The Open Platform 3.0™ Forum exists to advance The Open Group vision of Boundaryless Information Flow™ by helping enterprises to use Cloud, Social and Mobile Computing, and Big Data. This will be accomplished by identifying a set of new platform capabilities, and architecting and standardizing an IT platform by which enterprises can reap their business benefits. These capabilities will enable enterprises to:
- Process data “in the Cloud”
- Integrate mobile devices with enterprise computing
- Incorporate new sources of data, including social media and sensors in the “Internet of things”
- Manage and share data that has high volume, velocity, variety, and distribution
- Turn the data into usable information through correlation, fusion, analysis, and visualization
The meeting had two parts. The objective of the first part was to explain the need for Platform 3.0 and describe the Forum. The second part was a workshop for Forum members to analyze the business requirements for Platform 3.0 using the TOGAF® business scenario method. The goal of the workshop was to contribute to the development of a Platform 3.0 business scenario. Further input and analysis will be needed to complete that development.
In the first part of the meeting, Forum Director Chris Harding presented a set of slides to explain the need for Platform 3.0 and describe the Forum.
Business scenarios are described in Section 26 of the TOGAF 9.1 standard. Business scenarios are an important technique that may be used at various stages of an Enterprise Architecture, principally the Architecture Vision and the Business Architecture, but in other architecture domains as well, if required, to derive the characteristics of the architecture directly from the high-level requirements of the business. They are used to help identify and understand business needs, and thereby to derive the business requirements that the architecture development has to address.
Platform 3.0 implies a standard architecture that can be used by all enterprises. Its definition is now at the vision stage. Use of the business scenario technique will enable the Open Platform 3.0 Forum to leverage the body of knowledge and experience that is embodied in the TOGAF standard.
A business scenario describes:
- A business process, application, or set of applications that can be enabled by the architecture
- The business and technology environment
- The people and computing components (called "actors") who execute the scenario
- The desired outcome of proper execution
In this case the scenario will describe the business processes and applications that can be enabled by architectures based on social, mobile and cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of things.
A good business scenario is representative of a significant business need or problem, and enables vendors to understand the value to the customer organization of a developed solution. This scenario will enable the customer, vendor, and integrator communities to understand the value of a standard platform to enable use of the new technologies: Platform 3.0.
The workshop completed a first pass through the steps required to create a business scenario. The bulk of the discussion was devoted to the problem driving the scenario, the business environment, and the identification of specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound (SMART) objectives for the new platform. The meeting also summarized the technical environment (which had been extensively discussed within the Forum previously), and identified some of the human, computer, and organizational actors of the scenario.
Analysis and review of the gathered information, and gathering of further information, will take place in web meetings following the workshop, and through a survey of Open Group members. This will lead to the development and publication of the completed scenario. The target date for publication is October 2013.
