The Cloud, the Enterprise Architect and the CIO

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It was great to finally get a chance to speak at the IRM Enterprise Architect Conference Europe the other day. I’ve attended, submitted topics many times and this time around they gave me my big chance! I even got to speak in the keynote room as I’d had the most votes for that slot, so there were plenty of people to talk to which was great!

The presentation focused on four main areas:

  • Talking clouds
    Build a cloud taxonomy and an approach to using it with key stakeholders from business to IT.
  • Business Capabilities
    Discuss how looking above process and implementation at a business's capabilities enables EAs to engage in different discussions about the business.
  • Future of IT
    The future IT department in terms of new responsibilities and roles and understand the key architectural considerations of entering into a world of hybrid architectures.
  • Lessons from Agile
    Finally, while EAs yearn to be heard by the business, it is too easy to isolate ourselves from the rest of IT along on the journey. We'll look at key lessons from agile development and how these can be applied at the architectural tier and in so doing learn about "technical debt" and how in the right hands, it is a good thing!

Feedback was pretty good on twitter:

Chris Bird Old friends @taotwit, @Cybersal , @mattdeacon ,@aapthorp among others at #IRMEAC. New - too many to mention.Time with @alecsharp priceless
Chris Bird @mattdeacon me too. Liked your preso a lot, btw
Alec Sharp @mattdeacon Ah - I wondered if I'd got it right. Close, but no cigar. Thanks for taking my question on the cloud as an HR issue.
Alec Sharp  #IRMEAC @mattdeacon Looks at "technical debt" as a good thing when it helps deliver early, clarify needs, control investments, share resp
Alec Sharp  #IRMEAC @mattdeacon IT will physically contract therefore IT's boundaries will expand.
Alec Sharp  #IRMEAC @mattdeacon So, it's not the low-level utility stuff that is likely to move to the cloud, it's the critical bits.
Alec Sharp  #IRMEAC @mattdeacon Nice bit of counterintuitive info - the more strategic the function, the more likely SaaS will be employed.
Kristof Dierckxsens  @alecsharp #IRMEAC @mattdeacon - What business does (its capabilities) is static - it's the *how* (processes) that is more dynamic. << true
Alec Sharp  #IRMEAC @mattdeacon Some very good material here on what a capability is, and how it can be characterised in terms such as value.
Alec Sharp   #IRMEAC @mattdeacon - What a business does (its capabilities) is fairly static - it's the *how* (processes) that is more dynamic.
Alec Sharp  #IRMEAC @mattdeacon Arrgghhh - my tweets about this promising presentation were lost because of a Network Timeout Error. A cloud problem?

So here’s the deck if you’re interested – thoughts as always welcomed:)!

The Cloud, The Enterprise Architect and the CIO

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