Competences of IT Architects

The field of architecture in the digital world uses a plethora of terms to refer to different kinds of architects, and recognises a confusing variety of competences that these architects are required to have. Different service providers use different terms for similar architects and even if they use the same term, they may mean something different. This makes it hard for customers to know what competences an architect can be expected to have.\ud \ud This book combines competence profiles of the NGI Platform for IT Professionals, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), as well as a number of Dutch IT service providers in a comprehensive framework. Using this framework, the book shows that notwithstanding a large variety in terminology, there is convergence towards a common set of competence profiles. In other words, when looking beyond terminological differences by using the framework, one sees that organizations recognize similar types of architects, and that similar architects in different organisations have similar competence profiles. The framework presented in this book thus provides an instrument to position architecture services as offered by IT service providers and as used by their customers.\ud \ud The framework and the competence profiles presented in this book are the main results of the special interest group “Professionalisation” of the Netherlands Architecture Forum for the Digital World (NAF). Members of this group, as well as students of the universities of Twente and Nijmegen have contributed to the research on which this book is based

Critical Factors Affecting Quality of Building Projects: Professionals Service Providers’ Perspectives

Professional service providers play critical roles in achieving building project goals. They manage every complexity during construction activities to enhance competitiveness and sustainability in the construction industry. Notwithstanding, previous studies lacked in-depth explorations of professional service providers’ views on critical factors affecting the quality of building projects. Consequently, this paper evaluates critical factors that affect the quality of building projects from the professional service providers’ views. A cross-sectional survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire as an instrument of data collection. Various factors that can affect the quality of building projects garnered from extant literature were used to elicit the opinions of Architects, Structural Engineers, Mechanical/Electrical Engineers and Quantity Surveyors who were employed in specific clients’ projects. Severity and frequency responses of each factor were used to determine the importance index, and the ranking of factors among the professionals was determined. Percentage Rank Agreement Factor (PRAF) was used to measure the agreement of the importance ranking. One sample t-test and correlation analysis were used to determine the significance of each factor and the degree of relationships among the professionals. The findings from the research analysis revealed 30 significant factors affecting the quality of building projects. The top five most critical factors are ‘previous relationship with the client’, ‘client’s involvement in design process’, ‘client’s financial position’, ‘ability to choose the right design team’ and ‘new methods for service leverage’. The t-test showed that all the factors are significant towards ensuring quality building projects. A strong correlation exists between Architects and Quantity Surveyors, and between Architects and Structural Engineer. The Architects and M&E Engineers exhibited low correlation. Likewise, the correlation between the Structural Engineers and M&E Engineers was low. This study presents useful insight into the totality of quality from all stakeholders in the industry. It highlights factors that are key to achieving the desired quality of building projects

Decision Support Tools for Cloud Migration in the Enterprise

This paper describes two tools that aim to support decision making during the migration of IT systems to the cloud. The first is a modeling tool that produces cost estimates of using public IaaS clouds. The tool enables IT architects to model their applications, data and infrastructure requirements in addition to their computational resource usage patterns. The tool can be used to compare the cost of different cloud providers, deployment options and usage scenarios. The second tool is a spreadsheet that outlines the benefits and risks of using IaaS clouds from an enterprise perspective; this tool provides a starting point for risk assessment. Two case studies were used to evaluate the tools. The tools were useful as they informed decision makers about the costs, benefits and risks of using the cloud.Comment: To appear in IEEE CLOUD 201

The Future for Architects?

In this study Building Futures sets out to explore the future role of architects, asking: who will design our buildings in 2025; what roles will those trained in architecture be doing then and how will architectural practice have changed as a result? Through a series of one-to-one interviews and round table sessions the study aims to examine the breadth of those who shape the built environment: including traditional architects and those working in expanded fields of practice, as well as clients, consultants and contractors. The resulting speculations should be an opportunity for discussion and interrogation- an exploration of the imminent changes likely to affect the industry over the next 15 years

