Day two of the San Francisco Architecture Practitioners Conference
marked the beginning of "The Value of TOGAF™" plenary. This
kicked off with a welcome from Allen Brown, President & CEO, The
Open Group. Following Allen was the first in
a series of spotlights on The Open Group’s various Forums and Work
Groups, moderated by Chris Greenslade of CLARS Limited. First to
be spotlighted was the Business Architecture Work Group where Dave
van Gelder, Global Architect, Capgemini, gave the audience insight
into the latest developments within this Work Group.
Next up was Terence Blevins, Lead Architect, MITRE
Corporation, who delivered the keynote on how TOGAF makes advances
in the enterprise architecture discipline – using a satire of the
popular US game show "Jeopardy" to provide insights into the
world of enterprise architecture with a great dose of humor –
particularly highlighting three "contestants"; i.e., customers
who are desperate for answers, a vendor who truly believes they’re
providing the answer, and people who are working in enterprise
architecture to bring a consolidated view to the practice.
Following this was another spotlight, this time on The Open Group
Architecture Forum that delved into the Forum’s goals and latest news.
This update was led by the Chair of the Architecture Forum, Chris
Forde, in which he discussed the main topics the Architecture Forum
is working on – including key specifications – and what were the most
valuable projects for this Forum in 2007.
A TOGAF end-users panel, moderated by Allen Brown and
comprised of Chris Forde, VP Integrator SDN-T Strategy &
Architecture, American Express, and John Bell, Enterprise Architect,
Marriott International, discussed how organizations are using TOGAF
internally. One lesson learned was that during the buy-in process, it is
imperative to have a lot of conversations with the CTO and CIO in order
gain their support with these programs, but it is also just as
important to include the other key people managing the day-to-day
delivery in the adoption process – the technologists have a deeper level
of understanding of the enterprise architecture concepts. The ability to accept cultural change is also an
important factor to consider when implementing new frameworks. By
including layers of the organization during the adoption process, you
are empowering your organization to participate in this change instead
of resisting it.
A spotlight on the Adaptive Business Solutions Work Group from Allen
Brown followed this end-user panel and showcased the work members of
this Work Group are engaging in – touching on agent technology among
other things, as well as the 2008 goals and objectives.
"Applying TOGAF: Understanding the Framework, Advantages, and
Lessons Learned" was the focus of CGI Partner & Executive
Consultant, Robert Weisman. In this presentation, Robert
delved into the nature of TOGAF, its skills, the framework, architecture
style, and standards – where he commented that no one size fits all
when it comes to TOGAF. IT skills are imperative when implementing
enterprise architecture and TOGAF. "Enterprise Architecture is a team
sport", he commented.
Wrapping up the morning session was another spotlight on the Semantic
Interoperability Work Group, which provided attendees with a better
understanding of Semantic Interoperability and UDEF, by Arnold van Overeem, Certified Global
Architect, Capgemini. Arnold also provided the audience
with an overview of the current Work Group’s projects.
While the morning plenary was focused on the value of TOGAF, a
simultaneous track centering on security was also being offered to
attendees, to further enrich their conference experience. Dave
Edstrom, Technical Director, Chief Technologist Americas Software
Practice at Sun Microsystems kicked off the day’s Security tracks
by educating the audience on the pros of identity management, especially
in a world without fences, among other things. Following Dave's presentation, Eli Lilly’s CISO
& Senior Enterprise Architect,
Adrian Seccombe and Rich Mogull, Principal Analyst at Securosis focused
on security architectures for the future and provided their insights on
how today’s constantly changing technology world impacts security.
Post-lunch the afternoon again provided attendees with diverse
content based on three tracks addressing SOA, TOGAF/SOA Case Studies, and
SOA and Enterprise Architecture. Judith Jones, CEO,
Architecting-the-Enterprise Limited (UK) hosted the TOGAF Case
Studies stream in the afternoon.
After reviewing TOGAF at a high level, Suresh Done, Founder & President of SNA
Technologies (US) shared his first-hand experience
of using "TOGAF in the Automotive Industry" over the past two
years from two customer case studies. Some observations he gained from
these case studies include that TOGAF should be customized to suit the
nature of each company’s business and their culture, implement
enterprise architecture incrementally and don’t over-do architecture, and last, but certainly
not least, consider TOGAF certification and training.
