The Fully Credentialed Data Science Professional

For several years the popularity and importance of digital credentials have been growing.  Many professionals, particularly in the Information Technology (IT) industry or organization, have earned dozens.

However, like the people that earn them, digital credentials are not homogeneous.  Some signify completion of education.  Others require passing an exam.  Further examples represent hands on experience delivering value to an organization.

In the context of data science, there are two major types of certifications that carry digital credentials.  These have equivalents in similarly technical professions, such as IT architect.

The first is product certification.  These are awarded by major software and cloud providers (a.k.a. “hyperscalers”) to applicants who demonstrate knowledge of data science or specifically machine learning in the context of that provider’s application(s) or technical stack through passing an exam.  A hiring organization requiring skills within that ecosystem can be confident that the candidate understands the product(s) and terminology with which they would be working and has been educated in the basics of data science and/or machine learning.

These are not to be confused with the second type, which is a platform agnostic, professional certification.  Awarded by The Open Group at three levels – Certified, Master, and Distinguished Data Scientist – these demonstrate not only gaining and maintaining knowledge through education but also the application of skills and a methodology to deliver business outcomes.  Through the earning of one or more of these certifications, a candidate can demonstrate to a potential employer that he or she has real-world experience at a given level, not just technically but also in business acumen and working with team members and stakeholders.

It may be tempting to ask, “which type is more important?”  But that should really be thought of in the same light as picking a favorite child – inappropriate.  Rather, the two types are inherently complementary with minimal overlap but significant combined value.

Consider a realistic but hypothetical scenario.  A data science team has an opening that requires mid-career experience within a specific cloud environment.  The hiring team or manager can very quickly find fully credentialed professionals by looking for a combination of Open Certified Master Data Scientist and the applicable “hyperscaler” data science or machine learning certification.  Not only will the candidates understand the tools with which they will be expected to work, but they will also have demonstrated experience successfully executing a data science methodology and deploying solutions professionally.  Further, the professional could advance to a more senior position and become an Open Certified Distinguished Data Scientist, while maintaining his or her “hyperscaler” certification.

It is worth noting that data science is a team sport and that a well-designed team is not exclusively made up of data scientists but also data analysts, data engineers, and data architects.  This same approach to becoming fully credentialed works for them too.

The major cloud providers have equivalent “hyperscaler” certifications for these roles, some software providers offer application certifications, and The Open Group offers Open Certified Architect (Open CA) and Open Certified Technical Specialist (Open CTS) paths, the latter of which has Business Analysis, Data Engineering, and Data Platform specialties among many others.

Building a team of fully credentialed data science professionals helps to ensure the smooth and proper execution of the chosen methodology within the preferred infrastructure, while also objectively demonstrating organizational excellence to attract incremental talent and/or customers.

Source: opengroup.org

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Sitting Down with John Linford- Security & OTTF Forum Director, The Open Group

Recently we reached out to John Linford, Security & OTTF Forum Director, for The Open Group, to discuss his role, industry advice, updates within his Forum and lots more. Thank you again to John for his time and for giving us an expansive look into his Forum at large. Please see the full interview below:

Please can you tell us how long you have been in your role and what you enjoy most about it?

I joined The Open Group in June 2019, coming from San Jose State University where I taught economics. While teaching, I contributed to creating the Open FAIR ™ Risk Analysis Process Guide, which served as my main introduction to The Open Group. I immediately fell in love with the engaging discussions involved in creating that Guide and working closely with industry experts to do so.

I still enjoy that aspect of my role the most – working with individuals so knowledgeable is incredibly rewarding when we can align on ideas and on how to present them. Getting to that alignment can be challenging, but it is never boring!

What has your journey with The Open Group been like so far?

My journey with The Open Group began with Open FAIR. I learned about the Standards to assist Security Forum Chair Mike Jerbic with a course he was teaching at San Jose State University while I was completing my master’s in economics. This led to my becoming Open FAIR Certified and eventually to me acting as primary author of the Open FAIR Risk Analysis Process Guide.

After a series of conversations with The Open Group President and CEO Steve Nunn, I was fortunate enough to then become Forum Director of both the Security Forum and the OTTF, and I have thoroughly enjoyed helping along the various projects and activities in these Forums.

I had the unusual experience of being in my role for only about 6 months before COVID-19 shut down travel and changed the way we work – just when I thought I had things figured out, I had to completely change my approach.

Are there any new updates within your Forum that you can share?

The Security Forum is working hard on updates to the Open FAIR Certification Program to ensure it aligns with the newest versions of the Open FAIR Standards. We are also making excellent progress on an initial Zero Trust Reference Model Snapshot and are considering “promoting” a couple existing documents to act as the basis for a Certification Program – this idea is in its very early stages, and we welcome input on it.

The Open Trusted Technology Forum is actively working to solicit feedback on the O-TTPS Certification Program from Certified Organizations. We intend to utilize this feedback to improve and/or clarify relevant documents. We are also beginning a collaboration project with the Security Forum to offer guidance on quantitative supply chain risk management, leaning on the

O-TTPS and Open FAIR Body of Knowledge.

Can you tell us about any exciting updates planned within your Forum?

Both the Security Forum and the OTTF are diligently working on updates to their respective certification programs (Open FAIR and O-TTPS, respectively).

The Security Forum is also now working on mapping its existing publications to describe how they work together and to identify where gaps occur. This will allow collaborations with other Work Groups and Forums of The Open Group as we work to fill these gaps and/or rectify divergent thinking. We expect these efforts to fit extremely well with efforts on the Digital Portfolio of Standards and foresee many opportunities for engaging conversations on security topics throughout The Open Group.

What are you most looking forward to for the year ahead?

Outside of seeing the launch of the updated Open FAIR and O-TTPS Certification Programs, returning to traveling and attending industry events has been extremely pleasant –it is hard to believe how much I missed having engaging conversations in person. I am greatly looking forward to attending and presenting at more events.

Is there any advice you can give for those looking to start in the industry?

Learn everything you can and don’t think you know it all – this is not a field that takes a break or slows down. Threat agents are constantly learning and evolving; technologies are constantly changing; and attacks are becoming more sophisticated. Participation in organizations such as The Open Group allows conversations with industry leaders who are keenly and actively following industry trends and changes and can offer unique perspectives on events as they unfold.

