Judeumeh's Blog

The last Open Group Conference in London provided an opportunity to hear about latest  developments in Health, Finance and eGovernment. It also featured major milestones for the Open Group, e.g. the successful conclusion of the Jericho forum (on de-perimeterised security), and the rise of Platform 3.0 (aka Digital). Read on for some highlights and headlines from the event

eGovernment – According to one keynote speaker, the transition towards egovernment is reflected in growing demand for the IT industry to help implement or enable such major initiatives as: open data, global tax information exchange, as well as an enterprise architecture plus supporting data structures to cover all human endeavour.  The Global Risks 2013 report illustrates pressing issues to be addressed by world leaders, particularly in the G8 and G20 countries which together represent 50% – 95% of the global economy. Some IT enabled scenarios, such as massive disinformation and the dangers of starting “Digital wildfires in a hyperconnected world”, illustrate the hurdles that need to be overcome with vital input from the IT industry. According to one attendee, “…government is just the back office for the global citizen”. Overall, these initiatives are aimed at connecting governments, by enabling better information exchange, and providing much needed support for an emerging global citizen.

Platform 3.0 – The conference provided updates on Platform 3.0, (aka the Open Group’s approach to Digital). Andy Mulholland (Ex Global CTO at Capgemini) set the scene in his keynote speech, by discussing the real drivers for change and their implications, plus the emerging role of business architecture and innovation, as well as the Platform 3.0 approach to Digital. Subsequent sessions provided a summary of activities outlining key Principles (and requirements) for Platform 3.0, including: the role of the IT organisation in managing digital (i.e. brokering anywhere / anytime  transactions), Inside Out vs. Outside In approach to interaction, and the challenge for Enterprise Architects to acquire key skills in organisational change & behaviours, in order to remain relevant.

eHealth – Several sessions were dedicated to the trends and impact of technology on healthcare. Topics discussed include: Big Data in healthcare and the growth in Smartphone or smart device capabilities for health care. Also discussed were:

• Shrinking R&D budgets leading to collaborative efforts (e.g. Pistoiaalliance.org ),
• Explosion of health monitoring related services and offerings e.g. self help health websites, bio telemetry wristbands etc.
• Personalized Ambient Monitoring (PAM) of mentally ill patients, using multiple devices and algorithms. apparently 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience some kind of mental illness within the year.
• Unobtrusive Smart Environment for Independent Living (USEFIL) aimed at senior citizens
• Trends in life logging (e.g. quantified self and life slices), heading towards embedded or implanted devices (e.g. digestible RFID chips)
• IPv6 and ubiquity of information points – ID management for tomorrow will include a surfeit of personal data.

However, key challenges discussed include privacy issues regarding the collection, storage and access to personal / health information. Also, who will monitor all that data gathered from sensors, monitoring and activation from the Internet of things for healthcare?

Innovation – These sessions focused on various aspects of future technology trends and innovation. It featured speakers from KPN, IBM, Inspired and Capgemini (i.e. yours truly), discussing:

• Smart technologies (e.g. SMART Grid) and interoperability constraints, plus the convergence of business and technology and fuzzy boundaries of “outside in” versus “inside out” thinking
• New technology architecture opportunities to leverage world changing developments such as: Semantics, nano technology, 3D printing, Robotics and the Internet-of-things, overlaid with exponential technologies (e.g. storage / processing power / bandwidth) and the network effect
• Effects of Mobile and Social vs. traditional MDM, plus emerging trends for incorporating new dynamic data (sentiment analysis / IoT sensors plus deep / dark data).
• Use of big data to enable the Social enterprise, via smarter workforce, innovation and gamification.
• Case study of Capgemini internal architecture and innovation work stream – illustrating key organisational trends and cross sector innovation, plus challenges for internal innovation, and the emerging role of business model innovation and architecture

As you can probably surmise from the above, this multi-day conference was jam-packed with information, networking and learning opportunities. Also the Open Group’s tradition of holding events in the great cities of the world, (e.g. this one took place just across the road from the UK Houses of Parliament), effectively brings the latest industry thinking / developments to your doorstep, and is highly commendable. Long may it continue!