Archive for September, 2005

From Down Under, RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) is offering a complete Master of Enterprise Architecture, a high-level IT postgraduate by coursework program, specifically designed for ICT professionals who wish to advance their career to the role of Enterprise Architect within an organisation. That’s a great initiative!

Looking at the description, however, it occurs to me that there is very much technology and too little business in the curriculum.

My two EA Masters courses (at ITU and Copenhagen Business School) serve as individual “EA-infusions” in various masters programmes: Master in eBusiness, Master in Software Development, and Master in Business Administration and Computer Science. A number of students choose to continue after the course to create their own “Master of Enterprise Architecture” within one of the major programmes, by making individual projects under my supervision.

One of the discussions I often get into is about whether you can train an enterprise architect, or whether it’s a discipline of practicians. My view on this is simple: Of course you can train people in enterprise architecture, and even young (and bright) students can learn a lot. That doesn’t necessarily make them practising enterprise architects, however. You can also take a master in rocket-science, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you get to build NASAs new rockets right away. I think there is a need for EA training at all levels, from students to CEOs and politicians.

The professionals can choose the Open Group IT Architect Certification Program or some of the other Enterprise Architecture Certification schemes, if certification is what’s needed.

Continued-

Don’t miss Charles Nesson’s comments:

Key is its definition of openness to include “defensive suspension”. This is the term to pick apart in order to deeply understand. This is where the rubber meets the road for one in possession of power in the form of legal right considering whether to contribute it to a community of trust. Hesitant holders of intellectual property claim need of Defensive Suspension to assure them that they won’t get fucked.

I strongly recommend sitting in on Charles’ lecture from the roadmap launch. He has some good comments about the boundary between open and closed; he says that a completely open space is like a desert, while a completely closed is like a prison. The challenge is the movement towards a balanced space.

I’m not a lawyer, but to me the principle of defensive suspension is not an unreasonable requirement. But as it says in IETF RFC3669 (Guidelines for Working Groups on Intellectual Property Issues):

Words such as “reasonable”, “fair”, and “non-discriminatory” have no objective legal or financial definition. The actual licensing terms can vary tremendously. Also, IPR claimants have occasionally asserted that there were already sufficient licenses for a particular technology to meet “reasonable” multisource and competitiveness requirements and, hence, that refusing to grant any licenses to new applicants was both fair and non-discriminatory. The best way to find out what an IPR claimant really means by those terms is to ask, explicitly.

Ask. Explicitly. OK.

So I ask IBM and Microsoft: What’s that with WS-Security implementation issues? Wouldn’t it be better if WS-Security was an OASIS GOLD standard? (is it?) Enlighten us!

More blog commentary on the roadmap: Harold Jarche, TeleRead.
French: Data News: Vers le standard ouvert

I wish I’d been in Washington today, to attend the lauch of our new
Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems. I’m proud having been involved in creating this second roadmap aimed at government leaders and others about government use of IT. This new roadmap introduces the wonderful term openization, and is all about open IT ecosystems, open standards, open source, and open government.

As a member of the Open ePolicy Group, I’d like to thank Jeff Kaplan and staff at The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, IBM Corporation and Oracle for supporting this important work.

New York Times reports about the roadmap: “Plan by 13 Nations Urges Open Technology Standards” (via Bob Sutor and other IBMers). Also International Herald Tribune, Computerworld, Public CIO, Infoworld, Red Herring, and more reports. And yes, it was also Slashdotted.

Danish ComputerWorld reports this as a “a global Danish outcry for open standards”.

For the Danish context, I need to make one thing clear, and that is that the Roadmap is not an official Danish outcry. The report clearly states that “All members of the Open ePolicy Group participated in their individual capacity. The ROADMAP FOR OPEN ICT ECOSYSTEMS does not necessarily represent the official views of any government, corporation or institution with which members might be associated.” Hence, I participate in the Open ePolicy Group as myself, not as a Danish government official. And since I’m soon no longer a Danish government official, I can’t speak for the Danish government.

Personally, I agree to everything the roadmap says. Again, the central keyword is openization, a concept I think we invented at the workshop in Redwood City. Openness is not a matter of either-or, 0 or 1, yes or no. It’s a process, where ecosystems, technologies and standards become more and more open.

Update: The launch event at the World Bank, Evolving to Open ICT Ecosystems, is now available online. See the video.

More references:
- Earth Times: Adopt open-information technologies, international experts tell nations
- Corante: 13-Nation Army for Open Standards
- Consortiuminfo.org Standards Blog: Standards Numerology:The Magic Number is 13