If you could give advice to your respective self before starting in your role, what would it be?

Embrace templates and take the time to make and/or revise them as you notice repeat tasks. Creating a detailed Project Charter that is consistent across efforts allows work streams to begin far more efficiently and ensures participants are aligned not only on the project concept but on the goals and methods that will be used for success. Taking a bit more time at the beginning of these efforts results in work occurring far more quickly when it does get going.

Source: opengroup.org

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The Open FAIR™ Body of Knowledge: Gaining Awareness and Adoption Internationally

Open FAIR has seen rapid and extensive adoption in the US, where it has become the defacto standard for quantifying cybersecurity risk. We at The Open Group are encouraged that Open FAIR awareness and adoption are also increasing globally, and we’ve also seen some increased usage outside of the traditional IT risk quantification area. Some interesting recent developments on increased Open FAIR use and adoption outside of the US, and outside of the IT area include:

1- A recent standard published by the Central European Committee for Standardization (CEN), EN 17748-1:2022 Foundational Body of Knowledge for the ICT Profession (ICT BoK) – Part 1: Body of Knowledge, referenced Open FAIR (among other standards of The Open Group) as an informative reference standard for risk analysis. This is an important development, as it brings Open FAIR exposure to the attention of enterprises in Europe as a risk quantification method. CEN is a collaborating standards body with ISO (for the Central Europe area), as is The Open Group (we are PAS submitters to ISO, enabling fast track adoption of Open Group standards by the International Standards Organization). 

2- At the recent Open Group Brazil Security Web Event, we heard several presentations that described the use of Open FAIR in risk quantification, and the presentations were greeted with enthusiasm by the Brazil attendees. One of the presentations was from Modulo, a leading IT-GRC company, and a member of the Security Forum who were kind enough to volunteer efforts to translate the Open FAIR standards into Brazilian Portugese, paving the way for further adoption in Brazil and Portugal. 

3- Among the many people certified to Open FAIR, we now have 29% of the total population from outside the US, which is another sign of interest internationally. The percentage from outside of the US has grown considerably, with many countries with Open FAIR certified people now represented, including significant numbers of certified people from Australia, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy,  Netherlands, Peru, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.

4- Another indicator of international interest is the recent growth of Open FAIR commercial license holders based outside of the US. Here, 48% of the current twenty-five commercial licensees are based outside of the US. This tells us that the commercial interest in Open FAIR is growing for trainers, consultants, and software tool providers outside of the US.

5- Finally, as regards Open FAIR use outside of the traditional IT risk quantification use cases, we’re seeing more adoption and use in Operational Technology areas including for OT risk quantification in critical infrastructure including oil and gas. With the increased regulatory focus on cybersecurity risk, our Security Forum has also recently released a paper/papers on vetting cyber risk models, and the use of the Open FAIR models to calculate reserves for cybersecurity risk. (see: https://publications.opengroup.org/security-library/w221)

The Open Group Security Forum is actively working to update the materials that support and complement the Open FAIR Body of Knowledge, ensuring consistency in the guidance provided. This work includes publishing the Open FAIR Risk Analysis Example Guide in July of 2021, updating the Open FAIR Risk Analysis Process Guide (in progress) to ensure alignment with the standards, and developing a guide on the mathematics implicit in the Open FAIR methodology (in progress), as well as updating the Open FAIR Certification Program materials, such as the Introduction to the Open FAIR Body of Knowledge White Paper (in progress). Additional recent publications include the Calculating Reserves for Cyber Risk White Paper series, which emphasizes the use of Open FAIR in communicating to financial institutions how cyber risk can be quantified in economic terms as well as to calculate reserve requirements.

Source: opengroup.org

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Zira, The Dutch Hospital Reference Architecture, A Tool To Address A Worldwide Need

A Standard Frame of Reference for Hospitals

The purpose of this blog is to introduce one such Dutch healthcare innovation—known as ZiRA—to a broad audience of English-speaking architects. In Dutch, a hospital is a “Ziekenhuis,” thus ZiRA means a “hospital reference architecture (RA).” Specifically, it is a set of interlocking components (templates, models, and downloadable files) that provide architects, managers, and high-level decision-makers tools they can use to a) understand and describe the current state of their hospital and b) transform virtually any aspects of their business to achieve desired states. The ZiRA can help users accomplish necessary, mission-critical objectives, including constantly evolving to provide high-quality health services, to improve patient outcomes, to enhance patient experience, and, generally, to operate efficiently and effectively.

Read More: The Open Group TOGAF 9 Part 2 (OG0-092)

The Power of Public and Private Partnerships

ZiRA is a product of Nictiz, the Dutch competence center for electronic exchange of health and care information. Nictiz is an independent foundation that is funded almost entirely by Holland’s Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sport. For over a decade, Nictiz has encouraged ZiRA adoption by facilitating the establishment of collaboratives such as iHospital, a group composed of and led by key stakeholders from hospitals and related stakeholders across the Netherlands. 

Bringing ZIRA to a Broader Audience

Heretofore, ZiRA has been available in Dutch only. It stands to reason that this fact alone has precluded its broader adoption. Through the efforts of The Open Group Healthcare Forum (HCF) in collaboration with Nictiz and the ZiRA Governance Board, a complete English translation and clarification is underway. As of June 23, 2022, the first of two parts, entitled Hospital Refence Architecture. Understanding and Using the Dutch Ziekenhuis Referentie Architectuur (ZiRA), Part 1 is available at no charge in The Open Group Library here. In the Preface to this White Paper, the HCF discusses how Enterprise Architecture can help hospitals deliver higher value to patients and increase their functional efficiency.

Relating ZiRA to The Open Group Healthcare Enterprise Reference Architecture

The Open Group O-HERA™ standard, an industry standard healthcare reference architecture, provides a high-level conceptual framework that is relevant to all key stakeholders across all healthcare domains. Thus, the O-HERA standard is presented at a higher level of abstraction, whereas ZiRA is tailored to address specific needs and objectives of hospitals. The O-HERA standard makes it possible to create a crosswalk between the principles and objects modeled in ZiRA (primarily focused on the Architecture Model) with a variety of other emerging and possible less mature healthcare reference models worldwide.

