 dweud o cywm mwy o'r Newtechnawe, Gwlaff Mwbl Cymru, Ieithaf Yn Gwlaff, Mae yna ychydig yn ysgol o g nanwysgol, Yn Gwlaff Cymru, Mae'r newydd ar yr ydym ni, Both at our events and other industry events and a contributor to several online journals. In fact we had a little online fan club going for Dr Harding a few years ago I seem to remember. He began his career in research, communications and software research and development. Spent nine years as a consultant specialising in voice and data communications before joining us at the open group. In this session Chris will look at the challenges faced by companies doing digital business today. So over to you Chris. Thank you very much Steve and good morning everybody. I have a microphone here and now I'm armed with the mouse pointer. So it's great to be here in San Francisco and at the open group conference and to see you all. It's something of a change for me. I live in a small, I think you can maybe call it a hamlet in the country in England. It's got a population of three and you can't get a lot smaller than that. But I think I see people from a lot of different countries which is very normal for an open group conference and I suspect a lot of different backgrounds and ways of living also. So it's great that we can all get together here. But actually for those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 60s, probably a select but shrinking number, but probably some of us, international travel really is something that we were brought up to be accustomed to. So we had all these stories of space travel and science fiction and interstellar journeys and crossing the galaxy to meet creatures with four heads. So crossing the Atlantic to meet people who say tomato instead of tomato or maybe have a skin of a slightly different colour is really just a snip. So we were prepared for that. But what no one told us about and we were totally unprepared for was the rise of the internet and the worldwide web. And these have arguably made as big or maybe even as bigger difference to our lives as international travel has done. Not just the web but the whole set of digital technology. And to the way we live, to the way we work and to the way that we do business. So and that's really what I'm going to talk about in this session. How digital technology is transforming business and more particularly what are the kind of implications for that for enterprise architects. What is this doing to enterprise architecture? How can we architect systems, some of the considerations for how we can architect systems to deliver better customer experience in the digital age. And finally to say a few words about the DBCX work group which is joint work group of the open platform 3.0 forum and the architecture forum and which is working to establish guidelines in this area. So I live in a small hamlet and one of these things that this gives me a problem with is internet connectivity. So connecting via the telephone line is really pretty hopeless. But I do have, I've stuck an aerial up on the top of my house and with a long cable from that I can get a reasonable signal. But it's not sort of used as much as you can in the way that a phone line is. So I have some questions about it. I asked this question to try and clarify my usage. It took me actually a little while to find out how to ask questions. The supplier site was mostly concerned with selling me new things. But in the end tucked away in a corner I did find the ability to ask this question. So I sent it off and got an instant response saying we are considering it and we'll get back to you and sure enough in a day or so I did get a response. But it didn't actually give me a complete answer to the question I'd asked. So I tried to clarify further. I sent off another question and I got the instant yes we are considering it and then in a day or so I got a response to that. And this didn't really answer the question I'd asked either as far as I could tell. So I was beginning to wonder actually because of the way it was all phrased. Who I was talking to. I started my reply to that with the following question. And the answer I got back was as follows. So I'm still actually not sure whether I was talking to or exchanging information with real people or with an artificial intelligence program. And I'm actually in two minds about this. First of all, if it was an artificial intelligence program it wasn't a very good one. It didn't really give the answers to my questions and it sort of didn't have a look and feel that made me feel it was a good thing to interact with. On the other hand, if it was real people I have to say that a good AI program would have done a better job of answering my questions and directing me to the information that I needed to know. So it's really all about how you set these things up. It's a mix of maybe FAQs, maybe intelligent reasoning based on the questioning and having people who really do know their stuff somewhere in the background. The architecture of how you arrange that is very important in setting up the customer experience and giving a good customer experience. So people have been doing business for thousands of years buying and selling things and until very recently this is mostly being done face to face. So if you want to buy fabrics for example you probably have questions. Is this cloth really made from the high quality thread that the guy tells me it's made from? I've told him that I'm probably going to want to buy some more of the same stuff next week. Is he really going to be back in this place and be able to sell it to me? Or is this just a sort of quick job lot that he's got that he's getting rid of quickly and I'll never see him again? Is he the kind of guy that I can trust to help me if something goes wrong with what I've bought from him? And if you're buying something in the street like that you can look the guy in the face and you can form your conclusions and the conclusions you form about how far you can trust someone are a very important decision thing for you as to whether you're going to hand over the money to him. If you buy something on the web it's rather different. You can't look anyone in the eye. You are in fact interacting with the systems of engagement of the corporation that you are dealing with. And it may be quite a complex interaction. You may have got to that web page because those systems have been looking