The Enterprise Architecture Practitioners' Conferences are organized by enterprise architecture practitioners, for enterprise architecture practitioners, and for those
directly involved in the management and oversight of enterprise
architecture.
The Enterprise Architecture Practitioners' Conference at Austin
addressed some of the key issues and challenges that face Enterprise
Architects today. In this highly practical three-day conference and series
of workshops, members of The Open Group and non-members alike came together to share insights and perspectives on
best practices in enterprise architecture, and the key issues and challenges that
enterprise architects face
today.
The conference underlined the continuing role of The Open Group in providing a
truly global forum in which Enterprise Architects from all sectors of the industry can come
together to discuss best practice in Enterprise Architecture, hone their skills,
find new ways to solve problems, share experiences, and learn from each other.
Summary
The agenda for this Enterprise Architecture Practitioners' Conference covered
85 individual presentations, structured into a plenary plus 16 streams across up to 4 parallel
tracks.
The event provided a wealth of current case study and tutorial material,
summarized below.
The presentations referenced below are freely available only to
members of The Open Group and conference attendees.
Day 1 – Opening Plenary: Architecting Your Service-Oriented Enterprise
The conference plenary focused on the critical criteria for SOA
implementation and development. It clarified the business principle of
service-orientation, and detailed the business benefits through case
studies of SOA implementations. It outlined methods and frameworks for the
effective implementation of SOA, and furthered the industry's
understanding of how to deploy SOA to meet the particular business needs
of individual enterprises.
The plenary featured a number of important presentations covering case
studies of Enterprise Architecture driving enterprise transformation:
Welcome Following opening remarks from Allen Brown, President & CEO, The Open Group, Alisha Ring, President,
Austin Technology
Council, gave everyone a warm welcome to Austin and provided an
overview of her organization’s role in supporting the region’s
technology leadership and innovation. The council is a member-driven
association of business and organization executive leaders, working
together to promote the growth and success of Austin's technology
sector.
SOA and Enterprise Architecture … Working
Together David Linthicum, CEO, Linthicum Group, delivered a
keynote address about the relationship between SOA and enterprise
architecture. He kicked off his address with a rather
controversial yet undisputed observation: “There seem to be two
worlds out there, the world of enterprise architecture and the world
of SOA. The funny thing is that those in each world thinks that they
can do the other world’s jobs.” Dave went on to predict that in
five years SOA won’t exist outside the context of enterprise
architecture and offered several cases for why this convergence was
inevitable. For more highlights on Dave’s address, check out his
Real World SOA Blog.
The SOA Foundation: A Framework for Delivering
Business
Value Rob High Jr., SOA Foundation Chief Architect, IBM Distinguished
Engineer, followed with a presentation entitled “The SOA
Foundation; A Framework for Delivering Business Value”. He explained
that SOA has moved beyond a technology initiative to something that is
fundamentally about creating an alignment between business and IT. He went on to describe the SOA Foundation, industry-wide motivations
for standardizing the key elements of that framework, and some of the
strategic business and technology issues that are likely to evolve
within it.
SOA and Outsourcing Joe R. Hill, EDS Fellow, EDS, discussed SOA and
Outsourcing. Joe shared EDS’ view of the logical components that
comprise an enterprise SOA, including point solutions, BPM, portals,
and composite applications; and concluded with an overview of the core
intellectual capital assets for an SOA outsourcer to understand,
spanning business domain SOA solution components and accelerated
client on-boarding.
AOGEA Update Allen Brown, President & CEO, The Open Group, gave an
update on the Association of Open Group Enterprise Architects (AOGEA).
The AOGEA has recruited nearly 1,200 members since launching last
January, and over 100 people recently volunteered to participate in
the new Ethics Workgroup. Sridhar Sudarsan, Chair of the Austin AOGEA
Chapter, encouraged enterprise architects from the central Texas area
to join.
A Future-Proof Architecture for Composite Application Development
on an SOA Ross Altman, CTO of SOA and Business Integration, Sun
Microsystems, Inc., then presented on the architecture requirements for
composite application development within an SOA environment. Ross
argued that a major enterprise will almost never be able to implement
a complete SOA architecture based on a single product. To the
contrary, most enterprises will end up with a challenging mixture of
SOA middleware and development tools that don’t work seamlessly
together. The only way to avoid the major drawbacks to this scenario,
according to Ross Altman, is to focus on the most relevant standards.
Adaptive and Collaborative
SOA: Some Case Studies James Odell, Consultant, OSLO Software, Mihai Moldovan,
Product Manager, OSLO Software, and Andy Mulholland, Global CTO,
Capgemini, collaborated to give several case studies on adaptive
and collaborative SOA in action. Through these real-world scenarios,
all presenters illustrated how agent technologies, in particular, have
provided value to major accounts across several different vertical
industries.