10,000 Foot View: Applying Reference Architectures to the Health Enterprise Level

In 2018, The Open Group published the O-HERA Snapshot. This resource provides a cognitive map and conceptual guide that helps healthcare professionals consistently define their enterprise architectures for the benefit of effectively aligning information technology and other resources to solve business problems.

Read More: The Open Group TOGAF 9 Part 1 (OG0-091)

As depicted in Figure 1 below, the O-HERA is based on the conventional “plan-build-run” concepts gainfully employed by many industries for decades. In the “PLAN” phase (or “management model”), the organization focuses on vision, mission, strategy, capability, and transformational outcomes. In the “BUILD” phase (or “management model”), the organization addresses processes, information, applications, and technologies. Finally, the “RUN” phase (consistent with an “operations model”) emphasizes operations, measurement, analysis, and evolution. Security, ever so essential to the effective exchange of healthcare information, pervades the entire model. As demonstrated in the center of the diagram, the O-HERA standard is based on agility, a person-centric focus, and a strong preference for modular solutions.

Figure 1. The Open Group Healthcare Enterprise Reference Architecture – O-HERA™

The Vital Importance of Industry Standards

A notable success factor for ZiRA’s adoption in The Netherlands has been the country’s development and use of standards as a strategic method of ensuring that the best interests of its residents are met. Nictiz plays an active role in contributing to standards development and sharing information about best practices. ZiRA was built, starting about a decade ago, using The Open Group’s ArchiMate® modeling language.

ArchiMate provides the ability to create diagrams or pictures that explain the relationships among concepts and that this, in turn, improves communication and therefore understanding of complex ideas related to the architecture of enterprises, in this case the hospital enterprise.

Effective standards are essential to the establishment of information exchange in healthcare and this, in turn, is necessary to improve healthcare delivery and healthcare outcomes. When each hospital adopts its own preferred terminology and proprietary approach to describing the systems that support clinical care, significant barriers form against efforts to exchange health information effectively. We discuss this issue further at the end of this blog, in the context of a health care interoperability use case.

Without information flow, complex and expensive crosswalks and mapping exercises must be performed simply to correlate such basic yet essential data as individual patient identifiers. Data sharing agreements are equally costly and challenging to implement, as fundamental concepts and terminology must be exhaustively defined to ensure comprehensive mutual understanding between parties. Extensive reliance on such efforts at translation between proprietary systems also tend to be quite brittle and tedious to maintain.

How A Reference Architecture Benefits Communication

When a Hospital Reference Architecture such as ZiRA is adopted, a foundation is established to help hospital enterprises bridge challenges of communication between disparate internal and external systems. Nictiz established the foundation for this common basis of understanding by defining a “Five-Layer Interoperability Model”, as shown in Figure 2. Definition of standard terminology and explicitly related concepts helps advance common understanding within and between hospitals. For example, agreement on the meaning of “Business Functions,” “Services,” “Business Processes,” and “Business Activities,” helps reduce opportunity for ambiguity or misinterpretation.

Figure 2. Nictiz Five-Layer Interoperability Model

ZiRA further expands on the standard concepts expressed by Nictiz in the metamodel displayed in Figure 3. Here we see that reliance on The Open Group ArchiMate® modeling language, an international standard, is a key strategic success factor for ensuring the effectiveness of ZiRA. 

The ZiRA illustrates, with rich context from the healthcare industry, how adoption of The Open Group standards helps assure that a reference architecture is directly consumable by Enterprise Architecture practitioners, not only within the healthcare industry, but across all industry verticals and domains.

Using the same concepts from the ArchiMate standard across hospitals facilitates common understanding and makes it easier to compare differences when, for example when a merger is considered or systems need to collaborate to support care shared along the healthcare continuum.

Figure 3. ZiRA Metamodel

A ZIRA Use Case: Interoperability

ZiRA presents a conceptual and practical framework for undertaking a wide variety of hospital improvement objectives. It provides a common frame of reference and a unified modeling language uslng the ArchiMate standard. It promotes collaboration among participating hospitals via standardization, sharing best practices, and accelerating architecture and agile development processes. Of particular note is the objective to expand the establishment of interoperability in the healthcare chain between and among hospitals, health information networks (HINs), and a host of other providers.

Read More: The Open Group TOGAF 9 Combined Part 1 and Part 2 (OG0-093)

Interoperability, or rather the lack of it, is an international challenge, primarily involving difficulties in establishing data sharing agreements and in resolving data ownership and translation obstacles between and even within healthcare organizations. In the United States, “information blocking” has become such a challenge that legislative mandates such as the US Office of National Coordinator of Health IT’s 21st Century Cures Act have been adopted that require covered entities to support interoperability. Other countries have established similar rules and regulations. In such a climate, a ZiRA success story based on more effective collaboration provides valuable insights that other countries and other health systems might learn from.

Source: opengroup.org

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The IT4IT™ Standard Streamlines Plug-and-Play Adoption of Business Tools

Imagine a technology implementation strategy that works harmoniously for both you as the customer and your suppliers. Whether you’re an Enterprise Architect, Digital Practitioner, Sponsor, or Vendor, it’s not as impossible as it seems when you’re utilizing the IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, a standard of The Open Group and a game-changing foundation for digital systems professionals.

We set out to solve the most common and most costly implementation issues, which include managing a complex landscape of different processes and tools, multi-vendor integration, automation, and end-to-end support.

For tool vendors and suppliers, the solution means enabling a plug-and-play implementation of their tools, driving the ease of adoption of their products, and ultimately increasing revenue opportunities.

For Digital Practitioners and other customers, solutions ensure that new tools can be easily plugged into a multi-vendor end-to-end tool chain in support of specific value streams or even the entire digital product delivery pipeline, improving interoperability across the ecosystem, reducing costs, avoiding outages, and enabling business process automation.

Benefits and Outcomes

Establishing the IT4IT Reference Architecture as the standard that your suppliers must meet removes lengthy discussions of “how” to integrate and makes the on-boarding and off-boarding of suppliers faster, easier, and more cost-effective on both sides.