at your purchasing habits. Maybe they know more about you. Maybe they've been analysing your social media interactions. Maybe they've worked out that you're going to be wanting to buy some cloth of some kind and they pop up a, hey, go to this website, have a look. This could be of interest to you. But you still have a lot of the same kind of questions. Is this a supplier I can trust? Will the quality be good? Will things be okay? If something goes wrong? And you can't look anybody in the eye but there may be are other ways. You can look to see if there are customer reviews, for example, that might help you. If this is a website that you've used in the past, you will have a history there. If it isn't one that you've used in the past, you may still, from the way it behaves, get a sort of kind of feel of is this a good company to do business with to buy cloth from. The dictionary defines the word persona as the way you behave, talk, etc. with other people that causes them to see you as a particular kind of person. The image or personality that a person presents to other people. And corporations actually have personas too. So a bank, for example, has buildings made of solid stone. You open that solid wooden door and go inside and you will find fittings of good quality, people smartly dressed, everything that gives you the feeling, yes, this is a solid and reliable institution. These are people that can be trusted with my money and to give me good financial advice. And maybe you could say that a corporate persona is the corporation, interacts with other people and with its customers that causes them to see it as a particular kind of corporation. And that helps us really to define the challenge for the enterprise architect. How do we architect systems of, and that should say systems of engagement, I'm sorry about that. How do we architect systems of engagement to deliver the corporate persona that we want to project the persona that indicates that this is the kind of corporation, the solid corporation that we are that customers would want to do business with. So that's the challenge for architects today. And in some ways we are fortunate because although you could say digital technology is throwing up this problem that we are no longer able to do business face to face and gain a feeling of trust and confidence through personal interactions, it's also putting up a lot of things that can help us overcome this, like the ability for example to analyze data, analyze social interactions on social media and gain an understanding of the customer. So it's really two ways. But there are a lot of exciting things happening in architecture just at the moment. So microservices are what you might call the latest twist in the long running saga of the SOA revolution. Service orientation was introduced as an architectural principle over 10 years ago now. And it's been gradually gaining ground, it's gradually evolved. And it's now at the point where a lot of services or a lot of systems are service based, they present APIs and these are the ways that you interact with them. Microservices, which I've heard defined as SOA done right on a small scale, the idea that you will break things down into very small business oriented blocks of functionality, each of which will be a self contained service that is gaining ground as a popular way now of architecting systems. If you are around on Wednesday, you can hear not about microservices architecture, but about mainstream SOA and standard architectures for that. Heather Krieger is giving a presentation on that on Wednesday and also by the way on cloud architecture standards. So we're seeing architectural practices evolve, service orientation evolving as a movement and then changing itself to microservices and then maybe more things beyond that. We're also hearing about interesting things with cloud architecture. This afternoon there will I hope be a very interesting presentation on the use of fabric based modern architectures. I say I hope because the presenters are from the US East Coast and it will be a question of whether they have local colleagues I think who can deliver if we are going to get that presentation. If by any chance they can't deliver it, I will try and see if we can get it arranged as a webinar. We have had in fact internally within the open group a members only web presentation on this topic. So that's how I know what it's about I guess. So we could organise a public webinar if the presentation can't go ahead this afternoon, but I hope it will be able to. So again the idea of fabrics threads we woven together based on cloud computing is a way that architecture is evolving. Open Business Data Lake. So this is the concept that you put all your data into a lake or a big collection of data and then you develop actionable insights not only from the data that you have stored in the lake but from incoming streams of events and information. And this is a concept that I think is going to revolutionise the way we think about information perhaps to the same extent as service orientation has revolutionised the way we think about application processing. And we currently have in the platform 3.0 a fast track of the open business data lake technical standard which is being fast tracked by Capgemini and we will hear more about this at the next conference in London in three months time. So the Open Platform 3.0 forum was founded on the vision that we want to help enterprises to gain business value from new digital technologies particularly from cloud computing, from mobile computing, from social computing, from big data analysis and from the internet of things. These are mainstream digital technologies which are changing the way that we do business and we architect systems to do business. So the forum was founded to help enterprises to gain business value from those technologies and we are doing work in the individual areas of the technologies as for example the open business data lake in the area of big data but we are also working to develop a interoperability standard for digital platforms. So increasingly applications or what traditionally would have been applications are being delivered as sets of services running on digital platforms. And the challenge for interoperability if you are developing a solution that doesn't go outside one of those platforms it's very easy. But if you as is often the case