A key role for the Customer and Supplier Councils is to facilitate effective cross-Forum and
Forum-Governor communication, understanding, and support. Councils jointly host
Board-Forums liaison BoFs to provide an opportunity for Forum Chairs
and their Forum Directors to meet with Governing Board members in order
to:
- Hear from Forum Chairs who have met with the Board during previous
conferences about the outcomes of implementing actions they previously agreed with the Board
- Review and discuss improvement points
- Enable Forum Chairs and Board members to raise issues and share perceptions and
ideas
Secretary to the Councils Ian Dobson (The Open Group) chaired this
BoF (see slides).
Feedback from the SOA WG
Tony Carrato, SOA WG Chair, presented a status report on the SOA WG
(see slides). His presentation covered
the mission of the WG, its officers and current participation, its
initial program of work and its operating processes, its completed
projects and plans for future work, including a summary of its
perceived value-add in the SOA space. Further slides presented
highlights on current project work. More information is available at www.opengroup.org/projects/soa.
Ben Calloni (Lockheed Martin) questioned the multiple definitions
that exist for what SOA is - why does The Open Group SOA WG believe its
definition is better than all the others? Tony and Chris Greenslade
replied that the SOA WG believes its definition is right for the SOA
WG's purposes so they intend to run with it, and The Open Grouop needs to promote
this definition as the right one. Andras Szakal (IBM) felt that only
time will tell which definition will emerge as the winner. Skip Slone
(Lockheed Martin) supported Ben's concern, noting that the real concern
here is that many of the existing definitions differ markedly in their
definitions of services, and services are a critical part of SOA.
Feedback from the UDEF Forum
Ron Schuldt, UDEF Forum Chair, presented a status report on the UDEF
Forum (see slides). Ron summarized the
background to formation and launch of the UDEF Forum, explained the
basic problem, the intended solution, and the tasks undertaken to
achieve it. He briefly covered the derivation process for UDEF Names and
IDs, and recent progress. The UDEF solution is now delivered, leaving
the essential remaining tasks:
- To maintain the UDEF. This primarily involves adding extensions
as applied for by the user constituency.
- To train people in its use. The learning curve is not steep, but
training is needed. A tutorial is being developed to meet this
need.
- To market the UDEF solution as widely as possible in order to
achieve wide adoption and so realize the optimum value it offers.
Ron considers the name UDEF needs to be "socialized" to
make the product sound more functional and so attract the right
levels of attention among the user community.
Business Architecture WG
Allen Brown (President & CEO of The Open Group) explained that a
WG of the Governing Board is developing a definition of business architecture. This has particular relevance to TOGAF9 Terminology Project members (combined TOGAF/ITAC activity),
so it will be helpful to receive members' feedback when they are ready
with their proposals. Judith Jones (Architecting the Enterprise) noted
that it will be valuable to know more about this so it can be included
in the TOGAF9 development program.
Members' Issues and Discussion
This agenda item is an opportunity for Board Members and Forum/WG members to raise any issues and questions
common to cross-Form/WG interests that they wish to share. None were
raised in this meeting.
