Using Enterprise Architect and the Pro Cloud Server in Education

System Thinking in IT Solutions and Digital Fabrication - Course

What is the Cost of Poor Quality IT Solutions

Who knows the true cost of poor qualitry IT systems? Who cares about it? How can you measure the quality of IT solutions?  We can estimate, but it must be a relatively large proportion of the final cost for the completed solution. And it is not just a matter of money.

I am convinced that a systematic approach throughout the whole lifecycle of IT solutions must be more advantageous than using a quick and dirty approach.  ‘One of the aspects of system approach is the rigorous documenting (modeling) of the solution, from idea itself, analysis, design, implementation, go live, up to the end of operation and deployment'.

Based on experiences from praxis I am trying to share my knowledge with young people, who haven't developed bad habits yet. For that reason, I am organizing the courses for students of universities and middle schools, to encourage young people to think about their solutions before they start to work. The way, how to manage it, is to use modern technology and methodology.

It is not wasting time. Our path to solutions is our everyday journey. Every day we are discovering new knowledge and reaching new experiences, at least.

I would like to share my experiences from university in Slovakia, where we are realizing the small IT solutions. The main goal is not only developing a solution, but also developing an appreciation of how we are managing the solution. It could be called ‘Model driven solution’.

The name of the course is ‘System Thinking in IT Solutions and Digital Fabrication’

This course was created on the basis of cooperation among FABLAB CVTI,  ‘CVTI Bratislava’, ‘Comenius University Science Park’ and ‘Faculty of Informatics and Information Technologies, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava’ ‘FIIT STU’, AGNICOLI-Through Knowledge to Freedom -nonprofit organization, FabLabNet, Interreg Central Europe Programme, CE 283. The main objective of the course was to bring students closer to digital manufacturing and to reach new professional habits – generating and sharing knowledge among participants.

This course was focused on integration of 2 approaches. Rapid prototyping in the field of 3D printing, IoT, Laser cutter, CNC cutter and system approach. Students received the basic information about technology presented in FABLAB CVTI and general overview about holistic approaches in IT (TOGAF, ITIL). During the whole course we have used the client UML modeling tool ‘Enterprise Architect’ by Sparx Systems and server background Sparx Cloud Services, Pro Cloud Server with WebEA access. Licenses for ‘Enterprise Architect’ clients were provided by FIIT, licenses for Pro Cloud Server (WebEA) were provided by Sparx Systems company with close cooperation from Sparx Systems Central Europe.

The topic is quite extensive, and its comprehensive description goes beyond the purpose of this article. If interested in more details, please, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Roman Kazička

Enterprise Architects are now being reported as the highest paid discipline in IT, however with this realization organizations need to ensure they are getting the most out of these highly-skilled professionals. The skills and experience of Enterprise Architects combined with the right tools like Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect can support business agility with a lowered exposure to risk.

Glassdoor, the job posting and company feedback website, recently published its annual 25 Highest Paying Jobs in America list with the technology sector boasting 65% of highest-paying jobs. The title of 'Enterprise Architect' however did best, coming in at #4 overall. This annual list from Glassdoor is produced using employee-submitted salary reports, which are then used to rank them according to their annual base salary and the job openings/listings posted that year.

It's gratifying to see organizations are better-valuing the contribution of technically-skilled workers - especially given that IT capabilities are increasingly the wellspring of organizational growth. According to the list, Enterprise Architects are now the highest paid IT discipline and are highly sort-after in the workplace. This also bears out in last year's Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey which found enterprise architecture is the fastest-growing technology skill; up a "massive" 26 per cent compared with the previous year. All this begs the question - what is it about Enterprise Architects in particular that are commanding such wages and enjoying such standing in the workplace?

We know that Enterprise Architects are at the nexus of business and technology, working to align business strategy and IT execution. They are also increasingly responsible for envisioning and supporting future business capabilities by anticipating and evaluating IT investments and development. This all requires excellent strategic thinking, communication and problem-solving skills, along with a wide range of technical capabilities.

