Building a robust enterprise architecture that can meet the needs of a business isn’t an option, it’s something every organization has to do. And asking about the ROI  on an enterprise architecture project is like asking about what’s the return on investment of your physical plant. You need to focus on making sure your enterprise architecture delivers real business value. That’s the authoritative conclusion from Len Fehskens, The Open Group’s resident expert about anything having to do with enterprise architecture.  Fehskens’ official title is vice president and global profession lead for The Open Group.

CIOs interested in all aspects of enterprise architecture construction, especially service-oriented architecture, might consider getting a company-membership in The Open Group.  A merger of the X Open group and the Open Systems Foundation, The Open Group is a consortium of IT vendors and users that focuses on the development of open standards for enterprise architecture, as well as the professional certification for enterprise architects.  The organization focuses on the concept of Boundaryless Information Flow, which is the integration of enterprise applications (including legacy components), the exchange of information between those applications, and the standards to support these things. These efforts have led to the creation of The Open Group Architecture Framework or TOGAF. The current version spells out types of enterprise architectures – the business architecture, the data architecture, the technology architecture, and the application architecture.

When it comes to the complex subjects of enterprise architecture and service-oriented architecture, Fehskens, in this podcast, dispels much good advice from the dozens of conversations he had had with members of The Open Group. He says that you can’t do an entire enterprise architecture project as a separate effort and expect that it’s going to come out right. The best way to do an enterprise architecture project, according to Fehskens, is to do it project by project or solution by solution at a time. He says that you might start by picking a business solution that you know you have to solve and taking a disciplined architectural approach to solving it.

“While you’re doing this, you might take a larger perspective and start thinking about the types of questions you would ask when you do a service-oriented architecture project.  Next, you need to develop a strategic context solution by solution, focusing on business problems rather than technology. As a result, you grow your enterprise architecture by business solution by business solution.  You’ll also need some type of a strategic roadmap that gives you a rough lay of the land. This approach helps us to reduce the problem of painting yourself in a corner, but at the same time, you’re getting a substantive return on return on your investment, project by project. You don’t wait before the entire enterprise architecture is complete before you start seeing benefits”

In this podcast, Fehskens also talks about why service-service architecture, makes sense as a concept to the business side of the operation.  According to Fehskens, SOA makes it easier to align IT with the business because it uses the type same of language and the same type of concepts which the business uses.  He says, “We’ve  finally figured out the right way to think how we put systems together so both the sides of the house speak the same language. The challenge is how do we make it work. The question I hear most frequently is not should I do SOA, but what is the relationship between SOA and my enterprise architecture:  How do I make those two things work?  Are they the same things? Should they be the same things? How do I sort out the relationship between SOA and enterprise architecture?”  These are just a few of the things Fehskens explores in this podcast.

Bio
Len Fehskens has more than 40 years of experience in the IT industry as both an individual practitioner and manager. As the vice president and global profession lead for enterprise architecture at The Open Group , he oversees all of the activities relating to enterprise architecture, including AOGEA, TOGAF, and the Architecture Forum.

Prior to joining The Open Group, Fehskens led the Worldwide Architecture Profession Office for HP Services at Hewlett-Packard. He has worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, Data General Corporation, Prime Computer, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard. He is the lead inventor on six software patents on the object oriented management of distributed systems. He was recently certified in TOGAF.  He majored in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Resources
Is SOA part of the enterprise architecture or does it replace it? - InfoWorld
Opening up on Standards - eweek
Hot Certifications in a Cool Marketplace - InfoWorld

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Molly O'Neill has both a technology role and a policy role at the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency.  As an assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Environmental Information, she oversees the life cycle of information to support the agency's mission of protecting health and the environment. O'Neill's role as CIO includes overseeing the agency's strategic information planning, investment and information policies, enterprise architecture, and information security program.

In both of her roles, O'Neill is working toward the same goal - helping the EPA to use technology to collaborate and exchange information with the widest possible network of bright minds around the world. The EPA employs about five percent of the U.S. environmental workforce.  The majority of this workforce consists of people who work in state government, in consulting firms, in private industry, and in academic institutions.  She says, "Environmental issues are huge. People work at the EPA because they believe in its mission. We want to reach everyone who has a thirst for knowledge about environmental issues."

In this podcast, O'Neill talks about the EPA's Web 2.0 initiatives, as she puts it, "to reach out and grab the world globally, as well as locally." She also explains how the EPA's formal process for making IT investment decisions works, and how the EPA has been at the forefront of the green data center movement.

Bio
In December 2006, the U.S. Senate appointed Molly O'Neill as chief information officer for the U.S. Environmental Protection agency and as assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Environmental Information. She is a member of the Federal CIO Council, where she serves as the co-chair of the Architecture and Infrastructure Committee. Before going to work at the EPA, O'Neill was state director for the National Environmental Information Exchange at the Environmental Council of the States. In recognition for her leadership as the executive coordinator of the Exchange Network, she received a 2004 Federal 100 award as one of the top executives influencing government technology. She graduated from Virginia Tech.

Resources
Government Computer News - The  EPA the Web 2.0 Way
FedTech - Interview  with Molly O'Neill, CIO of EPA
CIOToday  - CIOs Tout Collaboration Tools as the Font of Today

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive  Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio  Producer
AlarmMusic.com Production Music  Library for Broadcast, Film, Video & Post Production