Q: How many years have you personally been actively involved with The Open Group?

A: I have been involved with X/Open and the Open Group for many years. Early on in the 80s when I was with NCR Corporation I was involved with X/Open Distributed Transaction Processing from a review and comment perspective. At that time I didn’t attend meetings. In 1996 I attended my first Open Group conference in Rome with interest specifically in the Architecture Forum. Since then I have been actively involved at varying levels including being a Director and Vice Chair of the Governing Board.

Q: Why did your organization become a Member of The Open Group?

A: NCR was interested in open standards and therefore was active within X/Open and The Open Group as a founding member. While at NCR my interest went beyond those technical standards and moved into architecture standards and best practices. MITRE was interested in bringing the industry to bear for our customers and still sees participation in organizations such as The Open Group as a key channel to engage industry. I’m hoping to stay active in The Open Group now as owner of Enterprise Wise LLC to facilitate Boundaryless Information Flow™ in Healthcare.

Q: What key forums/initiatives are you personally involved with at The Open Group?

A: As an employee of NCR and MITRE my special interest in The Open Group was focused on architectures standards and best practices – hoping to help raise the level of maturity of the discipline for the good of our customers and the indu8stry at large. However I couldn’t help staying in touch with the work of most of the forum, as they are all dealing with critical issues faced by our customers revolving around the concepts of Boundaryless Information Flow™. Today I am still involved in the Healthcare Forum as it presents The Open Group with a significant opportunity to impact an area relevant to the world, not just the world of IT.

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

A: The Open Group has helped to evolve architecture from being a mere technology issue to a business support tool by focusing on Enterprise Architecture. It has become more useful in terms of portfolio management because of this, as opposed to being something that merely constrains system development. In this way Enterprise Architecture is addressing IT alignment with business, and positions Enterprise Architecture as being a much more useful tool benefiting customers in all industries. Having said that there is much yet to be done and we must make sure we keep a sharp eye on not allowing Enterprise Architecting to become self serving.

Q: What key contributions have you and/or your organization made to The Open Group?

A: Since 1996 I have submitted numerous contributions to TOGAF® including individual contributions to each section of the TOGAF ADM, whole contributions of the Business Scenario Method, the Enterprise Continuum, input/output descriptions, original Tutorial material, and synopsis papers on the TOGAF ADM. As well I have held numerous positions including Co-Chair of the Architecture Forum, Chair of TOGAF Certification workgroup, Vice Chair of the Governing Board. One of the most impactful contributions was applying TOGAF’s Business Scenario Method to The Open Group itself resulting in the Vision of Boundaryless Information Flow™ which stands today as a relevant vision.

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

A: From the Architecture perspective the industry must stay together on the fundamentals of Enterprise Architecture and must share lessons learned and best practices. It is in no company’s interest to attempt to gain competitive advantage by doing architecture, rather they should focus on operational execution for their competitive advantage. To me this means we all need to work together to improve the discipline and ultimately raise the quality of architecting and architectures for that common goal to lower the excessive costs of integration and interoperability that are growing non-linearly.  People get very practical value from membership in terms of sharing best practices. Organizations get very practical value from using TOGAF – saving significant time and cost by reusing a proven method and resources. From a business perspective the issues that continue to affect Boundaryless Information Flow™ haven’t gone away, entropy calls for participation to address the new issues that emerge so we don’t slip backwards two steps for every one step forward.  

About Terence Blevins

Terence Blevins, a Fellow of The Open Group, is owner of Enterprise Wise LLC and a semi-retired Enterprise Architect. He is currently an invited member of The Open Group Governing Board and an active contributor to the Healthcare Forum within The Open Group.

He has been involved with the architecture discipline since the 80s, much of which was done while he was Director of Strategic Architecture at NCR Corporation. He has been involved with The Open Group since 1996 when he first was introduced to the Architecture Forum. He was co-chair of the Architecture Forum and frequent contributor of content to TOGAF® including the Business Scenario Method.

Terence was Vice President and CIO of The Open Group where he contributed to The Open Group Vision of Boundaryless Information Flow™.

He holds undergraduate and Masters degrees in Mathematics from Youngstown State University. He is TOGAF 8 certified.

October 2015