The Open Group Conference, Munich
20th Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference

Highlights of the Plenary, Day 2
(Tuesday October 21)

Allen Brown opened this morning’s proceedings by conducting a few survey questions on how attendees have been using enterprise architecture within their organizations. According to one question asked, 43% of those attending the morning plenary reported that they are currently using enterprise architecture solutions that have been developed internally for their architectures.

An Enterprise Architecture Survey was conducted by The Open Group following each session. The results are available here.

The first plenary session of Day Two was presented by Joel Goodling, Group Enterprise Architect for ABB, Switzerland. Joel’s presentation addressed the issue of "Adapting TOGAF for a Globally Distributed Enterprise". Joel outlined the processes that ABB went though in adopting TOGAF across a global enterprise consisting of five disparate company divisions, 100,000 people across 108 countries, and an IT staff of 5000 that managed 500 separate ERP systems with 70 different brands. Because ABB’s systems were so distributed, there was a significant business need for more homogeneity throughout the company, particularly when it came to finance and HR structures. The company was not mature in an architectural sense, nor did it have a strategic focus when it came to the overall architecture of the enterprise. Before settling on TOGAF as its architecture of choice, ABB tried a Goldilocks approach, first trying a "too heavy" architectural approach advocated by Accenture, then a "too light" internal approach. When tasked with finding a happy, "just right" medium between the two, they chose TOGAF because it provided a framework that would provide commonality of communication, simplify internal complexities, introduce structure, manage change, and promote agility within ABB. Using TOGAF as a framework, ABB was able to adapt the ADM to its own environment to bring more cohesion to the company’s diverse structure, use the enterprise architecture governance framework, and provide an overarching vision for their project.

Our second plenary presentation was given by Raghu Padmanabhan, Director, Enterprise Architecture, Cisco UK. Entitled "The Network: Enabling Next-Generation Enterprise Architecture", this presentation addressed a fundamental issue that Raghu says is often overlooked when doing enterprise architecture: the network. According to Raghu, considering the network when looking forward will help prepare enterprises for future agility. Networks need to be considered both for how they need to be adapted for current issues within the enterprise, as well as for how to best position companies for the long haul. The network should actually be considered as a way of thinking, he says, because it is such an integral part of how the enterprise functions. Nevertheless, surveys conducted by Forrester Research have found that infrastructure lags as a priority in many organizations and network performance is a top concern for 67% of companies the firm surveyed. Raghu argued that the network is a good place to begin architecture frameworks because it is the only common, single element that enables and connects all the components of the IT structure. He posited that a services-oriented network architecture, or SONA as Cisco calls it, can be used as an execution architecture to leverage enterprise architecture applications for business outcomes while considering the network as an integral part of the framework for enterprise architecture because it can tie together both network and communications services into any enterprise architecture framework.

Next up was Dr. Verena Schmidtmann, Senior Consultant, Detecon International GmBH, Germany. Verena presented a case study on how her consultancy used enterprise architecture at Deutsche Telekom entitled "Using TOGAF at Deutsche Telekom to Consolidate a CRM Landscape". Verena said that Detcon’s work with Deutsche Telekom was a good example of how to introduce enterprise architecture management into organizations for a number of reasons. First, their project focused on the business problem itself rather than on enterprise architecture. In fact, in doing the project, despite the fact that the project used enterprise architecture methods, they never actually used the term "EA" when working with the client. Tasked with a CRM implementation for 50,000 users throughout Germany, the challenge for Deutsche Telekom and Detecon was to increase customer satisfaction and create a more uniform experience for customers when working with the contact center. The end goal of the project was to have a corporate-wide integrated CRM system that was responsive to personalized campaigns and that would employ capability-driven collaboration. Detecon chose TOGAF as the basis for their project because they could adapt it to customer needs from the preliminary phases through the migration phase of the project. TOGAF allowed them to created a business vision, common language, project landscape, target states, and a roadmap for their project that fit their specific needs and could be adapted to specific needs, such as creating a company-specific financial model. Resulting benefits for the project included creating a defined toolset for both the architecture and for management, and mutual understanding throughout the enterprise that enabled them to implement the roadmap they created.

