Open Group 2012 – Cannes, France: Day One Highlights

April 23, 2012 | ,

Four members of the SFI team have landed in Cannes, and day one was a hit!

Highlights of Monday’s morning sessions included:

  • The traditional warm welcome from Allen Brown, Open Group President & CEO (with whom we chatted informally during dinner Sunday evening at the brasserie).
  • Business Models, IT and Enterprise Transformation presented by Alex Osterwalder.
  • EA and Transformation: An Enterprise Issue, A New Role for the CIO? – complete with an interesting and complex case study – presented by Eric Boulay and Hervé Gouezel.
  • Why We Can’t Agree on What We Mean by EA presented by the always thoughtful Leonard Fehskens.
  • Jes McPhee spoke of the Role of EA in Enterprise Transformations.

We discussed the sessions over a beautiful lunch from the rooftop Panorama of the JW Marriott. The team enjoyed spectacular views of the Mediterranean and mingled with fellow attendees.

 

Espresso, Riviera style!

Espresso, Riviera style!

After lunch we sat in on:

  • Are We Ready for Cloud Semantic Interoperability? presented by ZapThink’s Jason Bloomberg. (Hint: We’re not.)
  • Business Process Centered Business Transformation presented by Microsoft’s Krishanaswamy Srinivasan

Some takeaways from Monday’s sessions:

  • Messrs. Boulay and Gouezel proposed that a longtime primary IT goal of reducing IT budget is “an old question to ask.” The new question is: “What is my value?” Delivering value is the key to gaining trust and, by extension, gaining a seat at the table to discuss strategy and transformation. Alternatively… if, for example, you deliver a time-sensitive project late but under budget, you’ve failed to deliver value. And failing to deliver value erodes trust and future opportunities.
  • Jes McPhee echoed a similar sentiment when he said that showing value early “buys you the right” to work on “the next piece.”
  • Len Fehskens put forth a thought-provoking analysis of why enterprise architects still can’t agree on what EA actually is. There is much more to the presentation, but this point stood out: In the process of delivering, architects take on (or are asked to perform) many additional tasks that are beneficial to the project. Often these tasks are only very loosely related to architecture. The value of an enterprise architect thus becomes diluted, and the EA role itself becomes considerably broader and more complex than it should be.

We’re heading to the networking reception now… stay tuned this week for more updates!

P.S. Keep an eye on @systemsflow and @theopengroup for tweets!

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John Driscoll
is a Senior Consultant with Systems Flow, Inc. Over his 12-year career in the Information Technology field, John has consulted for numerous clients as a Technical Consultant for Hewlett-Packard, and also in both financial and other industries in the U.S.and abroad. John has an MBA with an emphasis in Information Technology from Northern Arizona University, and and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Rhode Island.


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