However, like many change-agents, Enterprise Architects encounter resistance and are required to continually prove the value and viability of their solutions. To this end, Enterprise Architects must demonstrably connect their work with long-term business strategy in a compelling fashion, otherwise the many competing elements at play within an organization - such as short-term vs. long-term business interests and business vs. IT prerogatives - can inhibit an architect's ability to get anything done. The ability to connect strategy and execution is essential for buy-in from the right business and IT stakeholders.

Wally McLaughlin, Director of Sales at Sparx Services North America notes, “We encounter leaders every day who have skilled and experienced architects on their teams – some really talented people. But in-spite of all of that knowledge, their teams are struggling to explain to business leaders and decision makers how to affect real transformational change. Companies are complex, but with the right modeling tools like Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Architects can help leaders break down the complexity into manageable parts that the rest of the organization can understand and act upon.”

Ideally by drawing a line between business strategy, architectures and outcomes like business processes, databases and source code, Enterprise Architects can hope to create clear demonstrable links between strategy and execution. Of course, extracting corporate strategy itself can be difficult (especially in cases where it's non-existent), but by referencing documented roadmaps and consulting executive staff, Enterprise Architects can at least begin to model the corporate strategies that should guide IT strategy. In fact, by allowing business executives to view the business roadmaps while they are defined, Enterprise Architects can prompt some useful discussions that help organizations identify opportunities for growth.

When IT silos develop within an organization, often it can mean IT initiatives continue for some time without a cohesive approach. Enterprise Architects can help bring IT strategy back into focus by reviewing current processes, products and initiatives and their links to corporate strategy. This is especially simple where organizations are already using modeling platforms like Enterprise Architect to model their software and systems. With enterprise-wide collaborative tools, Enterprise Architects can begin to break down silos across business architecture, IT architecture and systems to better direct the organization's development priorities.

With all this investment, Enterprise Architects need the right tools to get the job done. Why offer the wages being reported by Glassdoor and Harvey Nash/KPMG and then give them a spreadsheet? There is a lot on the line. Not only is software and systems increasingly critical to both day-to-day operations and growth, there is a large financial investment in Enterprise Architects themselves. A platform like Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect equips Enterprise Architects with the tools to effectively execute corporate strategy whilst keeping teams connected and collaborating toward a shared vision.

If you would like a trial of Enterprise Architect, please visit: http://www.sparxsystems.com/products/ea/trial/request.html

To learn more, Sparx Systems has released a new Enterprise Architecture Guidebook.

SparxSystems CE: Belgian Railway relies on Enterprise Architect

In order to prepare itself for the liberalisation of national railway markets in 2023, the Belgian National Railway Company SNCB has developed an architecture continuum using Enterprise Architect over the last three years. With more than 1000 applications in use and a huge volume of data, this was not an easy task. Today, IT decisions can be made more easily based on reliable information, and the company is now able to move toward a modern IT landscape.

 Luc Alix (left), Head of Enterprise Architecture and Alain Garsoux (right) in charge of Architecture Governance at Ypto, a subsidiary of the Belgian National Railway Company

Vienna/Brussels – In 2005, the Belgian National Railway Company was divided into three public companies, in accordance with European and Belgian regulations. This naturally had considerable consequences for the common IT: Thousands of components (applications, servers, networks, etc.) had to be recorded, analysed and reassigned. To ease this IT transformation, SNCB decided to create a new IT company called “YPTO”, a 100% subsidiary. Ypto started to invest in its enterprise architecture with Enterprise Architect from Sparx Systems. Luc Alix, Head of Enterprise Architecture, hired Alain Garsoux to promote and improve Ypto’s architectural knowledge database (continuum). Alix: "We very soon decided to define our own architecture framework by adopting and integrating major architecture standards like Archimate™, TOGAF™, BPMN, SAFe, etc.. The adopted prescriptive language helps the decision-making process by forcing us to address the important concerns and not getting lost in details.”