During the TOGAF Case Studies stream, "Formalizing the
Enterprise Architecture Program at
Micron" was the topic presented by Brooklin Gore, Chief
Enterprise Architect at Micron Technology, Inc. This presentation
specifically explored the evolution of enterprise architecture at Micron, including the
Micron enterprise architecture maturity and opportunities; industry examples; Micron’s
enterprise architecture people, processes, and principles and their operating model, including
the alignment with Micron Project Methodology and TOGAF ADM; and Micron
enterprise architecture business implications and next steps. Brooklin used the San Jose,
California based Winchester Mystery House as a classic example of what
happens when people don’t architect an entire system or adopt a master
building pla; i.e., you wouldn’t build your home with stairs going
to the ceiling and windows that open into other walls. He then
posed the question: "So why do we build our IT solutions that
way?" before delving into Micron’s existing enterprise
architecture.
Over in the SOA Track, Andrew Hateley, Senior Technical Staff
Member, IBM (US), provided insight on SOA Governance from various
sources including customer engagements implemented by IBM's SOA
consultants and best practices from The Open Group SOA project. One of
the suggested best practices is to know what you want from SOA, and make
sure you follow your wish list by tracking it in a well-known place.
Within the SOA and Enterprise Architecture stream, James Odell,
Technology Advisor at Oslo Software, conveyed his perspective on
adaptive business solutions for SOA. Among other things, he discussed
applying Coase’s Law to SOA collaboration, and illustrated this with
the example of using a dynamic resource management for collaborative
contract negotiation. James then introduced Brian Cook of the
Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) – an organization
that manages the flow of electric power to approximately 20 million
Texas customers – then showcased ERCOT’s project to move from a zonal to
a nodal market and his impressions of CSI architecture advantages. Mihai
Moldovan, Product Manager at Oslo Software finished up this
presentation by providing his take on the business value of dynamic
business applications – through the use of agent technology – and
how these applications can fit into a service-oriented architecture.
Following his presentation, Andrew Hately put on his moderator
hat and had some fun with the SOA Governance Panel which included
panelists Kyle Gabhart, Director of SOA Technology, Web Age Solutions
(US); Michael Nassar, Enterprise Integration Architect, IBM (US); Stephen Bennett, Americas SOA Practice Lead, BEA
Systems and SOA
Governance Project Co-chair; and Mats Gejnevall, Certified Enterprise
Architect, Capgemini, SOA Working Group Co-chair and SOA Governance
Project Co-chair. The four panelists were competing for a Fairmont
Hotel pen by answering questions related to SOA adoption and success,
SOI (affectionately referred to as Snake Oil Architecture), and SOA
Governance and Standards. This became an interactive experience as they
shared their industry experience and knowledge with the audience about
SOA success stories and what it takes to get the job done. Everyone agreed
it takes collaboration between people to successfully achieve SOA
Governance.
In the IT Architecture Certification (ITAC) stream, James de Raeve, VP
Certification, The Open Group, led an interactive discussion about
"ITAC from the Candidate's Perspective". Panel
participants included Chris Greenslade of
CLARS Limited; Roberto Rivera, Master Solutions Architect & Enterprise
Architect, HP; Andras Szakal, Chief Architect & Certified Software IT
Architect, IBM; and Cristina Woodbridge, IBM Worldwide IT Architect
Profession Leader. After reviewing ITAC levels, members talked about
the importance of certification and the motivations behind getting
certified. An important aspect of certification levels is that not all
skills are about architecture. For example, Level 3 certification is
more about leadership skills and understanding how to work with those
around them at all levels within the organization.
Simultaneously as part of the Migration to SOA stream, Jeff
Walker, Executive VP & CTO at TenFold Software discussed a
low-risk, programming-free legacy to SOA migration strategy. As part of
this he also addressed problems with migration, including how
organizations often lack understanding of legacy data and that legacy
data may be dirty and needs to be cleaned and must also be converted.
Jeff also provided an example of a data conversion architecture
that addresses legacy and import data, among other elements; and
provided suggestions on avoiding common migration problems.
Rainer Gimnich, Executive IT Architect, SOA
Advanced Technologies, IBM Software Group, presented on SOA Migration in Practice:
Methods, Tools, and Projects as part of the Migration to SOA stream. He examined why legacy systems are relevant to SOA
using
examples that there are currently 200 billion lines of COBOL code in
place, with 60% of application software written in COBOL. Rainer also provided his definition of software migration as well as examples
of migrating an existing architecture into an SOA.
Sridhar Sudarsan, Executive IT Architect, IBM closed out the SOA
track with his presentation "Batch Processing Best Practices in Transformation Scenarios". Sridhar shared best practices in SOA transformation scenarios from
his experience with working with customers over the past five years on
batch processing. Some trends included complicated application support
infrastructure and security, over-engineered frameworks, excessive use
of third-party libraries, and platform support staff not having the skills
to argue the case.
