DRAFT Minutes
ITANA Conference Call
April 17, 2008
 
 **Attendees**

Jim Phelps, University of Wisconsin - Madison (chair)
Piet Niederhausen, Georgetown University
Chris Mackie, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Michael Enstrom, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Tom Zeller, Indiana University
Duffy Gillman, University of Arizona
Gary Windham, University of Arizona
Steve Massover, University of California - Berkeley
Keith Rajecki, Sun Microsystems
Steve Mullins, University of Alaska
Sue Sharpton, University of Alaska
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)

**Action Items**

[AI] Keith Rajecki will post a summary from Sun's academic advisory committee to the wiki.
[AI] Keith Rajecki is interested in collaborating with someone on the call on a white paper concerning approaches to selling SOA on campus.
[AI] Jim Phelps and Dean Woodbeck will draft a message for the ITANA list about a white paper concerning approaches to selling SOA on campus.
[AI] Sue Sharpton will add an agenda and speaker information to the wiki concerning a meeting being held at the University of Alaska to introduce the concept of Enterprise Architecture.

**Agenda**

(0) Roll Call. Agenda Bash.

  1. Accept minutes of last call
  2. Face 2 Face Meeting Registration
  3. SOA - What are you doing, where are you at?

Items on the shelf:

  1. Future Call - Scott Converse on modified 6Sigma for Higher Ed, UW-Madison, Exec Education Program
  2. Architecture Tool discussion (All)
    1. UC Irvine's open source tool - Protoge
    2. Chicago's I.T. Ecosystem Tool (Tom B)
  3. Paul's piece on Standards for Arch Documents -  standards for architectural documentation (Paul H)
  4. UC-Berkeley Roadmap document (Hebert)
  5. Mellon ESB Assessment - goal? is there date on this? (Mark P)
  6. Mellon New Initiative: Framework for scholarly studies tools (Keith H)
  7. Web CMS RFPs (Jim P)

(99) Next steps, next call

**Face2Face**

Registration is at 20. This weekend, we will take the people on the wait-list (three or four). ITANA members are welcome to distribute the information more widely. At this point, there will be no dial-in. In the future, we may look for a facility that can better handle remote participation.

**Service Oriented Architecture**

The working group discussed the progress of SOA at their institutions.

University of Wisconsin - Wisconsin is rolling out its first composite application - the course guide. That means setting up infrastructure and determining who will run the architecture. An Integration Competency Center would have made this smoother, but the funding did not happen. There are still some questions about how the infrastructure will grow and who will provide funding and support.

Indiana University - Tom Zeller reported on a re-examination of business models as technologies converge. Indiana is looking at rolling together phone, email, Internet access and, perhaps, some other infrastructure into one charge. This would cover some portions of the infrastructure

University of Arizona - The university is deploying PeopleSoft across the enterprise and included funding for tying in SOA methodology and governance as part of the implementation. The proposal included moving to an SOA-based methodology for new applications and migration of the legacy environment to PeopleSoft. Funding included a competency center, which is also integrated with federation activities. In addition, People Soft and other vendors are pushing SOA as the wave of the future.

University of California - Berkeley - UC-Berkeley has proposed a competency center and is  waiting to hear about funding. The center will not be a central IT organization, but will serve as a mechanism for the campus to involve itself in what governance ought to look like. The CIO is convinced of the benefits of SOA.

Sun Microsystems - Keith Rajecki mentioned that Sun has developed an enterprise architecture assessment, a two-day process for clients who are looking to consolidate or standardize projects and may be gathering information in preparation to seek funding. Sun talks to departments on campus and, at the end, present assessments and recommendations.

There was a discussion about whether call participants see SOA in their future. Most do, but the time frame varies greatly. There was also a discussion about Kuali and other academically oriented projects that would be candidates for SOA.

Keith Rajecki from Sun reported on an academic advisory council that met at Sun in February. This group advises Sun on direction and projects related to the academic community. The main topic was Enterprise Architecture and SOA. Most of the CIOs in the room were emphasizing a move to SOA, particularly with all the web services architectures, to drive down costs. [AI] Keith will post a summary from that meeting to the wiki.

One of the challenges that remains at many campuses is convincing those who control the budgets that they need to invest in infrastructure even if they don't have a current project; that they will have future projects.

**Next Steps**

Wisconsin has put up an Enterprise Service Bus and has some services ready to be integrated.

Arizona has engaged with Oracle to do a two-day workshop for mix of technical, business and functional analysts to identify pilot projects to use SOA during the PeopleSoft implementation.

Georgetown, as a short-term next step, will be replacing ERPs and wants to create a web self-service platform to use SOA concepts and serve these ERPs.

**Role for ITANA**

ITANA would be a good clearinghouse for papers or case studies sharing what has worked in convincing leadership of the need for SOA. Another are would be discussions of what it takes for an organization to get ready for SOA. Is it an issue of educating the leadership? Capacity issues? Developing expertise among those who will need to do the implementation?
For many institutions, building SOA is more complex than just deploying off-the-shelf products that provide services but are not integrated.  

Chris Mackie said he would welcome thoughts on what the Mellon Foundation might do to help the SOA process along.

Gary Windham said he sees a common theme -that trying to accomplish this in a top-down manner and tying it to mission-critical applications is not the easiest path to success. Success may require analyzing the type of strategic IT architecture projects that could benefit from SOA, but don't require investing in an SOA suite or an ESB. The organization could deploy web services up to a certain point. The question then is how you convince the institution of the need to move to the next step. Seems like there is a middle ground between top-down and completely grass roots approaches.

[AI] Keith Rajecki is interested in collaborating with someone on the call on a white paper concerning approaches to selling SOA on campus. Chris Mackie mentioned that, if resources are an issue in accomplishing this task, the Mellon Foundation may be in a position to help with resources. The Foundation funded a study last year on ESBs. If the group could identify a strategic plan that demonstrates what needs to be supported and why, there may be a possibility for funding.

[AI] Jim and Dean will draft a message for the ITANA list about the white paper concerning approaches to selling SOA on campus and the possibility for some support.

**University of Alaska and EA**

Alaska will host several speakers on May 29 to help the university understand Enterprise Architecture. The regular ITANA call on May 29 will include an audio conference with some of those speakers. [AI] Sue Sharpton will add an agenda and speaker information on the wiki.

**Next Call, Thursday, May 1, 2008, 2:00 p.m. EDT**

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