San Francisco Conference observations: Enterprise transformation, enterprise architecture, SOA and a splash of cloud computing

Jason Bloomberg described Representational State Transfer (REST), which many now see as a key foundational principle for cloud architecture.

ZapThink to speak on Architecting RESTful Clouds at Open Group Conference San Francisco

It’s a common misconception that the Cloud is nothing more than a virtual server in the sky

What Will it Take for Enterprise Architecture to become a Profession?

EAs can’t…greater professionalism than the Medieval barber.

Open Group releases SOA adoption and governance standards

Jason Bloomberg, managing partner at analysis firm ZapThink, added, “The Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model was in large part contributed by IBM and includes some IBM-centric content, but The Open Group has done a good job evolving it to be a useful, vendor-neutral tool for helping organizations measure their architectural maturity.”

Many SOA maturity models come from software vendors and are little more than software sales tools, said Bloomberg. “ZapThink has found the ones from consulting organizations to be better aligned with enterprise needs.”

Read more at: SD Times

Understanding the Value of Reference Architectures

There’s nothing more that architects love to do than argue about definitions. If you ever find yourself with idle time in a room of architects, try asking for a definition of “Service” or “architecture” and see what sort of creative melee you can start. That being said, definitions are indeed …

IBM, Sun Microsystems, Intel, Cisco, Prepare for Enterprise Architecture Event

New keynote presenters, panel discussions and expert case studies including David Linthicum, managing partner for ZapThink, will return to deliver the opening keynote address at the conference, to be held January 28-30, 2008 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. In addition, the plenary sessions will include end user panels and case studies featuring American Express, HSBC and Marriott International.

Read more at: Open Group Release

The Open Group Announces Additional Presenters at Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference San Francisco

The Open Group has announced the plenary session lineups for each of the conference’s three days, focusing on service oriented architecture (SOA), The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) and skills- and experience-based certification. Following on the heels of the successful SOA panel at the Austin Conference, the “SOA Reality Check” Power Panel will feature InfoWorld.com Editor in Chief Eric Knorr; OnStrategies Principal Analyst Tony Baer; and Evans Data Corporation Lead Analyst and ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick. In addition, David Linthicum will join the discussion following his opening keynote address. The plenary sessions will also feature senior IT leaders and enterprise architects from global organizations such as IBM, QR Systems and MITRE Corporation, among others.

Read more at: Fox Business news

David S. Linthicum: Reference Models and Architectures

Those who implement SOA have become a bit confused about the notions of SOA reference models and SOA reference architectures. Moreover, there is confusion about how they work with the more traditional concept of enterprise architecture, including all of the management and development disciplines behind EA.

So, if you’re confused, you’re not alone. There are many definitions for the concepts of SOA reference models and SOA reference architectures that are now being defined by guys like me (my models are correct, as always), standards organizations such as OASIS and the Open Group, and vendors such as IBM, Oracle, BEA and TIBCO. Sometimes they align; most of the time they do not.

Read more at: SD Times

ZapForum Podcast: Live at the Open Group! (Part I)

In this first of a two-part podcast Series, ZapThink analyst Ronald Schmelzer podcasts live from the Open Group event in San Diego, CA on January 29, 2007 to cover the announcement of the Open Group’s Association of Open Group Enterprise Architects (AOGEA) as well as understand the future of EA, SOA, and the Open Group efforts.

In this first episode, Schmelzer interviews the following key Open Group individuals:

• Allen Brown, President and CEO, The
  Open Group

• Interview with Andras Szakal, Distinguished
  Engineer and Chief Architect, IBM Federal Software Group (still awaiting
  confirmation)

• Interview with Jason Uppal, Chief Architect, QRS
  (founding member of first AOGEA chapter)

In the next episode, Schmelzer roams the conference to interview attendees and vendor exhibitors as to their EA, SOA, and Open Group efforts.

Help wanted: qualified SOA architects

While applauding the Open Group program, Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, said more education is needed or SOA may be doomed by sheer lack of knowledge among the people trying to implement it.

“The real thing that’s holding SOA back is the lack of architectural experience,” the analyst said. “Something has to be done. If this gap isn’t filled I think the entire movement to service-oriented architecture could basically fail.”

Miko Matsumura, vice president of SOA marketing for webMethods Inc., echoed this concern in an interview last week with SearchWebServices where he said “the shortage of qualified visionary architects” would be one of the hot button issues facing the SOA world in 2007.

Schmelzer said what the Open Group is initiating will help address the problem of “paper architects,” which he identified as people who manage to get “architect” printed on their business cards, but aren’t really qualified to design SOA projects. This contrasts with the fact that no one can legally put CPA on their business card without have a certified public accountant license, which means they have passed tests and met other standard qualifications.

“Why is it with IT you can have completely untrained, unqualified, unlicensed, unskilled people controlling the organization for how a bank does financial transactions online?” the analyst asked.

The new Open Group association is designed to provide knowledge transfer among members as well as bar association type status, Schmelzer said. Knowledge transfer is hard to come by, he said, because unlike brick-and-mortar Frank Lloyd Wright-type architects, who attend schools of architecture at universities, computer science departments are not turning out classes of architects.

“If you major in computer science you either learn how to develop applications or how computers work,” he said. “But you don’t learn how to design complex systems, which is what architecture really is.”

The resulting lack of training and experience means that there are a dearth of qualified architects for SOA projects, Schmelzer said. ZapThink recently partnered with an executive recruiting firm to help identify qualified architects that organizations might hire to design their SOA implementations.

“Nobody knows where to find these people,” he said. “We only have 20 or 30 on our list. It’s not like there’s hundreds.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices