Fountainhead of progress

Enter the Chief Architect, an "emerging executive role in corporations tasked with bridging the gap between IT and business management," states Blue Titan CEO Frank Martinez. "The Chief Architect is a trusted resource to both executives and technologists, championing IT innovation for increased business responsiveness and profitability."

Whereas "architect" may have had connotations of a technically focused IT leader in the past, Martinez makes the case that this role is expanding -- and indeed must."Major enterprises are leveraging Chief Architects because they need someone who understands how technology affects business. As Chief Architects look for ways to simplify and maximize the benefits of increasingly complex enterprise environments, solutions that marry near-term technology 'demands' with long-term architecture and design 'needs' will be held at a premium. Chief Architects know that only well-designed enterprise architectures can aggregate these needs in a cost-effective, elegant and scaleable fashion."

Offering compelling examplesfrom the world of financial services, consumer electronics and the pharmaceutical industry, Martinez contends that"technology is not the primary impediment towards realizing Enterprise SOA today. The new Chief Architect realizes that SOA success happens for business as well as for technical reasons. The visionary thinking and actions of the Chief Architect enable them to leverage the most innovative technology but implement it within specific business needs in politically savvy methods."
Recognizing that agility and change are now vital to success, Martinez argues that today'sChief Architects are "moving their service-oriented architecture towards a truly adaptive infrastructure that leverages resources and systems for economies that culminate in competitive strength."