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  • Principal Architect, Great Software Laboratory Pvt, Ltd.

    Q: How long have you been involved with The Open Group?

    We became a Silver Member in late 2018. But I’d been referring to TOGAF® and ArchiMate® for my work for over 6 months before we decided to become a member.


    Q. What do you do, and how long have you been doing it? 

    I’m primarily a software developer and architect, consulting with our clients to design products/platforms. I’ve designed solutions/platforms for diverse areas like Online Video Conferencing, CRM, Smart Cities, IIoT, Voice-based wellness etc. My technical background is primarily database/data-warehouse and server-side systems, with increasing focus on data science in last couple of years.

    I’ve been a software developer for 15 years, and have increasingly focused on systems design and architecture since last 6-8 years.

    In last couple of years, I’m also intermittently consulting with enterprises in the capacity of an enterprise architect, e.g. integration roadmap for post-acquisition consolidation, designing cloud-native and scalable systems, etc.


    Q: Why did your organization become a member of The Open Group Architecture Forum and what does your involvement look like?  

    We became a member of The Open Group Architecture Forum to be more closely involved in the evolution of the TOGAF standard and related activities.

    The initial focus is to get deeper insights into the motivating factors behind the standards by working first-hand with the experts behind it, and attain greater clarity for applying the vast knowledge-base gathered therein.

    The longer-term focus is to contribute to the forum activities, the TOGAF Standand and related standards, to the best of our abilities by sharing our learnings obtained while consulting for our customers and partners. We believe we have good mix of experience working with enterprises as well as enterprise-software and technology companies, both mature and startups; whereby we have practical experience in what I can now refer to as adaptations of ADM-like methods in evolving architectures.


    Q: How has membership in The Open Group benefited you, your organization and the industry at large?

    It’s benefiting me directly by giving me access to an industry standard, elaborate yet structured vocabulary and thought process, particularly w.r.t TOGAF + ArchiMate. As a member of The Open Group I can leverage this in my consultation for our clients and partners, as well as, to close the loop, participate in the standards’ evolution process based on our experience.

    For many of our startup customers (e.g. Series A funding stage with critical time-to-market factors), the ability to portray the architectures at varying levels of abstractions and viewpoints which can act as influencing inputs for the strategic product roadmap is a very dire need. The roadmap has to cater to systematic evolution of the architecture as well as the products’ transition from PoC àversion-1 àstable releases whilst incorporating innovation throughout. And I believe that TOGAF and ArchiMate (adapted as needed) are highly applicable here as well, rather than just “controlling change” for large enterprises.

    We are thereby able to provide more value, in more diverse ways, to our customers/partners.

    I’m hopeful that over time, our membership in The Open Group would benefit the industry via our contributions to the forums, and indirectly via the value we provide to our customers in various verticals and technologies resulting in applied case studies of architecture best practices.


    Q: What contributions do you hope to bring to The Open Group?

    Participation in the forum-activities and standards, particularly around TOGAF and ArchiMate. More so in the newly initiated activities such as Information Architecture and Next-gen EA.


    Q: Why is it important for other organizations to join The Open Group?

    For the organizations: To benefit from the vast body of experience and knowledge culled in their standards and forum activities. 

    For the larger software/IT industry: The industry unfortunately still suffers from lack of a universally accepted vocabulary across the business and technology domains and people, and the more we accept and refine a standard, the better it is for the industry as a whole. Foundation and common-system architectures need to be established as reference standards, and a consortium like The Open Group seems best suited for that kind of collaborative activity.

    I can also imagine, somewhat ambitiously and dreamily, having more common-systems architectures as standards over coming years e.g. around data-science platforms, digital-twin-of-organization etc.


    Q: What are your hobbies?

    Regular hobbies: Chess and traveling

    Sporadic hobby: Reading mathematics/physics, especially history (e.g. evolution of number systems and logic systems) and pure/abstract math (e.g. category theory)


    Q: What book are you currently reading?

    “Enterprise Architecture at Work” by Marc Lankhorst et al., and “Building Evolutionary Architectures” by Neal Ford et al.

    “The Road to Reality” by Roger Penrose

    “Topoi: The Categorial Analysis of Logic” by Robert Goldblatt

     

    Q.  What social networks do you belong to?

    LinkedIn  https://www.linkedin.com/in/srinath-k/

     

    Q: Any last thoughts?

    It seems to me that architects are the only folks who are trying to define what “architecture” means in the software/IT industry, let alone the different shapes and sizes (enterprise/solution/data/business etc.) of architects – e.g. Martin Fowler’s “Who needs an architect?” comes to mind. Apart from the so-called architects, everyone else seems to knowwhat architecture is, and who architects are.

    I’ve been on this quest to understand/define what architecture is, for my own sanity, for the last 3-4 years – I guess that makes me an architect?

    Objectively, I believe standards like TOGAF are crucial to establish industry-wide expertise in this area of architecture – whatever that is; for this, TOGAF et al. need to be more accessible, and toned-down, more easily digestible, versions of it would be very helpful. While almost everyone seems to associate TOGAF with “Enterprise Architecture” and large enterprises, the refined thought process and vocabulary e.g. the phased ADM, the classification methodology of enterprise continuum all seem very much applicable to product, platform and solution architecture as well, in my limited experience.

    In somewhat loose TOGAF terms, the industry at large may benefit from solution-architecture, platform-architecture etc. viewpoints of the TOGAF standard itself.

    Looking forward to fruitful collaboration with other members of The Open Group to benefit the industry at large, and excited to be a part of this opportune journey.

     

    Bio

    Srinath Krishnamurthy is a Principal Architect and has been with GSLab since 2012. A computer science graduate from Pune University, his early background was with designing metadata-based analytic systems around data warehouses in diverse domains such as CRM and LifeSciences. In recent years his focus has been in addressing challenges around translating early stage business vision to IT requirements and architecture for technology startups, and consulting with enterprise customers for architecture evolution. 

    At GSLab, he revels in fertile collaboration with experts and partners in IoT, Media, Data Science, Identity Mgmt and other technologies/disciplines in creating interdisciplinary architectures and solutions for various domains and verticals.