By Ash Patel – CDMP, Marketing Specialist, The Open Group
During The Open Group Edinburgh Summit in April 2024, Steve Nunn, President and CEO, The Open Group, proudly announced the winners of the President’s Awards.
This included Marc Lankhorst for ‘Most Valuable Contributor for an Individual’ and RTX (accepted by Rolf Siegers) for ‘Most Valuable Contribution as an Organization’.
Marc Lankhorst is managing consultant and chief technology evangelist at Bizzdesign. He contributes to Bizzdesign’s vision, market development, consulting, and coaching on digital business design and Enterprise Architecture, and for spreading the word on the ArchiMate® Language for Enterprise Architecture modeling, The Open Group standard of which he has managed the development.
Most Valuable Contribution as an Organization
(accepted by Rolf Siegers, RTX, in the presence of Steve Nunn, President and CEO, The Open Group and Ian Betts, Shell, who was the 2023 recipient of the award)
RTX, the world’s largest aerospace and defense company, has been a key contributing member of The Open Group for over twenty years. Their participation started in the Architecture Forum, and extended to the Real-Time Embedded Systems Forum, Business Architecture Work Group, IT4IT™ Forum, Experience-based Professional Architect Certification program, Governing Board (Customer Representative), FACE® Consortium, and SOSA™ Consortium.
Rolf Siegers is a Technical Fellow, RTX Certified Architect, and The Open Group Master Certified Architect. He leads RTX’s Mission Architecture Program which establishes and enhances software, systems, system of systems, and enterprise architecture expertise across the company.
After receiving the awards, I caught up with Marc Lankhorst and Rolf Siegers, as they shared how they felt about the award, and what it meant to them/ their organizations.
“When we started with the ArchiMate research project, we never imagined that it would become an international standard with thousands of users and supported by dozens of tools. I’m still amazed by this success, and it has been a great experience being part of the team that made this happen, within The Open Group ArchiMate Forum for 15 years now and over 20 years if you count the initial project.”- Marc Lankhorst (Bizzdesign)
Marc Lankhorst receiving the President’s Award from the 2023 recipient (Paul Homan, CTO for Industrial Sector, IBM Services UK & Ireland), in the presence of Steve Nunn.
“It’s a great honor to receive this award on behalf of RTX. This recognition acknowledges our company’s emphasis on the importance of open standards and architecting modular, open systems. It is also attributed to the many employees who have contributed to The Open Group development, evolution, and propagation of open standards. We look forward to continuing our longstanding collaboration with The Open Group, and its global standards community.”– Rolf Siegers (RTX)
Rolf Siegers receiving the President’s Award (on behalf of RTX) from the 2023 recipient (Ian Betts, Shell).
Finally, congratulations to all the nominees for their participation in The Open Group initiatives over the years. We would not be able to accomplish the work we do, or create the standards that are helping to drive the technology industry without working together to achieve our vision of open standards.
Ash Patel – CDMP, Marketing Specialist, joined The Open Group in 2020, initially working in the Certification Team as a Certification Services Agent, before moving into the Marketing Team where he now works on marketing collateral, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and co-hosting The Open Group, Open Comments Podcast. Ash holds a First-Class Bachelor’s Degree in Media Production (BA Hons) from Coventry University and has a background in content writing, copy writing, script writing, photo editing, and video editing. He is based in the UK.
