From the Open Group’s Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference in San Francisco.

I had breakfast with David Jackson from Boston university. David is working on building a consortium of business schools who will offer something like an Executive Master’s of Enterprise Architecture degree. This would be similar to Executive MBA programs in that students would be coming in with real life experience.

Two parts of this are interesting to me.

The first is the tools and techniques that end up codified as part of the curriculum. What they teach will lead the students towards being certified (via the Open Group’s EA Certification program) Enterprise Architect. That certification requires at least two years of real-life experience. The certification also includes demonstrated proficiencies in a variety of tools and techniques.

When people start entering the market who are certified with these skills and knowledge of these tools, that will drive the adoption of the standards. Hopefully, rigorous yet simple tools will grow out of this market.

The second will be the “blow-back” force to the ERP vendors. These ERP vendors will need to demonstrate how their products fit in multiple architectures rather than provide a complete architecture in and of themselves. At least that’s what I hope.

Technorati Tags: IT Architecture, ITANA, Leadership, Open Group