Enterprise Architects, Digital Practitioners, Sponsors, and Vendors report increased success and satisfaction when collaborating across standardized systems and interfaces that seamlessly share data. Deploying new tools is faster, more automated, and offers better end-to-end system insights and measurements. With improved communication and support between multiple vendors, integration requires less effort and costs less to maintain, allowing vendors the opportunity for increased business.

Also, developing a clear vision of the target tool integration landscape supports both a given value stream and the entire value chain, allowing businesses greater agility when it’s time to adopt new practices and tools, e.g. DevOps, CI/CD, GitOps.

Identifying Key Challenges

Before we could identify solutions, we evaluated specific challenges from multiple stakeholder perspectives finding unanimous dissatisfaction with integration becoming expensive and cumbersome for both customers and suppliers.

Sponsors struggle with agility, unable to easily adapt to changes in business demand. Often redundancies occur across multiple tool vendors causing unnecessary cost increases and significantly reducing ROI. They also lack automated end-to-end flow of information, making it difficult to generate strategic business insight for decision-making.

Enterprise Architects waste time inefficiently integrating data across value streams with overlapping capabilities, with no industry standard common data model, and no ability to automate.

Digital Practitioners are left with unreliable, incompatible, or incomplete data, and are resistant to integrate a new supplier or tool due to the risk, complexity, and expense.

Meanwhile, the vendors seeking to offer solutions are faced with evaluating and rationalizing this messy portfolio of product offerings and are therefore not well equipped to convince a client that they can help enable their success.

Clearly all stakeholders would benefit by moving away from proprietary platforms and siloed solutions for specific processes and functions.

Implementing Solutions

Utilizing the IT4IT standard as a blueprint helps deliver a consolidated, modern, and automation-ready tool chain that accelerates flow, lowers the cost and complexity of digital product delivery, and enables an efficient exchange of data across the tooling landscape.

Customers and Digital Practitioners use the IT4IT standard to analyze and assess the current state of their tooling integration landscape, identifying gaps and overlaps in each tool’s functionality and interface, and enabling them to better understand the most effective ways to evolve their digital strategy with the needs of their business. They can improve transparency, traceability, and broad awareness of the data flows between teams and their tools, such as to existing vendors and tooling, to bottlenecks that need scaling and automation, to self-service/self-healing capability offerings, and for where Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) could be utilized.

Vendors can offer standardized interfaces and data models in their toolsets based on the IT4IT Reference Architecture which provide for more automation and speedier delivery with more consistent, reliable information.

When decision-makers strategically engage with tool vendors that adhere to an industry standard data model, they ensure improved consistency, efficiency, and effectiveness for all stakeholders.

Source: opengroup.org

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The IT4IT™ Reference Architecture is a Digital Product Blueprint for Cost Savings and Automation

How many failed and de-railed technology solution implementations has your company been through? It’s past time to reevaluate your digital transformation strategy. Become the hero of your business by implementing a standardized operational backbone that saves money, automates processes, and reduces the waste and friction in your current technology solutions to keep you moving forward ahead of your competitors efficiently and effectively.

Enterprise Architects, Digital Practitioners, Release Chain Engineers, Release Chain Managers, Digital Product Development Teams, and CIOs may relate to many of today’s most common challenges, such as when moving to the cloud, deploying Agile or DevOps, undergoing a digital transformation, or moving to a product-centric operating model. It may seem inevitable to suffer through the risk and pain of fragmentation, redundancy, insufficient structure, error-prone manual processes, and a general lack of understanding across the value chain. Reaching agility, scalability, and extensibility is possible when rationalization, standardization, and automation are the foundation of your processes.

The IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, a standard of The Open Group, is a game-changing foundation for digital systems professionals. It provides prescriptive guidance to design, source, and manage services across a full range of value chain activities. It’s a blueprint for increasing operational efficiency so that a company can deliver maximum value for the least possible cost with the most predictability. It may sound too good to be true, so we’ll explain how it’s done and why we’re so confident.

The Open Group completed case studies from a cross-section of vertical industries, including Oil and Gas, Finance and Insurance, and the Technology sector, which show how they have used the IT4IT Reference Architecture to add value to their businesses with automation projects, streamlining software and service portfolios, and transforming to more agile, digital working models.

Known Benefits

It’s been said, “an hour of planning can save you ten hours of doing,” but only when you have a proven and effective strategy.

Digital systems teams running on the IT4IT engine reap large rewards in cost savings and automation freeing up valuable resources for continuous innovation. Especially for teams that act as integrators to multiple suppliers, by having an effective “how” discussion at the start, everyone will benefit from removing costly, time-consuming, and error-prone implementations.

With IT4IT usage at the core, CIOs demonstrate that providing a consolidated, modernized, and automated tool chain which accelerates the adoption of digital transformation while reducing costs isn’t a myth. Release Chain Managers efficiently build an integrated set of tools to facilitate digital product delivery. Digital Product Development Teams seamlessly co-create a target architecture with the business. And with all this success, team members experience less stress, more job satisfaction, and are less likely to quit during an implementation which is even more valuable in today’s challenging job market.

Identifying Challenges, Analyzing Data, and Finding Solutions

Reaching this technology Utopia requires taking a hard and honest look at your current processes and systems. You might find a surprising lack of understanding of the tooling landscape, hidden potential issue areas, poor training plans for demonstrating how digital product tools are integrated with other tools, redundant capabilities, and the potential for these cost-draining issues to occur again and again as your business evolves. What Enterprise Architects, Digital Practitioners, Release Chain Engineers, Release Chain Managers, Digital Product Development Teams, and CIOs have in common is their need to demonstrate that there is effective control of the investment, in both time and money, including the ability to bring in or retire tools with little disruption.

Reliable solutions begin by using the IT4IT Standard. The multi-step process begins with rationalization by creating a structured inventory of your current tools and plotting them against their capabilities and functional components. This includes components such as the application type, estimated costs, user base, value stream and capability map, and scoring the strategic fit, value, risk, and customer satisfaction. Refer to our full case study for a value stream and capability mapping example.

