Call for papers
Information Technology (IT) Conference 2007

 

April 4 and 5, 2007
Ottawa Congress Centre (Capital Hall Room)
55 Colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Enterprise Architecture and the three R's (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle)

This conference builds on efforts to define common architectures that can be applied across the organisation and on viewing our business functions in terms of discrete, shared services. This approach is referred to as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). There is booming interest in this field as IT managers and developers strive to increase productivity, reuse and interoperability, while looking for gains in simplicity and ease of use.  Furthermore, Statistics Canada has now committed to evolving its Enterprise Architecture (EA) on the principle of discrete and easily shareable IT services.

Issues and objectives

Faced with budget cuts, increased demand and a growing number of information sources, managers are looking for effective, rapid and economical methods of delivering information services. Because information technology is complex and clients are increasingly feeling the effects of this complexity, managers are looking for innovative and simplified solutions to meet the ongoing information needs of their users.

Some of the solutions currently proposed to decrease costs and response times are to reuse system components, reduce their diversity and incorporate applicable standards. However, to be effective, these solutions must be part of new approaches for aligning the technology to the needs of the organization.

Among the new approaches, enterprise architecture has the objective of building a broad consensus within the IT community and among users. Having emerged in recent years as a central concept in the engineering of information systems, this architecture approach appears to result in a better organization of applications into discrete services.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) promotes an approach where automation logic is partitioned into individual units (services) that are highly interoperable, but generic enough to fulfill both immediate and future automation requirements. The major benefits associated with a successful adoption of SOA typically begin with improving an organization’s ability to share data across disparate systems and establishing an architectural model that is increasingly independent of the enabling technologies. Services are deliberately positioned as highly reusable IT tools that can be exploited over a long period of time. The end result is an increase in an organization’s overall business responsiveness (agility).

According to the Gartner Group, by 2008, more than 75% of enterprise projects will be based on Service Oriented Architecture. While this prospect alone gives an idea of the scope of the phenomenon, it is appropriate to measure the concrete implications of this approach for current systems.

What do these enterprise architectures consist of? Are they really a way of guaranteeing that information systems will now be aligned to the operational, functional and strategic needs of the enterprise? Do they constitute a technological solution or new models for designing and using information systems? How do the concepts of “Enterprise Architecture” and “Service” affect the structuring and management of IT projects? What are the specific languages, methods, techniques and tools for implementing enterprise architectures, their common features, their differences and their future trends? What factors would indicate whether this move toward enterprise architecture will build on what exists now, or whether it will instead lead to a major overhaul of existing architectures?

The purpose of this conference is to understand this new way of architecting the application-oriented components of an automated system and managing the links between them. The presentations will focus on the main aspects of enterprise architecture (essentially the service oriented aspects), describing both concepts and practical experiences.

Sub-themes of the conference

The conference, which will feature leading professionals, researchers and managers in the field of information systems and technologies, will include three main components :

• Management of Enterprise Architectures will deal with the planning of IT projects, their governance and the challenges with respect to human resources management under the various enterprise architectures.
• Technical Assets and Infrastructures will cover the use of physical assets and means of measuring productivity and the quality of the services provided under enterprise architectures.
• Applications Development and Maintenance will deal with the methods and means of developing services under different architectures.

 

Content and other information about the presentation

• A title
• A 200-word summary
• Name and address of the author and his/her associates
• Deadlines:
• Summary: December 8, 2006
• Final document and/or presentation: January 31, 2007

Send the documents to:

Eric Charbonneau
2007 Statistics Canada IT Conference,
Statistics Canada
R.H. Coats Building, 14-D, Tunney’s Pasture
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1A 0T6
Phone: (613) 951-1598
Fax: (613) 951-0607
Internet: eric.charbonneau@statcan.ca

You will be contacted no later than December 31, 2006, if your summary has been accepted for the presentation.