TOGAF® CERTIFICATION MILESTONE – SOON TO REACH 100K GLOBALLY

The number of individuals certified in the TOGAF® Certification Program as of May 2020 is growing rapidly and about to surpass 100,000 – currently standing at 98,900. This includes certified individuals from 149 countries, with the most certifications awarded in the UK, USA, India, Netherlands, and Australia.

The TOGAF Standard, a standard of The Open Group, is a proven Enterprise Architecture (EA) methodology and framework, used by the world’s leading organizations to improve business efficiency. Representing a Body of Knowledge from world-leading practitioners, the latest TOGAF Standard, Version 9.2 is universally known as industry best practice.

EA and Agile – Not Mutually Exclusive After All!

Every organization needs to be Agile in order to handle all kind of forces and developments inside and outside the organization. Equally, organizations also need the structure and overarching view of an organization that is provided by Enterprise Architecture. and in particular, The TOGAF® standard, a standard of The Open Group. Both Lean and EA can make organizations more Agile, but work from a different, complementary perspective. By synergizing both EA and Lean knowledge, techniques, and people, many organizations are exploiting the strengths of both approaches.

A Year of Growth and Opportunity: 2019 and a Look Ahead to 2020

By Steve Nunn, President and CEO, The Open Group

As we usher in the new decade, I would like to express my sincerest wishes for you – our valued Members, The Open Group global community, and staff – to enjoy much happiness and great success in 2020.

What a year it has been here at The Open Group! As I reflect on 2019 and consider what is to come in 2020, one thing is very clear – The Open Group is doing even more of what it does best – helping to solve real business problems through technology standards.

The IT4IT™ Standard Brought to Life

At The Open Group Amsterdam 2019, participants were offered the chance to participate in an exciting new gamification of IT4IT™, a standard of The Open Group. Jan Schilt, co-owner of GamingWorks BV acted as the CEO role of a Banking concern named UBanQ. In that game role, Jan challenged several teams to prove that they could become the bank of choice for customers in a highly competitive, rapidly changing digital world.

ArchiMate® 3.1 Specification: The New Version of the Standard

At The Open Group event in Amsterdam on November 5, 2019, the latest version of the ArchiMate® modeling language for Enterprise Architecture was released. Version 3.1 is an update to the previous major version 3.0 (released in 2016). Despite being ‘just’ a minor version update, it holds a number of useful additions and improvements for Enterprise Architecture practitioners.

The Interesting Case of Who’s Using the IT4IT™ Standard – Part Two – The Oil and Gas, IT, Retail, Logistics, and Engineering Sectors

The Open Group IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, a standard of The Open Group uses a value chain framework that applies this concept to IT by defining an integrated IT management framework focusing on the lifecycle of services. This allows IT to achieve the same level of business predictability and efficiency that supply chain management has allowed for the business.

The Interesting Case of Who’s Using the IT4IT™ Standard – Part One – The Banking and Insurance Sectors

The Open Group IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, a standard of The Open Group, is a value chain-based standard reference and operating model for managing the business of IT. It creates a model of the functions that IT performs to help organizations identify the activities that contribute to business competitiveness.

It supports real-world use-cases driven by the Digital Economy such as, Cloud-sourcing, Agile, DevOps, and service brokering, and is designed for existing landscapes, and accommodates future IT paradigms, making it ideal for Digital Transformation projects.

The First Ever Joint FACE™ and SOSA™ Expo and Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM)

I am very much looking forward to the first ever joint FACE™ and SOSA™ Expo and Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) event on September 17, 2019. Hosted by the US Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) and sponsored by Green Hills Software, this event will include demonstrations of the functionality and interoperability of both the Future Airborne Capability Environment™ (FACE) and the Sensor Open System Architecture™ (SOSA) Consortia Members. It’s a great opportunity to showcase the progress that the Members of The Open Group FACE and SOSA Consortia have made for creating new war-fighting capabilities for the services. Over 50 exhibitors will be at this event.

Agile Architecture in the Digital Age – a Conversation with Frédéric Lé

The agile transformation of the enterprise is becoming a pre-requisite of an effective digital transformation project. This requires organizations to adopt a product-centric, outside-in perspective, evolving product and service portfolios – as well as business and operational models – to deliver value faster than ever before. All this, whilst being closely aligned to the businesses needs and objectives.

We spoke with Frédéric Lé, Technology Strategist, Corporate Technology Office at DXC Technology, in advance of The Open Group Denver 2019 event to learn more about how digital leaders and their teams can steer transformation, something he has coined ‘DigitAgile’.

The Importance of Trademark Protection

I recently wrote a blog entitled ‘Why the Court of Master Sommeliers Made the Right Decision’ in which I stressed the importance of program integrity in the world of certification. A number of people have asked me subsequently about how The Open Group goes about building our certification programs, and how we achieve and maintain that integrity. Well the short answer is practice and experience!

A Look Back at 2018 and What’s to Come in 2019

For many of us, each new year is an occasion to look back at the previous year’s accomplishments, as well as look forward to what’s to come over the course of the next year. For the past three years since I took over the reins as CEO of The Open Group, I’ve made it a tradition to take advantage of the new year to do just this, as I’m sure many of you do both in your professional and personal lives.

With the passing of each year, I’m always struck not only by how quickly it goes by, but how many new opportunities arise throughout the year for The Open Group that none of us ever could have predicted. What’s nice for me, from where I sit, is that there is no shortage of new opportunities for us as an organization to do what we’ve always done—to help organizations come together to solve their business problems through open standards.