The initial analysis will highlight your business’ key challenges and gaps. Often the most critical find is in multiple tools supporting the same capability which has a direct negative impact on cost and complexity. Whether redundant or not, you may also identify capabilities that are poorly supported either due to their custom-built structure or the number of manual activities required, such as in testing and deployment. Existing tools may also lack the integrations required for data flows between the data objects they host. These findings are extremely common, and many are solvable.

Once analyzed, your business will create a vision of the target tool chain based on a new target technology operating model. This starts by identifying your digital technology management strategy and vision and identifying key gaps that need addressing, including where DevOps may enable improvements in productivity and effectiveness. You’ll explore how you might enable the building blocks for innovation, agility, scalability, and extensibility, deliver self-service, and leverage new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). In the process, you’ll identify existing strategic tools and vendors and opportunities for rationalizing or simplifying your tooling landscape. The result is more integrated and automated processes and support systems which accelerate the flow of work and create transparency and traceability across value streams.

Long-term Outcomes

Businesses worldwide of all sizes and industries using the IT4IT standard report that the benefits are ongoing during and after implementation. The most common long-term benefits include improved support of agile and digital transformation, improved efficiency, and improved effectiveness. Costs are reduced through fewer manual activities, removal of redundancies, and a higher degree of collaboration and information exchange. The insight gained during this process through data transparency will make your business more competitive by ensuring easier adoption of new practices and tools as your business evolves.

Experience the benefits for yourself. If you are an Enterprise Architect, Digital Practitioner, Release Chain Engineer, Release Chain Manager, a CIO, or a member of a Digital Product Development Team, contact us today to learn how tool rationalization and standardization through the IT4IT Reference Architecture can support the building and implementation of your winning strategy.

Source: opengroup.org

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Why Enterprise Architecture as a Subject is a “Must-Have” Now More Than Ever Before?

A master’s in business administration helps students understand business dynamics better. I believe having the ability to see business as a wholesome thing is paramount in today’s era. There is a dire need for students to apply the lens of Enterprise Architect and break the silos approach to enable students to see the business as a single unit. It is pivotal to understand that enterprise doesn’t run in silos the way the subjects during our MBA might make us think. For an enterprise to run efficiently and effectively, it needs to run collaboratively, i.e., all the fundamental constituents of an enterprise need to make progress in tandem.

Read More: Open Group Certification

“An enterprise is only as strong as the weakest link.”

Let’s take an analogy of the human body. For a human body to run efficiently, it needs an intention and goal, and it requires food as fuel, sleep as refreshment and a family as a support system.

Similarly, an enterprise needs strategic vision, business alignment to that vision, applications to execute the business strategy, data to act as fuel to propel growth and technology as the underlying support to get the enterprise running at all times. When we can see phases – Business, Application, Data and Technology as a connected whole, the administration of the business is bound to succeed. Enterprise Architecture ties these phases as a single navigable unit. Hence this subject is a fantastic opportunity for MBA graduates to connect the learnings of various subjects and apply them to get the enterprise engine moving.

MBA students often appreciate and enjoy drilling down on subjects and going deep in the subject of choice. And there is nothing wrong with this because it is the essence of mastery. However, I believe there is an urgency to zoom out and see the panoramic view of enterprise to augment the deep dive. The ability to see an enterprise as a connected unit would open new frontier and emerging business models. In addition, the zoom-out view would help future architects know how various components play their part in running an enterprise effectively. With EA as a subject, students would be able to see the big picture, connect technology to business priorities and help visualize an integrated view across business units (BUs).

Enterprise architecture as a subject and knowledge of reference architecture like IT4ITTM would help EA aspirants appreciate tools for managing a digital enterprise. As students, we know that various organizations are undergoing digital transformation. But hardly do we understand where to start the journey or how to go about the digital transformation if we are left on our own. Knowledge of the TOGAF® Architecture Development Method (ADM) would be a fantastic starting point to answer the abovementioned question. The as-is assessment followed by to-be assessment (or vice versa depending on context) across business, data, application and technology could be a practical starting point. The phase “Opportunities and Solutions” would help get a roadmap of several initiatives an enterprise can choose for its digital transformation.

Enterprise Architecture as a subject in b-school would cut across various subjects and help students with a holistic view. For instance, in a business analytics course, student learns statistical modelling and make data-driven business decisions. Now with Enterprise Architecture as a subject, they will start to appreciate thoughts like:

◉ Maturity of analytics capability within the enterprise

◉ Importance of single source of truth in a multi-application environment

◉ Importance of maintaining a data catalog with all the data elements and creating matrices like application-data matrix

◉ Technology to support the business analytics application – Is it in the cloud, etc.?

The benefits of having Enterprise Architecture as a “must-have” subject are many. I am confident that MBA Graduates with the ability to see enterprise as a collective unit would benefit their organizations navigate through the changing business requirements. And while they are driving this navigation, they would be skilful with the know-how of executing changes to respond quickly enough to the changing reality of business. Hence, EA as a subject will help MBA graduates grow their enterprise in a sustainable and resilient way.

Source: opengroup.org

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Architectural Data will Guide the 2020s

What technical and financial analytics should CIOs and decision makers expect from Enterprise Architects in 2022?

Enterprises are in the middle of an application explosion and a transformation acceleration.

Looking just at the application landscape: industry surveys tell us that the average enterprise is using 1,295 cloud services, and also runs around 500 custom applications. The worldwide enterprise applications market reached $241 billion last year, growing 4.1% year-over-year in 2020, according to IDC. 

The underpinning architectures of enterprises– made up of interactions between people, processes and technology, and often also physical assets (IoT) – are also growing and changing at pace.  

Enterprise Architects keep CIOs and business units informed using IT cost calculations and technical and lifecycle metrics.

They will often present costs and technical metrics for the current IT landscape, plus forecasts to inform planning for new business scenarios and digital transformation projects.

Common analysis in past years might have covered:

◉ Counts of applications

◉ Total cost of ownership of applications (also ROI and NPV)

◉ Which processes rely on a particular software or infrastructure (dependency analysis)

◉ How long technology is going to be supported, and when the enterprise needs to transition or upgrade

This basic data is useful but might still leave decision makers wanting additional analysis or tighter granularity.

