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

The Open Group Forms Professional Association for Enterprise Architects

“A CIO building a team in today’s complex IT environment must identify enterprise architects whose experience meets an accepted set of professional standards,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst, ZapThink. “When hiring accountants or lawyers, businesses can be assured of their credentials. The formation of The Association will ultimately provide CIOs worldwide with the same level confidence when hiring enterprise architects.”

Read more at: Open Group Press Release

Center Launched To Find Scarce SOA Talent

Analyst firm ZapThink and staffing company Excel Partner on Wednesday launched a consulting service to help companies find IT professionals experienced at building service-oriented architectures.

The lack of IT architects familiar with building SOAs is the biggest hurdle to adoption of the emerging form of distributed computing that leverages Web services standards. The use of SOAs is growing because they offer a more flexible, robust and cheaper method of application integration than older technologies.

“If something is not done, then the SOA market is going to slow and plateau,” ZapThink analyst Ronald Schmelzer said.

To help address the problem, ZapThink and Excel have started the Architect Resource Center, which is available online to help companies find potential architect candidates, and experts on staffing and SOAs. To help identify qualified candidates, ZapThink plans to launch, at the end of the month, a program that provides credentialing for IT workers proficient in SOAs and related technologies.

ZapThink and Excel are not the only firms addressing the staffing problem in the SOA market. The Open Group, an industry consortium focused on standards-based integration, is expected to announce a program Monday addressing the SOA staff shortage. The announcement is expected at the group’s Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference in San Diego. A spokesman declined to provide details.

Schmelzer expects to see more organizations this year announce similar programs. “It’s part of a trend we’re going to start seeing this year,” he said. “There’s going to be more talk about the people issues of SOAs, and less about the technology issues.”

Read more at: TechWeb