The Cloud Needs Structure, Says Open Group

Enterprise architectures will become more important as the cloud takes off, according to an event held in London by the Open Group.

Companies need frameworks to define their enterprise tech goals, and relate them to the business, according to presentations at the Open Group’s conference, which has been happening all week in London.

The need to think architecturally

“In the cloud, you have to think more architecturally and less technically,” said Andrew Josey (pictured), director of standards at the Open Group, which has been producing standards for enterprise IT, under one name or another, for more than 25 years.

Decisions to move to cloud computing emerge from strategic “C-level” executives and are to do with meeting business goals, at a  level that is not to do with specific technologies or service providers, he explained.

“These kind of decisions increase the need for an architecture,” Josey explained. “There is a lot of emphasis on fiding the stakeholders and consulting them.”

The Open Group has its roots in technology standards, being formed in 1996 from the merger of two vendor-led standards-making groups, the Open Software Foundation and X/Open, which made their name during the 1990s boom in “open systems”.

Back in the standards business

After that field lost its lustre, the Open Group became a user-driven body, and focused on management-level issues. It moved to the level of information architecture, and produced The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), using industry inputs including the US Department of Defence’s TAFIM architecture.

Now, says Josey, the move towards more virtual IT environment has re-emphasised the need for architectural decisions, and the architectural approach has been endorsed by the Opejn Group re-estabilishing itself as a standard maker. Its reference model for service oriented architecture has been submitted to the international standards body, ISO, the conference was told by Heather Kreger who is running the group’s SOA activity.

The Open Group conference also included a day on identity management run by the Jericho Forum, a security group which operates under the Open Group umbrella.