Business units want to understand how much updated processes or applications will lead to improved technical metrics (uptime, responsiveness) or improvements to processes which are important for successful customer journeys.

Enterprise Architecture Data Analysis in 2022

Data-driven enterprise architecture can now provide greater detail and certainty around forecasts. Architects and business users need to design calculation which roll up data numerically across the architecture, generating required KPIs on-demand.

For the data scientists and numerate business analysts, steps such as Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Min, Max, Average and Count are standard. In addition, operations such as Power, Log and Atan can be used to calculate trends, probabilities, attribute values and measure or predict impacts of business decisions.

As well as diagrams and roadmaps, EAs often need to be ready to provide reporting dashboards which include:

Technology Cost Analysis:

◉ On-demand totals of how much out-of-date technologies are costing the business

◉ Total cost of a specific Business Capability or Process – using the connections and relationships in the architecture to attribute portions of costs accurately

◉ More precise cost-of-ownership (e.g., calculating software, support or external services costs according to business function) Costs of underlying infrastructure or resources used. EAs can calculate the total cost of ownership of out-of-date technologies (available as a pre-built cost simulation in tools such as ABACUS from Avolution)

◉ Cloud migration costs

◉ Technical debt metrics such as remediation cost, complexity, cost of compliance

Lifecycles & Trends in Metrics

◉ Cost of risks and vulnerabilities associated to applications and technologies

◉ Technology and vendor lifecycle information summaries e.g., Number of years to retirement of a technology

◉ Application portfolio assessments: calculate and chart business fit and technical fit of applications and technologies. E.g., Are our applications using approved technologies, and are these technologies currently being supported by the vendor? (The base data for this analysis can be pulled in from sources such as Technopedia)

◉ Technical KPIs including Response Time, Availability, Reliability, Resource Utilizations

◉ Trends in metrics such as rate of growth in costs, or rate of increase in Availability or Reliability

◉ Machine-learning based predictions: E.g., Use lists of applications, lifecycles, financial data and other architectural content. For instance, the machine learning engine in ABACUS from Avolution provides a quantitative prediction of the values which belong in any empty cells. An ‘empty cell’ for an application, machine learning will propose a TIME (Tolerate-Invest-Migrate-Eliminate) recommendation, which the architects can choose to accept, for a more complete dataset.

Adding KPIs to Diagram-based Enterprise Architecture

◉ Comparison of future vs current state. Architects can dashboard side-by-side comparisons of information or technical architecture designs plus related catalogs and use these and  related metrics to monitor transformation projects

◉ Risks associated with specific processes (security ratings and risk ratings can be rolled up from technologies and applications to the processes they support)

◉ Comparing tasks by mapping tasks or processes to capabilities. For instance, as part of a consolidation during a merger or acquisition, architects can calculate costs or technical KPIs on processes to determine efficiency of the two versions of the process.

◉ Dependency analysis of a process: using diagrams and Graph Views to see connections e.g. to highlight where a process is dependent on outdated technology.

◉ Show systems, interfaces and APIs as part of process diagrams

Analysis by Architects on data from APIs

Architects can also present data pulled in from CMBDs or other company data sources (via API queries) as stakeholder dashboards. Charts and interactive visuals are often clearer and easier to explain than lists of data.

◉ Architects can use tools such as Postman to run queries on APIs

◉ Common API integrations include Technopedia a range of CMDBs, and VMware products

We’re in the foothills of a golden age of architectural analysis. Businesses understand their external environment and run their sales functions with data from business intelligence tools and modern sales platforms. They are applying the same quantitative approach to their internal enterprises, a joined-up universe of data on people, processes and technologies.

Source: opengroup.org

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The Open Group Open Footprint™ Forum Global Event Highlights Blog

The Open Group Open Footprint™ Forum (OFP) held its first virtual event, June 23-24, 2021. It brought together experts from across the globe to introduce and demonstrate the work that has gone into the Forum since it launched in August 2020. Speakers, from a plethora of industry leading organizations such as Accenture, AWS, Deloitte, ERM, IBM, Infosys, Shell, WBCSD, and Wipro hosted sessions outlining the mission of the Open Footprint Forum, explanations of the Open Footprint Data Platform, as well as live demonstrations of the Platform to show its applicability to all industries.

The Open Group Open Footprint Forum was kicked off by Heidi Karlsson, Director, OFP at The Open Group and Johan Krebbers, VP IT Innovation and GM Emerging Digital Technologies for Shell. Both Heidi and Johan provided an overview and introduction to the Forum, it’s mission and the work that is already taking place. The aim is to create an industry standard (and Open Source-based) data platform where emissions data of each company can be saved using these same industry standards.

Open Footprint Deliverables

Sammy Lakshmanan, Global Managing Partner, Digital Services, ERM, & Co-Chair of the Open Footprint Forum provided a brief walkthrough of the key deliverables and projects currently underway within OFP. Sammy highlighted the OFP Data Platform as a consistent way of exchanging, processing, and storing emissions-related data, aligned with reporting standards and frameworks that enable data to be accessible.

Sammy also showed a template for organizations looking to apply the OFP solution, ranging from data entry, to reporting, to integration that was further explained in a later session.

The final deliverable of the OFP Platform is the user interface/reporting. To store, view, and report the emissions-related data, including those that are shared across boundaries. There was more to come on this in the live demonstration sessions later on.

In the last session before the break, Gommaar van Strien, Shell, took us through the Open Footprint Data Platform, its goals, platform development, and plans for the future. When outlining the benefits of the OFP Platform, Gommaar said “Emissions/Factors/Models are auditable, data is searchable, and exchange data is in a standard format.”

This session was concluded with a roadmap and plans for the future. It was clear to see a lot of work has been put into the Platform but there is still a lot more work to be done, especially within the next 9 months.

After the break, Anna Stanley, Manager at The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), showed us the objectives of the WBCSD and what can be the links between WBCSD and the Open Footprint Platform. Anna began discussing The Carbon Transparency Partnership. Greater value chain emissions transparency through the exchange of verified, product specific primary emissions data to unlock and enable multiple, high value use cases for industry players, regulators, and governing bodies.

