Wipro conference charts future of EA Center
Dr. Brian Cameron, executive director of the Center for Enterprise Architecture at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), and Sandeep Purao, associate professor of IST, recently helped facilitate a conference sponsored by Wipro, a global information technology services company based in Bangalore, India.
At the conference, 55 representatives of organizations on the Center for Enterprise Architecture’s external advisory board deliberated the future of the enterprise architecture field from both educational and research perspectives.
“It was a great meeting, very productive,” Cameron said. “There was a lot of discussion and energy in the room.”
The Center for Enterprise Architecture, which was launched in January 2011, seeks to gather intellectual resources across Penn State to address research concerns and questions that span the design, functioning and governance of contemporary, information-driven enterprises.
The Center is guided, in part, by an external advisory board consisting of representatives from leading corporations, government and professional organizations. The board is comprised of two subgroups: the Research Advisory Group, which guides the research mission of the Center; and the Education and Outreach Advisory Group, which provides input and guidance on the undergraduate, graduate and professional educational activities of the Center.
At the conference in East Brunswick, N.J., Purao led the discussions of the research group, while Cameron directed the education group. Within both groups, representatives gave updates on the progress of their organizations with regard to enterprise architecture and discussed possible future initiatives in the field.
In the education group, Cameron said, much of the discussion revolved around how universities can effectively market the enterprise architecture curriculum to prospective students and their parents. One of the ideas that the research group discussed, he added, was the question of how researchers can measure the value of enterprise architecture.
In addition to the external advisory board members, Cameron said, undergraduate and graduate students in the College of IST attended the conference. The graduate students presented research papers on topics related to enterprise architecture, while the undergraduates discussed an enterprise architecture course that they are enrolled in and their honors projects for the course.
Cameron said that similar large conferences for external advisory board members will be held at least once a year, with smaller meetings in between. The diverse representation in the Center for Enterprise Architecture is beneficial in generating ideas, he added.
“We get a great perspective in where the quickly evolving field of enterprise architecture is going,” Cameron said. “It helps us keep our research and education on the leading edge.”
Arvind Ramachandra, senior enterprise architecture and transformation lead, Wipro Technologies, took part in the panel discussion on "The Future of Enterprise Architecture" with a specific focus on business architecture and how EA’s goals will be redefined. During the session the concerns and challenges faced by CIOs and IT executives in the current business and technology environment were shared with the members.
“It was indeed an excellent opportunity to have such a platform to discuss and share ideas and experiences, as well as network with executives in the enterprise architecture space”, said Ramachandra.
