Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference
April 21-23 2008, Glasgow, Scotland

Highlights of Day Three

The final day of the plenary was kicked off by opening remarks from Allen Brown, President & CEO, The Open Group, following the previous evening’s reception at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum.

Josh Street, Technology Strategist, Bank of America, kicked off the plenary session, themed "Leveraging SOA in Enterprise Architecture", with his presentation "Legacy SOA – Bringing SOA into the Real World". Josh discussed project challenges that organizations face when implementing SOA. Key to a successful implementation, he said, is establishing the problem you want to solve, such as agility or simplification. Architects also need to determine what they are managing and measuring for in order to show progress and dollar value to executives. Additionally, architects must understand the business – which is different than the strategy – before implementing the technology, because SOA is really about understanding the business in order to make it more agile. Finally, Josh provided recommendations on setting standards for implementation and creating a governance body.

Next, Chris Howard, VP & Service Director, Executive Advisory Program, Burton Group, delivered his presentation "Fighting SOA Fatigue". Reaching SOA maturity is happening more slowly than anyone thought. Chris discussed some of the challenges in the space: myriad vendor messages, along with challenges within the technical, design, project, and management realms. There are also real risks, such as unaddressed cultural problems leading to SOA silos and the fact that business is used to not being engaged with IT. Enterprise architecture, however, when used correctly, is outcome-oriented and makes good design easier. Thus, enterprise architecture provides fit and context for SOA projects. Chris cautioned against overemphasis on SOA in isolation, which distracts from enterprise goals and business relevance. SOA fatigue is real, so what we really need to do is to raise the level of conversation higher.

The final individual presentation, "Operationalizing SOA", was given by Tony Carrato, Worldwide Chief Operations Architect, SOA Advanced Technology, IBM. Tony focused on the deployment and management phases of SOA projects – most discussions to date have been about the front end, he said, but now we actually have to run and support them. He encouraged the audience to think about SOA in operation, because end users care more about running systems than they do about architectures, development approaches, etc. Architects should start the dialog early with the operations team, and then, when designing systems, consider the operational concerns within the context of architectural issues. The SOA Working Group and others in The Open Group are researching these topics, and he encouraged the audience to get involved.

The plenary ended with a panel Q&A moderated by Dr. Chris Harding, Forum Director, The Open Group (UK), and featuring the morning’s speakers: Josh Street, Chris Howard, and Tony Carrato. After starting with an informal poll of the audience, the panel answered questions covering a range of SOA issues. Topics discussed included project momentum; the need for proper governance; managing failures and analyzing successes; how SOA is going to evolve; and the importance of semantics – what things are called – in SOA projects. The panelists also touched on the cultural differences that SOA projects introduce and encouraged attendees to focus on the business capabilities and simply executing the project.

In the afternoon Professional Development Track, Sarina Viljoen, Real IRM, South Africa led a presentation "Case Study: EA a Key Enabler for Information Flow in the Organization". Sarina employed a case study of a telecommunications service provider to illustrate enterprise architecture’s role in enabling information flow.

Over in the SOA Track, Dr. Chris Harding, The Open Group (UK), led a report from the SOA and EA Workshop, held the previous morning.

Wayne Horkan, CTO for the UK & Ireland, Sun Microsystems (UK), added to the Professional Development Track with three case studies of enterprise architecture based on his own experiences that outlined best practices and lessons learned.

In the Business Architecture Track, Peter Fellows, Deputy CTO, CGI Northern Europe (UK), and Nick Coleman, CTO, CGI ISMC presented on "Responding to Business Innovation, Growth, and Retrenchment in the UK Mortgage Industry". Peter and Nick gave an overview of business architectures in the mortgage business, both the capital markets model and the savings and loans model. They then examined the ways in which IT architectures can respond to pressure for growth, channel innovation, and retrenchment. In the case study they presented, the architectural vision was important, but a flexible architectural roadmap that safely delivered business value mattered much more.

E.G. Nadhan, Distinguished SE & Lead Technologist, Global Strategic Capability Management, EDS, led a presentation in the SOA Track called "Key Attributes of a Service-based Architecture Lifecycle and Governance Model". He presented on how an architecture lifecycle and governance model can provide an enterprise’s ability to benefit from well-formed, service-based architectures. He also outlined a model for the development and management of all architectures in the overall lifecycle.

Following that, Jerome Bugnet, Enterprise Architect, BEA Systems (UK), presented on "SOA Governance: Three Practical Steps to Tackle the Thorniest Aspect of SOA". Jerome showcased a proven approach to implementing an SOA governance that is pragmatic, accessible, and linked to business benefits.

The Professional Development Track continued with two presentations about real-world experiences setting up an Association of Open Group Enterprise Architects (AOGEA) Chapter; one in Toronto, the other in Ottawa. Jason Uppal, Chief Architect Master Certified IT Architect, QRS, and Bob Weisman, Partner & Executive Consultant, and Enterprise Architecture Practice Leader, CGI led the respective sessions.

Pieter van Kampen, EMEA Enterprise Architecture Lead, Hewlett Packard (Netherlands), led a Business Architecture Track: "The Role of Business Enterprise Architecture in HP’s Own Transformation". Pieter's talk highlighted how HP has implemented and adapted the concepts and frameworks from the book "Enterprise Architecture as Strategy", which is based on research from MIT.

Wrapping up the SOA Track was an SOA Governance panel moderated by Robert Laird, IBM (UK). Panel participants were Clive Gee, Executive Architect, IBM; E.G. Nadhan, Distinguished SE & Lead Technologist, Global Strategic Capability Management, EDS; and Jerome Bugnet, Enterprise Architect, BEA Systems (UK).