FEMA Gives EA Subcontract to REI and IBM

Back in September IBM was awarded with a contract from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help "modernize" their Enterprise Architecture system. The value of the project is approximated to be $915 million over the next 6 years. In latest news just announced here, REI Systems Inc. has been brought on board to assist IBM, and have been awarded a contract with FEMA for around $225 million. Other additional members of this team include: Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., Oracle Corp., and Computer Sciences Corp.

MEGA Expands

As this article reports, MEGA Systems is entering into a new market space: Eastern Europe and Russia. They are being helped along with this venture by BPM International, a company that has headquarters in Budapest, Hungary. This announcement comes on the heals of a previous announcement by MEGA, where they introduced new partners in both the Middle East and Southeast Asia. As ArpAid Solti, a managing director for BPM International, stated:

"With economic development running at a fast pace in Eastern Europe in recent years, enterprises here have been seeking proven solutions and expert advice to help them quickly improve performance and optimize resources. MEGA offers unique and significant high-value process and risk management solutions that help companies take full advantage of business growth"

It has been interesting to note the worldwide expansion of Enterprise Architecture solutions and how quickly it has gone from being simply a buzzword. to commonplace and very necessary.

Path to Become an Enterprise Architect

Praba Siva, in this blog post, created an excellent chart for the path that an individual should follow to become an enterprise architect. He details what type of positions you should hold, for how long, the skill sets learned from each position, as well as what the next steps and positions should be. (Click on diagram to see a larger version)

Alan Inglis, in this blog post, discusses the above chart. He comments that he would add a business entry point, and would also like to see an entry point from an “information or data perspective”.

What are your thoughts? Is there anything else you would add to build on these two authors viewpoints?

Excellence in Enterprise Architecture

In a recent post by Nick Malik, he details how he was asked a question about whether or not Microsoft provides “internal support to create an Enterprsie Architecture program.” Upon reflection, Malik felt that, yes Microsoft does support the EA team. He also remarked on his definition of what constitutes excellence:

Excellent, to me, means that the effort is tailored to the needs of the business. That includes business strategy, business structure, and corporate culture.

His opinion is that this definition of excellence is different for everyone. Do you think there is a common way to define it? And what would you define as attaining excellence for an enterprise architecture program?