To summarize Anna’s session, she ended by saying “We’ve been working with the Open Footprint Forum for a long time now, and I’m really pleased that it’s one of the first initiatives to join us in creating Scope 3 emissions transparency.”

Up next we had an interesting session from Sumouli Bhattacharjee, ERM. This session focused on Green House Gas (GHG) & Reporting. To quote Sumouli on the direction GHG reporting is heading, “What is a gamechanger is the pressure from customers and suppliers.”

During this session, Sumouli highlighted what OFP can do to assist in the reporting of Greenhouse Gases. The Open Footprint Forum has engaged with some of the biggest industrial, technology, and sustainability organizations to put together a template of solutions which can be adopted across industries, supply chain, locations, and standards. OFP is focusing on standardization and accessibility of sustainability data to create an open ecosystem for exchanging data between organizations and across supply chain. Samouli said “OFP is collaborating with standards and framework organizations to facilitate consistent disclosure across multiple standards.”

Wednesday’s session continued with Sourabh Roy, Digital Strategist, Infosys Limited, for his presentation on Open Footprint™ Reference Architecture, data entry, and reporting. Sourabh outlined the Reference Architecture principles. The Open Footprint Platform is based on open-source, vendor-neutral components (in-line with the principles of The Open Group). Open Footprint Architecture leverages OSDU™ Data Platform Architecture. Some of the key principles for the Reference Architecture are Open-Source, Interoperability, Scalability, and the need to be Cloud-native.

Sourabh later broke down the Open Footprint Data Platform Architecture.

After the final break of the day, Johan Krebbers, Shell lead us through the Open Footprint Platform Strategy. This included the high-level direction, targets for the Forum, as well as showing the roadmap and plans for the future. Johan mentioned the need for agility in the platform, “Our main concern is the flexibility of the data platform. We need to be ready.”

To round up the first day of the Open Footprint Event, Luca Venturini, Accenture had an interesting presentation on Developments in the Market of Greenhouse Gas and Related Activities. This presentation acted as a timeline showcasing the trends in ETS or carbon Tax Coverage in the last 30 years. Luca explained that the energy transition is a long-term structural change in the global energy system from fossil fuels to net-zero carbon. This multi-faceted problem is driving companies to target holistic emissions reduction – from core operations to indirect customer and supply chain impacts.

Day 2

The second day of The Open Footprint Event began with an interesting session on the developments in the market of Greenhouse Gas and related activities. The presentation from Jacques Buith & Femke Perlot-Hoogeveen, Deloitte Consulting, LLP showcased the journey to becoming sustainable and impact driven. “A purpose-driven route in line with the global goals will embed sustainability in the DNA of organizations.” Before rounding up their presentation, both speakers left us with something to think about. “We’re in the decade of action. We’ve done the exploring, we need to start doing sustainability now.”

Key highlights of the event were the sessions from Sonia Van Ballaert, Ph.D. IBM Global Client Director Shell and Lizz Dennett & Merlyn Gregory of Amazon Web Services (AWS). These sessions covered both IBM and AWS Open Footprint™ plans.

Sonia van Ballaert, IBM, ran us through the new OREN platform from IBM and Shell, and how OFP will underpin transparent GHG reporting. “When we talk about carbon footprint, the mining industry has a huge footprint and we need to tackle it.”

Lizz Dennett & Merlyn Gregory, AWS in their presentation mentioned that “Sustainability is really just a data problem at its core”. They demonstrated the keys to success for optimizing operations: 1) leadership buy-in 2) get sustainability and IT in the same conversations 3) select an achievable, measurable pilot 4) provide training & support 5) set deadlines.

After the break, speakers William Fox and Javier Espinoza, Data Gumbo, demonstrated the OFP calculation engine design. In this session they showcased various scenarios of interest, the implications of each scenario and the pros & cons. Having showed the calculation engine design, they then went on to show live demonstrations with engine examples and business rule examples.

Heidi Karlsson, The Open Group Open Footprint Forum Director showcased opportunities for new and existing members. Heidi highlighted the need for collaboration in the future and the benefits of being involved in OFP. From opportunities for leadership, to receiving contribution and recognition rewards, there are a number of ways anyone can get involved in the Forums activities.

Next up, a host of industry experts took us through the Open Footprint demo of reference implementation. The key takeaway from this session was the live demonstration of “A day in the life of… a bed”. Sammy Lakshmanan, ERM, Bhupinder Singh Chawla, Infosys & Geert-Willem Haasjes, IBM, took the audience through the footprint journey of a bed. From production to a report from a customer success manager. The speakers finished the demonstration with a view of what’s to come.

Open Footprint Platform and what is expected by various industries

After the live demonstration, Ravindra Balija, Wipro showed attendees a summary of standards in industries that have been looked at and how OFP can be applied to these industries. In this session Ravindra demonstrated the level of reporting within the airline industry, shipping and airports environment. Among the key takeaways we learned that there are no common standards for storing and managing emissions data. Something that the Open Footprint™ Forum aims to rectify.

Source: opengroup.org

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Agile Enterprise Solution Architecture

Enterprise Architecture (EA) as an enterprise planning framework has its place and merits, yet it often falls short of real-world IT expectations. The traditional EA approach defines the to-be state architecture that may exist for a while but does not last long. In most cases, an enterprise architect starts from existing architecture and makes improvements. Such improvements are constantly needed as complex systems EA guides and expects are subject to constant changes. In practice, an enterprise architect is either engaged in strategic planning (including business modeling) or solution-oriented architecture. Most of the routine work of enterprise architects, in fact, involves crafting application or technical architecture. Therefore, what really matters in the IT world is an Enterprise Solution Architecture (ESA) that inter-mingles EA with Solution Architecture (SA) and provides holistic yet pragmatic modeling to enterprise information systems, along with an incremental and iterative approach for agility.

Agile Enterprise Solution Architecture mainly covers five areas: 1) enterprise capability (enterprise-wide organizational considerations of strategic planning, business context, and relevancy), 2) requirement/case scenario (business process and functionality required for enterprise IT systems), 3) architecture overview (including traceable business measurements, architecture patterns, and architectural metrics such as principle, risk, architecture decision, etc.), 4) IT functional service (relationship/interaction, granularity, etc.), and 5) IT infrastructure (operational aspect).