The Emerging Role of the Enterprise Architect Allen Brown, President & CEO, The Open Group, delivered
a presentation on the evolving role of the enterprise architect. He shared his rationale for why the enterprise architect has
emerged as such an important profession, and explained why
certification programs based on open standards, like TOGAF and ITAC,
are critical to the future advancement of the field. He also discussed
the importance of the AOGEA as a professional oversight body to ensure
a standard set of professional ethics and code of conduct for the
enterprise architect.
Building an SOA to Power the Smart Grid Andres E. Carvallo, Chief Information Officer, Austin Energy, gave
the first of three presentations on the theme of "SOA in the
Energy Industry". In it he reviewed the SOA transformation that
he has been leading at Austin Energy over the past four years. He
revealed the steps his team took to build the nation's first smart
grid as well as the business and IT needs that drove the project
The Value of Service Oriented Architecture – Chevron Upstream
Prospective Douglas Darner, Enterprise Architect, Chevron, provided
an overview of the value associated with adopting SOA as a key element
of the Chevron Upstream Foundation Program. His presentation also
highlighted the evolution of SOA at Chevron, the founding principles
of the company’s implementation, as well as their core challenges.
SOA Governance – A Practical Approach Hans Eric Klumpen, Program Manager, Schlumberger Information
Solutions, gave the final presentation on the theme of "SOA
in the Energy Industry". Heoutlined the process steps for
analyzing the current state of IT systems and defining the right
services for driving business value. According to Hans, the
process includes Service Identification, Service Definitions, Service
Specification, and Implementation/Deployment.
SOA – Why it is Important to Deutsche Bank Abhijit Gupta, Chief Enterprise Architect for Personal &
Corporate Banking IT & Operations, Deutsche Bank, made the
case for SOA at Deutsche Bank. According to Abhijit, for IT to
continue to be partners in performance to the business, the bank
needed to focus on consistency and flexibility to support speed to
market, industrialization, and entry into new markets.
The Future of SOA – Media Panel A media panel of well-known industry analysts, trade press, and
other experts discussed and dissected current SOA-related trends and
gave their predictions on the future of SOA. The panel, moderated by Dana
Gardner, President & Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions,
included return appearances by Eric Knorr, Executive Editor at
Large, InfoWorld, and Tony Baer, Principal Analyst,
onStrategies, in addition to Beth Gold-Bernstein, Vice
President of Strategic Products and Services, ebizQ, and Todd
Biske, Principal Enterprise Architect, MomentumSI. Questions
examined by the panel included: “Will SOA be consumed by enterprise
architecture within the next five years?” “How will SOA affect the
dynamics of IT as well as the business?” “What will happen around
SOA standardization?”
Closing Address Karla Norsworthy, Vice President, Software Standards, IBM, delivered
the closing address on the role of open standards within the context
of SOA and Web 2.0. She boiled down the core value of standards as
enabling greater choice, flexibility, speed, agility, and ultimately
skills. These remarks were obviously well received by a
record-breaking number of attendees.
The conference streams at Austin provided experience-based insight into the approaches and
methods that have proved most effective for developing architectures around the
world.
The various conference streams delivered innovative viewpoints,
practical insights, and case study presentations by a diverse range of EA
professionals from both vendor and customer organizations.
These streams took a highly practical, hands-on approach, combining presentations and
discussions on best practices with interactive workshops, case study reviews, and
demonstrations of the latest tools.
STREAM #1: SOA and Enterprise Architecture
Host: Alex Heublein, Distinguished Technologist, HP
Some Experiences with SOA Testing Tony Carrato, Lead Architect for Asia-Pacific, SOA Advanced
Technology, IBM Software Group and Chuck Shriver, Test Architect, SOA Advanced Technology, IBM Software
Group
The presentations, tutorials, and workshops at the meeting, and the associated
discussions and panel sessions, all provided participants with a wealth of
experience-based insight into current best practice in enterprise
architecture, from leading
experts and practitioners around the world.
Participants at this unique event were able to:
Participate in highly practical workshops and tutorials teaching best
enterprise architecture practices
Review case studies from organizations who have put theory into practice, and learn from
them what works and what doesn't
See demonstrations and presentations on leading tools supporting open architecture
methods
Network with leading architecture experts, vendors, and peers in the
enterprise architecture field
Next Steps
This Fifteenth Enterprise Architecture Practitioners' Conference was a
great success, confirming the global need for this unique series of
events.
The next Enterprise Architecture Practitioners' Conference will be
held in Budapest,
Hungary, October 22-24 in association with The Open Group Member
Meetings, October 22-26.
If you are interested in presenting at Budapest, or at other Enterprise Architecture
Practitioners' Conferences, then pleasecontact John
Spencer, APC Manager at The Open Group.