want to develop a solution that uses capabilities from multiple digital platforms then you need them to interoperate and typically you will look at a catalogue of services exposed on each of those platforms that you will want to integrate. Enterprises and wider business ecosystems because enterprises typically exist within wider business ecosystems will maintain cross application service catalogs and that would enable users to compose interoperable solutions by combining those services. And the interoperability standard that we are in process of defining will facilitate that. So that's a part of the way that the architectural platform is developing to support digital business. And of course the Togaf architecture development framework remains I think a constant within the open group. Some of these new techniques may change the way we think about for example application systems, for example data systems, for example technology systems. Or maybe we will be referring to them as information fabrics, intelligence fabrics and infrastructure fabrics. So there may be changes in the way we think at that level but the overall framework that enables collaborative teamwork that enables the key characteristic that the architecture is driven by the business needs, the business considerations. This will I think remain as a constant when we develop architectures for new digital technologies and systems based on them. For example the definition of principles which is a key feature of Togaf and the insistence on the conformance to those principles is going to be I think a key thing when you're talking about architectures based on microservices or threads or whatever which are developed by different teams and have to work together to give a consistent experience to the customer, a consistent way of supporting the business. So I now want to say a little about the DBCX work group. DBCX stands for, and this is something of a mouthful, digital business strategy and customer experience. It is about working out how to do architecture for digital business and in particular for digital business that delivers a good customer experience. I'm actually not going to say too much about it because the two speakers following will, they represent two of the key members of this work group PA Consulting and Hawaii and they will be talking about giving their ideas which are the ideas that the work group is discussing and this is kind of giving some introductory thoughts here to that. So I'm not going to say too much about it but I will just mention that we are a joint work group of the Open Platform 3.0 forum and the architecture. The Open Platform 3.0 forum because the content of what we're looking at is very much based on these digital technologies. The architecture forum because it's about how you develop a particular sort of architecture in this context. The work group has in fact developed a white paper and the draft of that is currently in its final review and we hope that that will be published in a few weeks time and available from the Open Group Publications catalogue. It's also working on a reference model which will help people to understand how to do this kind of architecture and I'm sure will be developing other guidance that will help to do that too. So it's an important work group. There are a lot of very good ideas being exchanged in that work group resulting well you'll see the white paper but hopefully the ideas will result in good guidance when the work group has completed its more substantial deliverables and that is something that any member of the Open Platform 3.0 or the architecture forum can participate in. If you want to find out more about what that group has been up to, there are a couple of webinars that is done and recordings of these are available. The customer experience journey and digital disruptive business models and creating great customer experiences in a digital world. The second of those actually was delivered only last week so that's right up to the minute and those recordings are available through the Open Group Bookstore and I'll give you another way of finding them before I finish. So I encourage everyone to have a look at those and get involved in the work of the work group. So to conclude and there will be time for questions which I'm happy to take. We've looked at how digital technology is transforming business about how the face-to-face way of doing business is being replaced by the customer interacting with systems of engagement in a complex way and that presents challenges to the architect in how can the customer be given the kind of customer journey that the enterprise wants the customer to have and how will the customer come to trust the enterprise and have a loyalty to the enterprise so that they will be a repeat customer and continue to do business with the enterprise. So we've looked at that. We've looked at how we architect systems of engagement to deliver corporate persona. We've set that as the key challenge. We've looked at some of the new architecture techniques that are available for the architect to use in doing that and we've mentioned briefly the DBCX work group which is working on architecture for digital business and will be developing the more precise how those techniques can and should be deployed to obtain the architecture that will meet the need. So if you want to find out more, if you visit that website there will be pointers on that too. Amongst other things, the webinars, the webinar recordings there will be, if you are a member of the architecture forum or the Open Platform 3.0 forum, you can log into that page you can find out the work in progress that the group is doing and also if you want to get in touch with me you should find contact details there too. So thank you very much for your attention and I'm happy to take questions. Thank you Chris. You've got one question but my guess is that we have others from the audience first. Let me quickly introduce myself. I'm Dave Lownds, I'm Chief Technical Officer at the Open Group. Chris, thank you very much for that great presentation on this exciting area. Let me first ask anybody else who got any question comments for Chris. In the back there, I know it's a bit hard to move around and my colleague Steve will pick those up for you. Let's get started Chris, we've got one question and that is that Open Platform 3.0 will require new legal arrangements