History of Itana

Itana was founded on March 2, 2007.  Itana is jointly supported by EDUCAUSE and Internet2.  Itana started as a peer group for IT Architects in Academia (thus ITANA).  Its focus was to grow the pool of IT Architects.  The early charter (version 1.0) did not include any type of governance beyond the chair.  At first, Jim Phelps ran the group as CG Leader and Chair.  As the group gained steam and matured, he decided that he needed to formalize the activities of Itana and broaden the scope.  

In 2011, the Itana Rebranding Team formed to think about how architecture practice had changed and how Itana should shift to align with this change. The first thing the team did, was develop a capability map for Itana.  This called out the major deliverables and goals and activities of Itana.  It gave us a framework to focus work and working groups.  

Version 2 of the Charter was adopted at this time.  It called out specifically the capabilities and how Itana’s efforts support them.  The name was changed from ITANA to Itana to represent the fact that the focus of Itana now included Enterprise, Business and Technical Architects.  (See Leadership Lessons from Capability Mapping for the Jim’s take on how this helped him as chair and CG leader.)