&D Europe. Together, they began with an overview of their co-authored book, Ecosystems Architecture: New Thinking for Practitioners in the Age of AI, which argues for an inspiring next step in the evolution of Enterprise Architecture as new AI technology becomes widely adopted.

With that framework in place, the trio then treated us to a deeper dive on the roles that Generative AI can come to play in the enterprise context, showing how practical experience and professional consensus can guide the way beyond the initial applications we see today towards a more fundamental shift in how enterprise technology operates. As Phil Tetlow summarized the breadth of possibility, “Generative AI is not just about producing chatbots. You can ask an AI to return an answer in UML, or even invent its own language. We will have to embrace AI properly to work successfully with it professionally.”.

After a short break, we then switched gears to another exciting new publication from The Open Group, TOGAF® Series Guide G238: Business Intelligence & Analytics. With the guiding insights of Céline Lescop, Lead Digital Sustainability & Data Architect at AXA Group Operations, and Guillaume Hervouin, AXA Data & IT4IT Architect at AXA Group Operations, the conference learned about new thinking around how shared data management capabilities can enable enterprises to drive more data-driven strategies.

Given the theme of the day, our next session with Michael Anniss, Owner/Principal at M.J. Anniss Ltd., fittingly took a longer look at the idea of change and strategies for flexibly managing it in the context of the TOGAF standard.

We were then joined by The Open Group VP and Chief Technology Officer, Andras Szakal, for a session focusing on risk mitigation in the age of AI. In a deeply thought-provoking session, Andras explored what it might mean for Enterprise Architects if an increasing share of the technology sector comes to rely on fully-automated processes and what a positive vision of balancing the expertise of IT professionals and an enthusiastic embrace of AI advantages might look like. We’re sure that the conversations he seeded will continue for some time in the EA community.

As a plenary, Andras was joined once again by Phil Tetlow, Neal Fishman, and Rahul for a roundtable discussion chaired by Steve Nunn, presented as a special edition of Toolkit Tuesday, the long-running and much-appreciated webinar series from The Open Group. In a wide-ranging conversation that could have gone on engagingly for much longer than we had time for, one key note that we’re sure many in the audience will take away was the comment from Neal that “there is no such thing as a static standard”. There’s little doubt that the sessions across day two of the virtual event will have sown many of the seeds for the next, dynamic evolutions of the standards of The Open Group.

Day Three – The Open Group Open Footprint™ Forum

For day three of the virtual conference, we switched tracks again to consider the exciting developments happening under the aegis of the Open Footprint Forum, getting straight into things with welcome comments from Steve Nunn and Jim Hietala, VP, Sustainability and Market Development at The Open Group.

Jim then handed over to Sammy Lakshmanan, Principal, Environmental Social & Governance at PwC, and Arjen (AJ) van de Voort, Leadership OFP and Global Lead Sustainability Assurance at Intertek, to talk the conference through the Open Footprint™ Data Model and how it came into being. Highlighting the contributions of over 80 companies engaged in the Forum, they demonstrated the rapid progress being made on a vital initiative to help make carbon data verifiable and accurate across the value chain.

They were followed by Jon Curtis, Founder and CEO at Net Zero Matrix, with a session fleshing out the power and significance of the Open Footprint Data Model by discussing the Net Zero Matrix Carbon Register and Validation Ecosystem, which hosts data on net zero targets and progress for over 6,900 public and private companies. After discussing how data hubs function in emissions tracking applications, Jon explained that because “companies will need to have their calculated emissions, there is an increasing need for carbon auditors”.

Bertrand Rioux, Director at Two Ravens Consulting, then joined us to take a deeper dive into implementing the Open Footprint Data Model for corporate applications. Citing regulatory regimes like the California SB-253 Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act and the U.S. EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, Bertrand showed us how a standardized approach to structuring emissions data effectively helps businesses to navigate shifting governmental and legislative expectations.

Addressing those in the audience whose interests had been piqued by an engaging morning of discussions and wanted to take part in the work of the Open Footprint Forum, we were then joined by Sandeep Roy, Co-Founder and Chief Digital Officer at Planckton Data, and Susan Harper, Senior Manager of Standards and Certifications at The Open Group, to explain the structure and purpose of the new Open Footprint Data Model Standard Snapshot and guide people on how to get involved in future development.

Finally, to close out both the day’s presentations on the Open Footprint Forum and The Open Group virtual conference as a whole, we were rejoined by AJ van de Voort who, together with Pete Eskit and Salud Hernandez from ExxonMobil, provided a fascinating showcase of how ExxonMobil is implementing the Open Footprint Forum Data Model as a proof of concept to elevate and future-proof its sustainability reporting practices.

Thanks go, as ever, to every single person and organization who so generously provided the time and resources needed to make this virtual conference such a success. Special thanks go to our sponsors – Association of Enterprise Architects, Nozom Consulting, and Van Haren Publishing.

Every meeting of The Open Group feels notable for the variety and richness of the insights offered, but this January’s event particularly showed off our Members’ incredible collective ability to sit right at the forefront of many strands of exciting progress, while grounding everything we do in meaningful evidence and practice.

Please save the date for our next in-person event, The Open Group Summit Edinburgh, Scotland, April 22-25, 2024 ~ Ecosystems Architecture and AI Standards. It promises a packed schedule covering Enterprise Architecture, sustainability, open industry standards, and Digital Transformation, as well as Member meetings including the OSDU® Forum, Open Footprint™ Forum, Architecture Forum, and IT4IT™ Forum.

We hope to see you there.

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 25 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.