The Open Group hosted its latest event in the Scottsdale Plaza Hotel, Arizona, January 28 – 31, welcoming over 600 attendees including decision-makers, Enterprise Architects, engineers, technologists and end-users representing many businesses and governments. The theme was ‘Digital in Practice and the Supply Chain’, with a focus on the standards, architectures, and business frameworks that support and enable the transition to a modern Digital Enterprise.
For many of us, each new year is an occasion to look back at the previous year’s accomplishments, as well as look forward to what’s to come over the course of the next year. For the past three years since I took over the reins as CEO of The Open Group, I’ve made it a tradition to take advantage of the new year to do just this, as I’m sure many of you do both in your professional and personal lives.
With the passing of each year, I’m always struck not only by how quickly it goes by, but how many new opportunities arise throughout the year for The Open Group that none of us ever could have predicted. What’s nice for me, from where I sit, is that there is no shortage of new opportunities for us as an organization to do what we’ve always done—to help organizations come together to solve their business problems through open standards.
In the past four years, the acceptance and uptake of Enterprise Architecture as an integrated and holistic approach to better citizen services and Digital Transformation in the Government and the public sector has been notable and significant.
Last month, Digital India had a significant milestone. The India Enterprise Architecture Framework, aptly called IndEA, was formally notified by the Government of India as a national standard. Needless to mention, for me the journey from development to notification has been challenging and extremely fulfilling at the same time, both at a professional and personal level. Ever since the success of ePragati in Andhra Pradesh, many Ministries, States, Departments, and other public sector entities have shown growing interest in enterprise architecture. The elevation and notification of IndEA as a national standard is absolutely a move in the right direction to accentuate and accelerate such activities.
When I think of an “executable standard”, I think of a standard that is capable of being fulfilled (i.e. a standard that can readily impact real world things, whether those things are people, processes, or technology). Regardless of what I think, it isn’t easy to define an executable standard – however I think the following will help everyone understand the essence of an executable standard.
In April 2018, I had the privilege of attending The Open Group conference in London with the theme: The TOGAF® Standard in 2018. After seven years, we see the release of the latest version TOGAF Standard 9.2. As a member of the English translation team for the TOGAF Standard Version 9.1, I have learned the difference in the new version and had a lot of thoughts. On the one hand, many improvements in the new version are highly consistent with the knowledge and practical experience of the Aviation Industry Group in the field of architecture method. On the other hand, the active development and continuous improvement of the knowledge system reflect that the architecture method has huge demands and driving force at the practice level. There is still a big gap between Chinese and international applications in this respect. This article attempts to understand and share this updated version from the perspective of application. In addition, I hope that Chinese practitioners can get inspiration and confidence from these changes.
A number of new Business Architecture methods are being built into the TOGAF® framework to better allow companies to address value stream and business capability mapping. At The Open Group London event in April, J. Bryan Lail, Business Architect Fellow with Raytheon, discussed how Raytheon is using Business Architecture as part of its overall Enterprise Architecture to create a new Sales and Operations Planning method for all the company’s various products and divisions.
