EA Coverage in Orlando (The Gartner EA Summit)
Wow, is the only way to start looking at the turnout in Orlando for the Gartner Enterprise Architecture (EA) Summit held last week (June 11 - 13). More so since all the participants braved the thunderstorms and weather to show up despite stranded flights. For myself, I decided to take matters into my own hands after an unscheduled landing in Tampa and drove down enjoying Florida’s wide lane freeways which seemed surprisingly dry given the stormy weather hours ago.
Back to the EA conference which mostly starred Gartner VPs and Analysts, the whole conference was about Business Architecture (BA), EBA, SOA and Information Architecture.
There was an over bearing importance on Business Architecture and managing the goals of the organization and hence the CEO.
One area which keeps beating us is the missing steps between the as-is to to-be systems. Especially rationalization of systems and the specific options to “simplify” the underlying assets without making systems overly complex as we add BA, BPM, SOA into the mix.
The turnout as mentioned in the Gartner opening by Anne Lapkin (Research VP, Gartner), had an extended industry presence from manufacturing, services industry and telcos besides the regular financial services, retail and insurance segment. While the turnout was huge, we still missed the CIOs in the audience.
Does this mean the CIOs and CTOs relate less to EA? Given the magnifying glass business sponsors have on IT budgets and its alignment to strategic corporate initiatives, EA, information architecture, security are topics getting into the hot seat.