Ron Tolido, CTO Continental Europe & Asia Pacific at Capgemini led the keynote and final morning plenary session, "A Compelling Case for Open Business Analysis". Starting with a Tower of Babel metaphor, Ron said that just like Business Analysis (BA), "Babel" begins with "BA" and therefore business analysis also starts with the need for a common language in places where there is no longer any unification. According to Ron, BA can serve as the bridge between IT and business, and expertise in analysis of business processes can be an integral part of IT functionality. Citing Forrester, he said that two types of business analysts are emerging: those that are business-oriented analysts and those that are IT-oriented business analysts. What is needed are business analysts that are cross-functional and that can bridge the gap between the two disciplines. BA is important because of the global scale of most enterprises, the increasing dependence of business on technology, and because it is a way to help achieve boundaryless information flow within companies. Currently, Capgemini has developed an internal methodology called SEMBA for business analysis, and The Open Group BA Work Group is investigating the connection between business analysis and Business Architecture. What is needed now is a better understanding of how BA fits with systems development and business implementation, as well as the development of modeling standards and best practices if BA is to become more legitimized.

The afternoon sessions included tracks themed around the following topics: EA & Business Standards, Extending EA to the Enterprise, and Secure Architectures.

In the Extending EA to the Enterprise track, discussion centered around the topics of changing how architecture is thought about and how to apply it to enterprises. Walter Stahlecker, Open Group Fellow from Germany gave a presentation entitled "Quest to Apply ‘Architecture’ Holistically". Walter discussed various "types" of architecture that can be practiced, including building, landscape, naval, planning, and IT. He also mentioned that the term can be used to refer to a concept, a profession, and even a document. Architects ultimately help enterprises to focus on the essential, and enterprise architecture can be seen as the union of all architecture models. Walter said that TOGAF has now been optimized for architects to have a total view of the enterprise from the inside of the organization. This view often includes a number of differing architectures, due to the differing concerns within organizations. Within the BA Working Group, they are currently working on ways to use a more holistic view of all of these differing architectures and concerns. Discussions following the session centered on definitions of what architecture is, as well as how to define the scope of what architecture is, and the issue of learning how to satisfy the majority of stakeholders involved.

During the second stream of the EA & Business Standards track, Joseph Francis, Executive Director, Supply Chain Council presented on the topic of "From Business Strategy to IT Architecture: The SCOR Reference Process". The SCOR process is a framework for supply chain management. According to Joseph, between 60 and 90% of the costs associated with running the Fortune 10 companies are associated with the supply chain. Because the supply chain is such a large cost center, it behooves IT to focus on it because it encompasses the majority of the infrastructure that architects must manage. Companies using SCOR have seen significant changes and improvements throughout their businesses. Since supply chains tend to be both complex and tied to very specific processes and end products, most companies have hundreds or thousands of separate supply chains throughout their organizations, each of which may have their own IT architecture. Because the SCOR process begins with defining business strategies for a project and then the work and material and information flows, it can serve as a helpful way for architects to prioritize business goals for projects and also map out systems that are used within the business. Ultimately, using SCOR processes can be very helpful in integrating strategic business process management with IT architectures and management.

In the Secure Architectures track, Jeremy Wilde, Managing Director, ITGRC in the UK spoke about the issue of "Business Process Management: The Future of Security Management & Compliance". Jeremy advocated using Business Performance Management (BPM) as a process for security management and compliance because it is one area where security managers can add value to the design of business processes. This is due to the fact that security management has increasingly become associated with short-term needs for governance, risk, and compliance (GRC). Although BPM has been around for quite some time and many businesses may want to focus on performance, BPM has not been widely adopted in part due to immediate needs for compliance. By applying BPM to security and compliance management, a number of benefits can be realized, including risk management workflows, policy mapping, modeling of risks and controls, automation of controls, and analysis of control effectiveness. BPM can also be used with web architectures for deploying secure business processes that have built-in compliance and security measures.