and security for achieving interoperability. What are the main topics for the legal domain? Do you have any thoughts on that? The main topics for the legal domain and that is a very pertinent question both the legal and the security aspects are important to Open Platform 3.0. We have in fact in our member's meeting on Thursday a joint meeting with the security forum with whom we will be discussing some of the security issues and not only, well you can sometimes class identity management as a branch of security. I personally think it's something a little bit separate but clearly digital identity and the ability to have interoperability between different platforms that have different concepts of digital identity is a key issue that needs to be taken into account in defining the platform standard. There are other considerations obviously with ensuring that the digital identities can only access the information that they need to and that the information that they have is secure and the other security considerations which I'm sure people are very much aware of. Now unfortunately the Open Group does not have similarly a legal forum that we could similarly discuss the legal questions with but those questions actually are very important. We are touching on them in some respects in that in the work we did we developed a business scenario as part of our understanding of the need for the platform and the platform requirements and one of the things that identified was the need to be concerned about the preservation of intellectual property rights. So that is clearly one legal aspect if information is to be shared between components of a solution then understanding the intellectual property rights is one legal aspect that we do have on board that we are trying to think through. But I won't say that we do have a, as I say we don't have a legal forum so it may be that there are some other legal aspects that we're not fully aware of that we should be taking on board and if you feel that there are things that are missing in this respect then we would like to hear from you on that. Thank you Chris. A couple more here. I want to ask myself, I heard what you were talking about and the concept of SOA where customers would assemble solutions. That sounds very similar to some of the things that are going on with demand driven soft IT that's happening in the IT for IT forum. Do you see synergies between those two and how are we going to exploit them? Well I do see synergies to answer the second question first. It's likely that we'll have a small liaison group that's one of the things that we'll be discussing in the members meeting at the end of this meeting and we did in fact have a substantial joint meeting with the IT for IT forum in the Edinburgh conference three months ago. So yes there are synergies we will liaise with and work with the IT for IT people to explore those and in some cases there could be common threads to what we're doing so microservices I think will be a topic of interest to both of us but we are I think approaching these things from very different perspectives IT for IT is what it says Open Platform 3.0 is about the provision of a digital platform and the definition of a digital platform so they're not the same thing so we will continue to approach them separately but talk to each other. Next question. How do you see doing digital business effect or change or transform traditional business models to a digital experience business model? That's not an easy question to answer. It is a good question. I mean I think we've all seen some of the changes in business models with the rise of companies whose business is selling things on the web or maybe increasingly moving to being a marketplace on the web through which other companies can sell things. We've seen taxi companies that don't own any taxes to quote another famous example so we have seen a lot of new ways of doing business emerging new business models emerging a result of the availability of digital technology but the thing about business ideas is that they are genuinely creative things and they are not obvious. If I knew what the next big disruptive digital business idea was I'd form a company and get rich. So I'm sure there will be but I couldn't hazard a guess on exactly what they are but history certainly shows that they have recently been these transformative things. You may have to settle for being famous they're not just rich, right? Well, even that would be good. One more question here, Chris. Doesn't the customer experience also include the store? Apologies for whoever asks this. I think you're talking about a physical store here. How do you determine what a customer will want as they enter the store? That could be a virtual store or a physical store. Well, no, actually physical store is a valid point to make because we're talking about a business architecture and that includes bricks and mortars physical stores as well as web presence and a lot of companies actually are finding that the combination of the two you can order online, click and collect in your local physical store is a good business model. So the idea of the physical store being part of the digital business model and being part of a new way of doing digital business is a valid idea and companies are exploring that. When the customer walks into the store, was that the question? How do you understand the customer? That is something that is part of the practice that we're trying to develop, if you like, of architecture. Clearly there are ways of understanding customers through social media. For example, if you can find a customer what they're doing on social media a lot of companies make that analysis. You can track their progress through sites on the web using cookies that's a well-known technique. So there are established ways in which you can find out about the customer. So understand your customer is a good thing. I think we have a long way to go before we get good at that. My thoughts about the kind of understanding that a lot of websites have of me they're about as good as the AI system or whatever it might have been was that I talked about. But yes, that is a part of how to develop customer experience that we will explore. That's actually a great place to wind up because it leads very nicely into our next speaker. I'll introduce him in the second year. Thank you very much, Chris. A big round for Chris.