Within this architecture, all high-level statements (business initiative, process, and the like) need to be clearly mapped into ESA elements before they can become part of the architecture. Importantly, the IT service serves as a liaison between the enterprise blueprint and solution architecture. Its focus is on different levels of service interaction, service offer, and service system. At the functional level, for example, IT services can be categorized as interaction service, application logic service, data service and technical service.

Agile ESA helps clarify enterprise-level issues and key stakeholders’ major concerns (or the architecturally significant concerns) by forming critical architectural thinking blocks, especially those in between enterprise strategies and capabilities, business domains and applications, and applications and technologies. For this purpose, it:

◉ Maps inputs from all stakeholders including implicit requirements or objectives

◉ Introduces key architectural metrics to reach realistic architecture decisions

◉ Employs techniques for service abstraction, service interface, and service realization

◉ Incorporates an analysis process for architectural modeling assurance and governance

◉ Advocates just enough architecture and significant architecture of value streams

◉ Instills T-shaped IT expertise via a modeling framework to balance the enterprise capabilities and IT service modeling at the right level of abstraction and correlate between different architectural aspects (business and IT, application and technical, functional and operational, logical and physical)

As a modeling framework, Agile Enterprise Solution Architecture targets the following objectives:

1. Simplified: Eliminate unnecessary complexities in a traditional enterprise architecture, and simplify various architectures into a core model for easy learning and wider adoption

2. Panoramic: Take a holistic approach to trace back and forth key architectural elements (business, technical, and alike), and make enterprise architecture readily applicable and pragmatic

3. IT Service-oriented: Focus on enterprise capabilities and IT services (the primary elements), strike a proper balance between enterprise architecture’s strict definitions and solution architecture’s granular details, resulting in IT service architecture delivery (rather than traditional roadmap, business entity, product, or component)

4. Adaptable: Apply to various architectural styles (enterprise or solution, emergent or intentional, cloud-native or monolithic, software or system-scale, business or application) for ready customization and extension, and architect for changes to meet enterprise growth

Source: opengroup.org

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How to Use Microservices: A Guide for Enterprise Architects

Many organizations have started to break up a portion of their monolith applications and systems, transitioning to sets of smaller, interconnected microservices.

A recent survey by TechRepublic, found that organizations who used microservices were reaping clear benefits: 69% were experiencing faster deployment of services, 61% had greater flexibility to respond to changing conditions, and 56% benefited more from rapidly scaling up new features into large applications.

But when are microservice architectures the best option? When can they offer the most value to an enterprise? And how do they fit in the enterprise architect’s toolbox?

The Benefits of Microservices

Consider a car production assembly line, where task specialization has been introduced to manufacture each part. Individual tasks become more efficient due to dedicated resources, operations, and labor. These newly generated efficiencies drive greater productivity and output, benefiting the overall process. 

Similarly, in microservices, or microservice architectures, separate modules are responsible for building and maintaining different components of the end-product. Individual units can be modified and scaled without disrupting the other parts. In contrast, implementing changes to a single, large “monolith” module, can be difficult to manage and can quickly become complicated.

Microservice vs. Monolith Architectures

The O’Reilly Microservices Adoption in 2020 report found that “77% of respondents have adopted microservices, with 92% experiencing success with microservices.” 

While the advantages of microservice architectures are plentiful, there are also tradeoffs to consider when comparing to monoliths.

In short, microservices still need to be “architected”:

◉ Communication between separate services is more complex. As large applications can contain dozens of services, managing the interactions between modules securely can add extra challenges.

◉ While microservices allow for different programming languages to be used, the deployment and service discovery process is more complicated. A broader knowledge is needed to understand an application’s full scope.

◉ More services equal more resources. For the car manufacturing example above, each task station requires individual tools, workers, and processes. Likewise, a single service may call for a dedicated database, server, and APIs.

How and when to Migrate a Monolith to a Microservices Architecture

When deciding if a microservice architecture is the right option, enterprise architects need to consider their organization’s goals and concerns.

As it’s uncommon for new architectures to be built from the ground up, a migration from one state to another is the most likely scenario. This transition begs the questions: What does the current architecture allow? What does it limit? What are we trying to achieve?  

Sam Newman, author of Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems, suggests starting with Domain-driven design or DDD. This modeling exercise enables an organization to “figure out what is happening inside the monolith and to determine the units of work from a business-domain point of view”.

Considerations when Building a Microservice Architecture

Once an enterprise architecture practice has settled on migrating from one architecture to another, the team can ensure the process is heading in the right direction by:

◉ Determining the level of modelling detail;

◉ Deciding on the applied properties, and;

◉ Setting appropriate KPIs.

Microservices (Integration layer) dashboard in ABACUS

As different microservice platforms have different approaches to service classification, classifying an organization’s microservices should be a key priority.

One commonly used approach is to categorize services across the 3-layers of: Experiences, Processes and Systems. The diagram below illustrates this approach, using 3 layers of integration components for business services/events.

Microservices Modeling in ABACUS using an Extended metamodel for Integration Services in 3 layers: Experience, Process, and Systems

The Process of Mapping Microservices

It’s straightforward to model microservice architecture. The following 7 steps can help to inform your modeling process:

1. Adapt the metamodel to support microservices. ABACUS provides a number of architectural patterns which can be used to update your current framework for this purpose.

2. Populate the microservices portfolio to enhance the production architecture of the microservices layer. Use the data you have already uploaded or integrated with ABACUS.

3. Add properties and values to further develop the architecture

4. Create views such as Microservices Portfolio, Microservices Solution View, Microservices Dependency Views, etc.

Layered Microservices Modelling using Application Services and Application Interface in ABACUS

Microservices Modelling using “Publisher – Broker – Subscriber” Pattern in ABACUS

◉ Establish the relationship between microservices based on data flow and services orchestration.

◉ Design and implement analytics such as microservices cost, complexity, and availability.

◉ Develop a reporting dashboard and assess integration scenarios (see above example Microservices (Integration layer) dashboard).

Source: opengroup.org

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