FOREIGN PROFESSIONALS AND DOMESTIC REGULATION

Changes in demographics and patterns of investment in human capital are creating increased scope for international trade in professional services. The scope for mutually beneficial trade is, however, inhibited not only by quotas and discriminatory taxation, but also by domestic regulation -- including a range of qualification and licensing requirements and procedures. To illustrate the nature and implications of these regulatory impediments, this paper presents a detailed description of the regulatory requirements faced in the United States market by four types of Indian professionals: doctors, engineers, architects, and accountants. India is one of the largest exporters of skilled services, and the United States is one of the largest importers of skilled services, so these two countries reflect broader global trends. The paper argues that regulatory discrimination, for example through preferential recognition agreements, has implications both for the pattern of trade and for welfare. It presents some illustrative estimates that suggest the economic cost of regulations may be substantial. The paper concludes by examining how the trade-inhibiting impact of regulatory requirements could be addressed through bilateral and multilateral negotiations.Accreditation; architect; architects; Architecture; barriers to entry; board meeting; candidate; candidates; career; career advancement; Certificate;

ClouNS - A Cloud-native Application Reference Model for Enterprise Architects

The capability to operate cloud-native applications can generate enormous business growth and value. But enterprise architects should be aware that cloud-native applications are vulnerable to vendor lock-in. We investigated cloud-native application design principles, public cloud service providers, and industrial cloud standards. All results indicate that most cloud service categories seem to foster vendor lock-in situations which might be especially problematic for enterprise architectures. This might sound disillusioning at first. However, we present a reference model for cloud-native applications that relies only on a small subset of well standardized IaaS services. The reference model can be used for codifying cloud technologies. It can guide technology identification, classification, adoption, research and development processes for cloud-native application and for vendor lock-in aware enterprise architecture engineering methodologies

Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) in the Semantic Web: A Multi-Dimensional Review

Since the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) specification and its SKOS eXtension for Labels (SKOS-XL) became formal W3C recommendations in 2009 a significant number of conventional knowledge organization systems (KOS) (including thesauri, classification schemes, name authorities, and lists of codes and terms, produced before the arrival of the ontology-wave) have made their journeys to join the Semantic Web mainstream. This paper uses "LOD KOS" as an umbrella term to refer to all of the value vocabularies and lightweight ontologies within the Semantic Web framework. The paper provides an overview of what the LOD KOS movement has brought to various communities and users. These are not limited to the colonies of the value vocabulary constructors and providers, nor the catalogers and indexers who have a long history of applying the vocabularies to their products. The LOD dataset producers and LOD service providers, the information architects and interface designers, and researchers in sciences and humanities, are also direct beneficiaries of LOD KOS. The paper examines a set of the collected cases (experimental or in real applications) and aims to find the usages of LOD KOS in order to share the practices and ideas among communities and users. Through the viewpoints of a number of different user groups, the functions of LOD KOS are examined from multiple dimensions. This paper focuses on the LOD dataset producers, vocabulary producers, and researchers (as end-users of KOS).Comment: 31 pages, 12 figures, accepted paper in International Journal on Digital Librarie

Circular Economy Snapshot: Philips Light as a Service

Philips, the Dutch lighting, healthcare and consumer lifestyle company and the world's largest lighting supplier, began its sustainability journey in the early 1990s when it set its first sustainability standards. It began by focusing on technology innovations to reduce packaging and increase energy efficiency of its products. This focus shifted over time to consider end-to-end solutions and how the company could influence consumer choices and behaviour. This resulted in a growing portfolio of green product innovations.By the 2000s the company began setting goals to grow its green product portfolio. In 2007 it set a target that 30% of its turnover would be from green product revenues by 2012. In 2012 it set a new goal of 55% of total sales to be 'green' (as of 2013 the proportion stood at 51%), and embedded the target in the corporate scorecard. About one third of its over $2B annual R&D budget is now directed towards green innovation.Today the company's mission is to make the world healthier and more sustainable through innovation and its goal is to improve the lives of 3 billion people a year by 2025. It committed to this mission in 2012 both as a competitive necessity and with the conviction that companies solving the problem of resource constraints will have an advantage. It believes that customers will increasingly consider natural resources in their buying decisions and will give preference to companies that show responsible behavior