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June 17, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM U.S./ET (GMT-4)

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Turbulent times have increased turnover at the top. Find out what Council CIOs have done to "break in" new CEOs—build relationships, set expectations, educate on the role of IT.

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We'll highlight relationship priorities and best practices identified in a Council study, and we'll interact with a CIO panel on the approaches they've used to improve strategic vendor partnerships.

Executive Competencies Assessment Tool

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Enterprise Architect

Why you need an enterprise architect and what to look for in one.

 

August 03, 2007 — IDG News Service —


Job description: An enterprise architect (EA) takes a company's business strategy and defines an IT systems architecture to support that strategy, according to Jim Lanzalotto, vice president of strategy and marketing at talent and outsourcing firm Yoh. To do so, EAs must understand a company's business and be able to dive deeply into technology issues. In recent years, the role has moved out of the banking industry to pop up all over the corporate universe as companies move to align business goals and the IT infrastructure that supports the business and helps achieve those goals.

Why you need one: With more than 50 percent of IT projects typically not achieving their stated goals, having someone to ensure a company's technology objectives are aligned to its business goals is vital. The EA role becomes more important as companies adopt service-oriented architecture (SOA) approaches toward application development. To realize significant cost savings with SOA, issues of software quality and reusability are key. An EA must be able to see whether the application has been built with quality and with reuse in mind. "They don't need to know how to program, but they need to be able to recognize patterns," says David Buckholtz, vice president of planning, enterprise architecture and quality at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Desired skills: At least a BS, potentially an MS or a PhD. An MBA would be the icing on the cake. Degrees aren't generally offered in enterprise architecture, but some universities and other organizations provide certification programs focused on underlying concepts, best practices and tools. Other industry certifications are good to see on a candidate's resume, such as the certificate for systems engineer (CSE), says Lanzalotto.

How to find them: Enterprise architecture is an emerging specialty, so it's a challenge to find people with the right skill sets. Since the position requires an in-depth knowledge of a company's particular business, Buckholtz recommends a wide geographic search. "You have to be willing to go out and relocate people," he said. Consultancies and systems integrators are good places to look, since staff there have honed their IT and business skills on a variety of IT projects focused on different industries and technologies.

What to look for: Communication is a key skill; self-confidence is a must. Enterprise architects have to talk to both technical developers and business managers. They need to be able to stand up in a meeting and tell the most senior person in the room unwelcome news, like an IT project won't make its deadline. EAs also need to demonstrate they're on the cutting edge of enterprise software and SOA.

 
 
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WHITE PAPERS

Modernizing Legacy Systems to a Service-Oriented Architecture

This free white paper reveals how to eliminate the risks of mainframe dependence by unlocking data and business logic trapped in legacy systems and making these services 'first-class' SOA citizens.
 

A Solid Foundation for Service-Oriented Architecture

Learn how to speed development, build better interfaces, and enable service sharing.
 

Data Grids and SOA

How modern in-memory data grid technologies can improve data availability, performance and scalability.
 

Improve Agility with Operational Responsiveness

Operational Responsiveness is the ability of business processes and systems to respond to changing conditions and e...
 

Data Grids and SOA

A data grid infrastructure, built with clustered caching, can help you avoid "weak link" vulnerabilities that can sabotage SOA strategies.
 

A Middleware Foundation for Application Grid

This white paper shows that Oracle WebLogic Suite packages many essential middleware capabilities to help organizations implement application grid concepts.
 

WEBCASTS

IT Consolidation Made Easy

The Primary IT Initiative for Reducing Costs
 

Webcast with Dan Vesset: Investing in Business Analytics Technology

What exactly is business analytics and why should you care? Dan Vesset of IDC and Gaurav Verma of SAS answer this a...
 

Capitalize on Your SAP Content

After 18 years of partnership and over 3,000 successful customer deployments, Open Text has become SAP's premier pa...
 

Enterprise Cloud Computing: Ready for Primetime?

The progression toward enterprise cloud computing is happening today, as industry leaders deploy technologies that ...
 

Preparing Your Business Services for the Future

Would you trust your network monitoring tools enough to know when something is truly halting a business service? Wh...
 

Enterprise System Management Challenges in Big Organizations with Eli Almog

In this Podcast with Eli Almog, Corporate Architect in BMC's CTO Office, discusses how IT managers can know when it...
 

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