Enterprise Architect: Cost-effective and adaptable

Since a suitable tool is naturally required for the construction of such a complex IT landscape, the decision was made to purchase based on specificity. Enterprise Architect proved to be the cheapest and most adaptable solution. A. Garsoux explains: "Being active in the public sector forces us to regularly reconfirm the purchase, the good price of the platform has so far always made it possible to extend the licenses and to avoid migration tasks. This allows us to continuously work with the tool, which has now been ideally adapted and makes our architecture work much easier and more productive.” Hans Bartmann, Managing Director of SparxSystems Central Europe: "We are pleased that Enterprise Architect has so far overcome the hurdle of tenders so well due to its excellent price-performance ratio, adaptability and openness to many languages and standards. At the same time we congratulate SNCB on their state-of-the-art IT architectural solution, which can also serve as a very good example for other companies!”

The EA Shared Model Repository provides an overview The EA Shared Model Repository provides an overview of the mapped areas and guidelines for modeling

Open tool to reduce complexity

During the embedding phase for the modeling platform, Ypto specified precise guidelines for solution architects. Standard architectural views were defined to support the work of 12 Enterprise Architects and 50 Solution Architects. "Thanks to pre-fab architecture diagrams, we are able to easily capture our current complex IT landscape into the architecture knowledge database (Continuum). The captured raw data is then transformed into actionable information to support decision making”, says A. Garsoux. With this capture, a continuous documentation is automatically updated, which is of decisive importance for traceability and further developments.

The analysis of the existing applications showed for example that currently up to 20 applications are necessary for the handling of a single business activity. Since each of these applications (currently over 1.000) has to be maintained, the declared goal is to significantly reduce this number. "For any new request for change, we always start by specifying the impacted business activities and the impacted applications. From this we can very quickly see - thanks to our architectural knowledge database - what things we want to keep and what needs to be renewed,” says the IT architect.

The Architecture Framework provides an overall view of the IT architecture

New applications are subject to precise specifications

"Precise architectural principles have been defined for all applications, which must be adhered to. Only in this way can we ensure that we achieve a uniform architecture. The framework also helps us to make very efficient decisions on certain developments," explains A. Garsoux. The IT architect now describes the structure as mature and ready for roll-out in the company, which is already ongoing. But he also knows that this will require a lot of internal persuasion: "The commitment to this forward-looking IT architecture must now spread throughout the company, because this of course entails changes. Our delivered information convinced our management and we prove every day that we are taking a decisive step towards a prosperous future for SNCB!"

The SNCB

SNCB is Belgium’s national railway company. It is a public company which provides the operation and marketing of railway services for national and international passenger and freight transport. It is also responsible for the maintenance of the rolling stock. SNCB employs around 21,000 people and has a turnover of 2.2 billion euros. It also owns shares in Eurostar and Thalys, as well as in the IFB and TRW branches. SNCB plays a crucial role in the development of sustainable mobility by providing a quality, reliable service that is in line with the market.

About Sparx Systems

Enterprise Architect is the world’s premiere UML/SysML modeling platform. Produced in Australia by Sparx Systems since 1996, it has been implemented by over 730,000 users worldwide, due not only to its high performance at an unbeatable price. Enterprise Architect is a powerful yet intuitive modeling tool that facilitates any desired level of explicitness and precision in the development, analysis and documentation of even the most complex systems and architectures. Individuals and teams can use EA to design and produce software systems, perform business process modeling, handle requirements or model any process or system using standardized or custom modeling languages and frameworks with maximum reuse and traceability throughout. Pro Cloud Server and WebEA allow geographically-distributed model-based development and engineering teams to actively collaborate on any number of ongoing projects in real time. SparxSystems Software Central Europe was founded in 2004 in Vienna, Austria to provide individuals and organizations in Europe's core German-speaking and other economically-aligned markets with Enterprise Architect software licenses, training and support in their own language and time zone.

Enterprise Architect User Group

London 2017; 18th - 19th May

The London

2017 meeting of the Enterprise Architect User Group sees a shakeup to the agenda in the form of an additional day being added to the roster. In additional to the traditional presentation day of User Stories, How to's etc the extra day added to the event is taking the form of a training day.

The training day adds to the event a selection of six, three hour training sessions on a variety of subjects from BPMN to TOGAF and Model Curation.

Location

Code Node, 10 South Place, London, EC2M 7BT

Get Directions

Agenda; Thursday 18th May

You can find information on these training sessions over at the EA User Group website.

