Q: How long have you been involved with The Open Group?
ITpreneurs has been involved with The Open Group since 2011 when we first achieved accreditation for TOGAF® level 1 and 2 classroom and eLearning.
Q. What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?
ITpreneurs, is a learning solutions provider to training companies and consulting organizations. We develop, manage and deliver a training portfolio of thousands of titles covering the full spectrum of IT.
Within The Open Group community, we offer the TOGAF® and ArchiMate® programs and are participating in the development the IT4IT™ program. We enable ATCs and Affiliates to develop a strong and successful proposition in their markets. My role within ITpreneurs is to ensure our portfolio is comprehensive, complete and innovative.
Q: Why did your organization become a member and what does your involvement look like? What forum did your organization join?
ITpreneurs engages with many framework owners and standards bodies. Through participation with these organizations we ensure that the voice of our customers, over 500 training and consulting organizations, is properly reflected, and that competence and skill development programs meet the requirements of the IT Professional.
We became a member of The Open Group as in 2011 we recognized the strength of the TOGAF standard and the relevance of the certification portfolio. We believe that TOGAF has the potential to grow further and believe we can help The Open Group to achieve this by enabling our channel, and continue to promote the value of the standard.
Amongst others, we are members of the IT4IT, and Architecture Forums.
Q: How has membership in The Open Group benefited you, your organization and the industry at large?
As a member of The Open Group we are able to tap into a collaborative and innovation driven community. Through it's open model, The Open Group has the potential to develop solutions to challenges that CIOs face. We benefit from this collective knowledge, and it allows us to deliver valuable training programs to training and consulting organizations.
Through The Open Group ecosystem we are able to reach out to the experts and gurus who have developed The Open Group standards, and these individuals typically become authors of our training programs. By working with these experts, we in return ensure that we contribute to the community by staying close to the original concepts and values of the standards.
Q: What contributions do you hope to bring to The Open Group?
ITpreneurs offers many IT certification and non-certification programs to the market in many languages.
We have developed competences and a framework for brining new products to the market, and enabling organizations to leverage these standards. We believe we can contribute by taking new training and certification programs offered from The Open Group to the market, excite training providers to adopt these programs, train their trainers, marketing and sales teams and as a result ensure that the community at large starts leveraging products from The Open Group.
Q: What are your hobbies?
For over 20 years I have been active in scouting, and am an active member of a local scout group in my hometown.
Q: What book are you currently reading?
I'm reading Lean Start Up at the moment, and the Lean IT Leadership Publication by the Lean IT Association.
In his role as the VP of R&D with ITpreneurs, Arjan Woertman is responsible for the products and services that ITpreneurs delivers to the market. As part of his tenure with ITpreneurs he was involved in several key initiatives such as the development of the COBIT training portfolio together with ISACA, the ITIL Expert Program, and more recently the portfolio of The Open Group programs such as TOGAF®, ArchiMate®, and IT4IT™.
January 2016