8/10/2019 Oracle Magazine - Next Gen Architect

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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

ARCHITECT BY BOB RHUBART

CONNECT: blo gs .o racl e.co m/arc hbeat fac eboo k.co m/brhubart twi tter.co m/brhubart l inkedi n.co m/in/bobrhubart

Technological evolution is the business

of architects at the enterprise, solution,

and application levels. People in those roles

bear responsibility for getting their organiza-

tions from their current technological state

to some predetermined yet always moving

target state in order to meet ever-changing

business demands. Failure to hit that

targetor to recognize that the target even

existscan have dire consequences. Just ask

anyone who used to run a video rental store.

Or a mall. Or the music business.

Cloud computing, mobility, the Internet

of Things, and other disruptions present new

challenges and portend changes not just for

the what, why,and howof IT, but also for the

whoincluding architects. This reality raises

important questions: What skills will be crit-

ical to the success of the next generation of

architects? How will those skills differ from

the skills that have served the current gen-

eration of architects? I put those questions

to members of the architect community.

Architects are often focused on prin-

ciples and rules to keep IT in line with

policies, says Oracle ACE Director Lonneke

Dikmans, managing partner at eProseed.

But for the next generation to succeed in a

fast-moving world, Dikmans says, being

able to innovate and come up with new

solutions will be more and more important.

Openness and the ability to learn and

adapt are essential to architects respon-

sible for helping to move their businesses

forward, according to Oracle ACE Director

Lucas Jellema, CTO at AMIS Services.

Architects themselves have to become

agile, says Jellema. Rules that were abso-

lutely sensible five years ago may have to be

revised or even completely rewritten.

Oracle ACE Director and Veriton LTD

Founder Simon Haslam adds that the move

toward cloud-delivered applications will

place even greater importance on the ability

to quickly absorb new concepts. Cloud

service provisioning will shorten procure-

ment time, driving architects to deliver

production-ready, innovative solutions

much more quickly than today, in weeks

rather than months, he says.

Cloud computing will drive a change in

mind-set, according to Haslam. Future

architects will have to think much more

laterally about failure modes and potential

performance bottlenecks, since many of

those things will be out of their control.

They will also have to understand how their

operations teams will monitor complex

interdependent SLAs [service-level agree-

ments] and mitigate risk, he says.

Oracle Enterprise Architect Eric Stephens

asserts that basic problem-solving skills

and business fundamentals, while always

important, will be even more so in the

future. The next generation of architects

will do well to spend more time consuming

business literature and emphasizing the

business planning aspect of architecture,

he says.

Those all-important soft skills, too, will

take on even greater significance for the

next generation of architects. The ability

to explain ideas and the consequences of

choices is key, says Dikmans.

Toward that end, Jellema recommends

taking advantage of conferences, wikis, and

other community-style platforms where

architects from various organizations meet

and exchange experiences and ideas. Get

out of the ivory tower to get more in touch

with the rest of the world, he advises.

There is a payoff to that kind of outreach.

As more and more reference architectures

and best practices become available, the

focus will shift from thinking about the the-

oretical solution to executing architecture

in a controlled manner, says Dikmans. That

should make it easier for the next genera-

tion of architects to avoid entering the ivory

tower in the first place.

For the architects to come, perhaps

images of sleek, nimble starshipsrather

than ivory towerswill inform the techno-

logical and organizational sensibilities they

will bring to the task of steering the com-

panies they work for toward that always-

elusive to-be state.

Bob Rhubart

(bob.rhubart@oracle.com)

is manager of the

architect community

on Oracle Technology

Network, the host of theOracle Technology Network ArchBeat podcast

series, and the author of the ArchBeat blog

(blogs.oracle.com/archbeat).

The ability to

explain ideas and

the consequences

of choices is key.Lonneke Dikmans, Oracle ACE Director

Architect: The NextGenerationThe need for agility, adaptation, and transformation also

applies to arbiters of change.

READmore Rhubart

blogs.oracle.com/archbeat

GETmore Oracle Technology Network

architect information

oracle.com/technetwork/architect

READmore about enterprise architecture

oracle.com/technetwork/architect/entarch

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