Agenda; Friday 19th May

You can find a synopsis for each of these presentations over on the EA User Group website.

How to buy your tickets...

Tickets for the event are available directly from the EA User Group website and are priced as follows:

• Full two day event ticket; £550.00 +Vat
• Friday only ticket; £75.00 +Vat

In a candid interview with Arun Kant from CIOReview, Sparx Systems' CEO Geoffrey Sparks highlights how Enterprise Architecture has become an imperative for survival in the ever-changing and globalized corporate landscape.

CIOReview has also included Sparx Systems in their '20 Most Promising Enterprise Architecture Technology Providers 2016' list, resulting from a robust selection process actioned by a highly qualified panel of domain experts. The in-depth interview with Geoffrey Sparks is the featured article in this month's edition of CIOReview, where Geoffrey discusses the Sparx Systems tradition of continual development of the Enterprise Architect platform, while maintaining the highly competitive price-point that enables affordable outfitting for all project stakeholders.

Geoffrey Sparx, Founder and CEO, Sparx Systems

To read the full featured article, simply download the PDF attachment at the top of this article.

Enterprise Architect User Group

Sparx Systems hosted the 2015 Canberra Enterprise Architect User Group in April 2015.  The User Group included a number of presentations from partners located across Australia, Asia and the US.

Figure 1: Critical Success Factors for EA

CC & C Solutions presented an outline of their company and discussed how Enterprise Architect helps to address Enterprise Challenges.  Vish Viswanathan presented the Critical Success Factors for Enterprise Architecture which included the TOGAF Framework, People and Enterprise Architect by Sparx Systems.  He went on to discuss the key benefits of Enterprise Architect and outlined their engagement process.

Figure 2: Meeting CC & C staff at the Australian National Botanic Gardens.

We invite you to the Sparx Systems Canberra User Group meeting to be held on Wednesday 15 April 2015. This meeting will introduce Enterprise Architect 12, NIEM, TOGAF and discuss aspects of the North American Market. The meeting will be held at the Auditorium in the Australian National Botanic Gardens from 3.00pm to 6.00pm.

Please book early as seats are limited. Refreshments will be provided.

This event will also feature the following Guest Speakers:

• Chris Armstrong, CEO of Armstrong Process Group (APG) presenting on TOGAF and NIEM
• Wally McLaughlin, Sales Director from APG will discuss the use of Enterprise Architect in North America
• Veritec will be presenting on how Enterprise Architect is being used at the Department of Finance
• OMNILINK will present on how Enterprise Architect is being used to improve software applications
• Scott Hebbard, Communications Manager at Sparx Systems, will provide an overview of Enterprise Architect 12
• Vish Viswanathan, Managing Principal of CC&C Solutions will discuss TOGAF and how to "go all the way with EA" to help customers

We invite you to register for this live event in Canberra.

European Enterprise Architect User Group 2015 in Zürich, March, 10th 2015

After a series of highly successful German Enterprise Architect User Community events in previous years, it is my great pleasure now to be able to announce a first time event in Zurich. Thanks to the support of UBS AG, the European Enterprise Architect User Group event will be held in Switzrland at the company's headquarters in Zurich. The event will include a series of lectures and a permanently-staffed Experts Corner, and during coffee breaks and lunch there will be plenty of time for more in-depth conversations with users and lecturers alike.

The lectures will be held alternately in English or German. In his keynote speech, David Würth, Enterprise Architect Specialist at UBS, explores the standardization activities and use of Enterprise Architect, and shares some of his enterprise-wide initiatives. Phil Chudley, TOGAF and BPMN specialist since their very beginnings, will illuminate us on the topic "Enterprise Architecture" and associated technologies...and of course you won’t want to miss presentations by Swisscom and the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB).

Save the date: Tuesday, March 10th, 2015, from 9.00 till 17.00 at UBS AG in Zurich

Registration at http://www.eausergroup.com/events

This new training course teaches ArchiMate business, application and technology layers as well as motivation and implementation & migration extensions (providing full support for TOGAF).

http://www.hippo-software.co.uk/pages/EAforArchitectureandStrategy.htm