TED talks

Something a bit off-topic this time. Do you know TED talks? TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It is a small non-profit organisation that started in 1984 organising yearly conferences around the globe.

On their website TED.com, they publish videos of the best talks and performances from TED and partners for free. More than 450 TEDTalks are now available, with more added each week. The videos can be viewed on the website, but also downloaded as podcast.

Since more than a year I download the videos on my iPod and view them when I have some time to spare. Most talks are about 15 minutes in length. The talks are always inspiring, brought by inspiring people, mostly unknown, but occasionally well known people like Bill Gates, Al Gore and Bill Clinton perform as well.

Highly recommended, not only for your own education and awareness, but also to learn how to give a good talk to an audience! Some of the most inspiring videos are this and definately this. Just to get you started...

Measuring Enterprise Architecture Maturity

Capability Maturity Models (CMMs) are used to measure the maturity of organisations in various ways.

There are CMMs for software engineering, system engineering, project management, software maintenance, risk management, system acquisition, information technology (IT), services, business processes generally, and human capital management. Because several CMMs are used in an organisation a more overall CMM was created, called Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), providing a general maturity level to an organisation. The terms CMM and CMMI are developed by the Carnegie Mellon University. CMMs usually have 5 levels:

1. Initial
2. Repeatable
3. Defined
4. Managed
5. Optimized

When looking for a maturity model for enterprise architecture, I found several architectural CMMs:  

• US DoC ACMM
• US GAO EAMMF
• E2AMM

All of these provide a matrix that describes levels of maturity and the topics to measure the maturity. I found the E2AMM matrix the most useful. Using the matrix provided architects can value their maturity and find what measures must be taken to improve the maturity of their enterprise architecture organisation.

It is not uncommon to have various levels of maturity on the topics when the matrix is filled in. A consistent maturity level over all topics in the future is not needed as well. Enterprises can decide to value some topics as more important than others. They can for example decide to have a generic maturity level of 3 for all topics, but maturity level 4 for some that are found most important.  

It would be an interesting exersise to fill-in the E2AMM maturity matrix (or one of the other ones if you like) for your own organisation, just to see where you are and what could be enhanced.

Master Certified IT Architect

I made it! My ITAC certification I wrote about earlier was succesful. The Open Group certification board granted me the title "Master Certified IT Architect". The certification is valid for 3 years, after which I have to re-certify.

ITAC certification

As I have written before, I am working on becoming ITAC certified as a Master Certified IT Architect. ITAC stands for IT Architect Certification program of the Open Group and is meant for experienced IT architects.

ITAC certified architects must prove to the Open Group they have real world experience in IT architecture. This proof must be provided in two ways: candidates must create a 50 page certification package and must perform 3 interviews with Open Group certification board members.

I have created the certification package some time ago. The certification package must provide proof of IT experience by answering many open questions (like "provide three examples in which you have conviced stakeholders of the benefits of a new architecture") and by providing three experience profiles (in effect descriptions of projects in which you were the lead architect). The certification package is sent to the Open Group for review (after payment of course) and when the package is accepted the candidate is invited for the interviews. The package must contain endorsements from clients and these references are checked by the Open Group.

Last week I went to Reading (UK) - close to London - for the interviews. At the Open Group offices I has three one hour interviews, one on one with three Open Group certification baord members. In the interviews I was asked about my certification package and about my experiences. Although the interviews felt like having a job interview I liked the interviews with these very experienced architects and I think it all went well. However, I have to wait for the results that are expected in a week or so. When at least two of the three board members feel you deserve the ITAC title "Master Certified IT Architect" you will get it.

Keeping my fingers crossed...

Is your Internet connection ready for the cloud?

 Running your own data center is sooooo 2008! The trend today seems to be to convince companies to make more use of "The Cloud". In the cloud server applications are hosted outside of  the data center and are provided as a service through the Internet.

Well, you know the drill: ASP, SaaS, we heard it all before. In general companies are not planning to move their IT at all. But for some parts using the cloud can be interesting already. Email for instance. Why do you have your own email infrastructure including a server farm, spam protection, backup and power cost, when you can use Google's Gmail or comparable offers for a fraction of the operating costs? Large scale email infrastructures make sense and although email is mission critical to many companies, it is also a commodity just like electricity. Email in the cloud also enables staff to work from home or any other place when services are available globally from the Internet.

To make a long story short: for several applications the cloud can provide a solution and can be a common service provider in the future.  But it makes one component in your infrastructure crucial: your Internet connection! Do you know the availability of your Internet connection? System managers might know, but are they monitored on it? Is it in their KPIs? If the Internet connection fails, is a contingency plan in place? Do you have a redundant Internet connection? Via two separate providers? Are these two providers independent from each other? Via two separate cables? Is failover implemented between these connections? Is this tested regularly?

So....

Many questions  but I guess few answers. So please ask yourself: Is my Internet connection ready for the cloud?