Q: How long have you been involved with The Open Group?

It all started with my interest in TOGAF® 7 in 2005/2006.  I have been formally involved since 2007/2008, triggered by a 4 day in-person course via Architecting the Enterprise & getting certified in TOGAF 8.  I felt more engaged as I applied the learnings and uncovered consistent ways of implementation across industry verticals – a virtuous cycle of sorts.  I have been on serving the Open CA board since my certification in late 2000s.

Q. What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?

I am an effective storyteller for organizations in the brink of business, process, digital and cultural transformations. I unfold linkage between seemingly disconnected scenes, unexpected dependencies and ignored risks. The industry calls me a management consultant and I use Enterprise Architecture methods and techniques as tools of trade.

I have been in the industry since mid-1990s. My education inculcated systems-of-systems thinking, and my work serves as an everyday reminder.  Over the last 10 to 15 years, I have been more deliberate in using Enterprise Architecture and domain architectures to effect organizational change and deliver value.

Q: Why did your organization become a member and what does your involvement look like? 

Conexiam joined as a Silver Member in 2005 for a singular reason: buying a commercial license was paying a voluntary tax on honesty. Joining as a member allowed us to get involved (in the Architecture Forum) and jump-start thorough understanding. The largest value we received from being a member was rapid domain maturity. Meeting and working with peers helped us hone the structure & practice of the profession.

Dave Hornford, the Managing Partner of Conexiam was the Chair of the Architecture Forum during TOGAF 9 development days, as an effort to get a more useful discussion going. As active consumers of TOGAF, we sparked the re-design of the next release as an attempt to 1) make it more useful, and 2) get a more meaningful discussion going.

Our firm belief in making standards actionable, using standards to deliver practical guidance, and to elevate the current level of operations of an organization has made our involvement stronger and deeper.  We are active in many Forums - Security, IT4IT™, SOA, Open Platform 3.0™, to name a few.  We also provide training and certification for TOGAF and IT4IT.  However, we think of ourselves as practitioners and coaches first.

Q: How has membership in The Open Group benefited you, your organization and the industry at large?

The value addition has been precious.  The quality of thought leadership we experienced has been hugely rewarding. It is increasingly an avenue to share expertise.

The Forums and the events provide early exposure to innovative thinking - discussions leading to World Class EA Capability Model, IT4IT and Open Platform 3.0.

Talking about the industry at large, some top impacts in my view are:

The Open Group operating principle of being vendor-neutral has created an exclusive value - not only is there a forum for competitors to collaborate, the consumers are benefited by not having to sweat about the "common denominator" concerns.

Non-Technology decision-makers have a resource to go to, when it comes to buying technical solutions or services in cloud computing, SOA, Microservices, IoT.  For example, the key metrics and characteristics for interoperability or operations.

A scientific method to organizational change is available.  Whitepapers published in the "World Class" series make application of TOGAF tangible.

The Open Group provides a consistent and integrated approach to create and certify products and their suppliers; individuals on their understanding and application of the standards and products created with those standards.

Q: What contributions do you hope to bring to The Open Group?

Inspired by Kaplinesque thinking, Conexiam decided to make our practice open and to broaden our contribution to the Architecture and Open Platform 3.0™ Forums.  We led and delivered the World Class EA whitepaper for EA Capability Leaders on how to set up the capability and evolve it.  It is on its way to become a TOGAF Guide. 

We have submitted two more whitepapers to The Open Group - a how-to-put-to-use TOGAF as a Practitioner and a Digital Transformation approach.  Both of them are under different stages of review.  We are working on another guide about Architecture Governance. Via participation in IT4IT, Digital Strategy and Customer Experience and Security Forums and Work Groups, we hope to further the contemporary and futuristic work of the members of The Open Group.

From the perspective of being a member of The Open Group Governing Board, I will be focused on the recent proposal from Andras Szakal on executable standards - as applied to Open Platform 3.0 and Open Process Control.

Q: Why is it important for other organizations to join The Open Group?

I think there are three things that support a change.  Technology Itself, Management of Technology, and Organizational Change.  The Open Group through its publications provides a structured approach to technology management and organizational change.  Members ensure that standards and guides are current and practical.  As patterns of using technology is converging across industry verticals, lot of runway can be covered rapidly by participating in The Open Group forums.  I think there is significant amplification to an individual or an organization's growth - by consuming and contributing to material produced by the members of The Open Group.

Q: What are your hobbies?

Photography, Hiking, and current affairs as related to break-through from CERN, MIT or NIH.

Q: What book are you currently reading?

I am reading a set of essays and articles that talk about collaboration and experimentation amongst musicians from different parts of the world.  These essays provide nuanced insights into the motivations of self-organizing teams.

Q: What social networks do you belong to?

I am less of a digital nomad, in that sense - only on LinkedIn.

Q: Any last thoughts?

It is a question of time for lab grown human or animal organs, 3D printed products, bio-mimicry, and machine assisted living becomes mainstream.  This spells the dawn of days beyond digital transformation (more of human augmentation).  For architects, it will be an exciting transition to guide, and humbling at times.

Sriram Sabesan leads the Digital Transformation practice at Conexiam.  He is responsible for developing best practice and standards in the areas of Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud and IoT (SMACIT), Customer Experience Management and governance.

Over the past 20 years, Sriram has led teams specializing in system engineering, process engineering and architecture development across federal, technology, manufacturing, telecommunication, and financial services verticals. Managing and leading large geographically distributed teams, Sriram has enabled clients develop and execute strategies in response to shifts technology or economic conditions.

As an active member of The Open Group since 2010, he has contributed to the development of Open Group standards, snapshots and white papers. He is an Open Group Certified Distinguished Architect and is certified in TOGAF v8, Scrum Practice and Project Management. 

Sriram holds a Bachelor of Science degree Mechanical Engineering and Master of Science (Tech) in Power and Energy.  Sriram also received his Diplomas in Financial and Operations Management in 1998.

September 2016