Winners of the Global Digital Architecture Ratings & Excellence 2019 were announced during the Awards function held at Courtyard by Marriott, Central Park in New York on November 21, 2019.
The winners are selected after four rounds of evaluation that included live video interactions and three days of onsite assessment in New York. Over 300 nominations were received from 30 countries for the key categories – Digital Strategy, Various Industry Verticals, Digital & Enterprise IT, and Digital & Enterprise Management.
This year, we further refined the On-Site assessment process of 2018 with the addition of a comprehensive Rating Report. Once again, the onsite assessment was key to decide the winners of the 2019 edition of Global Architecture Ratings & Awards, re-emphasizing that the Architecture World Summit in New York was more of a “walk-in assessment” program than a conference.
This year, the nomination process started in March 2019 and concluded by the last week of November. The Evaluation was organized by six major regions, namely the US, Canada, Europe, APAC & ANZ, India and Middle East & Africa. After various regional rounds, 30 companies were invited for the final round at the New York to the Architecture Ratings & Awards Summit on 19-20-21 November for an onsite assessment. The projects and initiatives are evaluated for over 120 parameters, which are organized around fourteen groups, including the complexity of the problem, the quality of Architecture artifacts, Architecture Governance, Performance Indicators, Perceived business benefits, Innovativeness of the solution, etc.
Even this year, we found that most of the Enterprises have created custom Architecture Framework and internal methodologies to create architecture-centric business and technology solutions. Some of the highest-rated projects demonstrated valuable framework concepts and methods such as
Architecture Methodology for Digital Transformation of Flight Cockpit Operation.
Architecture Methodology for Product Development of new Digital Product in Media.
Architecture Methodology for Cloud Migration.
Architecture Methodology for SoA Services.
Architecture Methodology for IT Landscape Rationalisation.
Architecture Methodology for Business Intelligence & Analytics Software development.
Architecture Methodology for Artificial Intelligence Enabled Software development.
Methodology for Business Process Improvement and.
Architecture Methodology for Patterns Development.
ICMG Architecture Rating program evaluates the Business value as well as Technology execution actualities. These Architecture Methodologies highlighted many business benefits, including the elimination of the manual inspection process at train entry/leaving the yards, improving Crop Health,saving time for Aircraft maintenance, reveal tax reporting irregularities, etc. As in the case of several projects, architecture centricity produced uniformity in applying design patterns for cybersecurity, reduction in average development time for IT solutions, reduced downtimes, increasing the availability of the services to the end-users.
The summit also included several keynotes and interactive sessions by the project heads and chief architects of the finalist organizations. Mr. John Zachman discussed Why Architecture is Key to Innovation in the Digital World and also deliberated on Why Enterprise Architecture is The Issue Of The Century. Mr. Sunil Dutt Jha, CEO of ICMG International, was candid in highlighting that Why CEOs Are Best Suited To Own Enterprise Architecture.
In the panel discussions “How We Improved Our Digital Architecture for Digital Transformation,” Chief Digital Strategists shared their valuable insights. While the
session on “Why We Need REAL Architecture for Artificial Intelligence Systems to Deliver,” saw animated discussions by the Chief Architects. These discussions provided an excellent opportunity for the finalists to get a feel for emerging trends and understand the advancement in the field of Digital and Enterprise Architecture.
Our evaluations also included how well finalists addressed the concerns about their project as well as related to other projects. The final round (onsite assessment), contributed to around 30% weightage to the overall evaluation process.
John A. Zachman, well known as the “Father” of Enterprise Architecture, and who created the Zachman Framework - the Periodic Table for the Enterprise, graced the occasion once again with multiple keynotes, and also actively participated in many case study review sessions. Also, Dr. Alex Samarin (Managing Partner ICMG Europe), Krish Ayyar (Managing Partner ICMG Australia), and Sunil Dutt Jha (CEO ICMG International) were part of the on-site assessment team.
India were the winners of Business Intelligence and Analytics for their “Opportunity Discovery Engine,” whereas Ontario Treasury Board Secretariat got the Best Architecture for Artificial Intelligence enabled Solution for “Cognitive Computing and Innovative Services Team.”
In the Enterprise Management category, award for Improving Business by Improving Process went to Dubai Customs for their “Smart Refund” Project, and Enterprise Architecture award was jointly won by TOFAS of Turkey for “Enterprise Architecture Establishment” and the Regional Municipality of Peel of Canada for “Vision, Strategy & Architecture enabling transformation of Peel’s Digital Government Services.” Ontario Government, Treasury Board Secretariat, Central Agencies I&IT Cluster won the Architecture Methodology & Governance award for “Architecture, Information Management, and Project Management Office (AIP)’s Architect.
In the Digital Strategy Category, Best New Product & Service offering was won by Al Yaum for Media of Saudi Arabia for their “E-Paper Digital Solution,” and Best Digital Strategy to Execution was won by Mainstream Renewable Power of Ireland for “Sustainable Digital Transformation.”
In the Digital Enterprise Management Strategy Category, Vector Energy of New Zealand were the winners of Digital Architecture for Digital Solution and Digital Architecture Governance awards for their “Reference Architecture Template – Architecture as a Code.” Canadian National Railways took out the Award for Digital Transformation for their “Digital Automation Inspection Portal.”
In the Enterprise & Digital IT Category, Best Software Architecture for IT Products went to Call Health from India for their “Integrated Healthcare Platform for Individual and Institutional customers, globally!”. TOFAS of Turkey were the winners of SoA Vision for Enterprise Services for “Enterprise Service Architecture (SoA),” SaskPower of Canada received the IT Landscape Rationalisation award for “Technical Debt, Sustainment Investability triage by Business Criticality and Technical Integrity.” Tata SIA Airlines of ure Practice.”
Winners of the Industry Verticals Category were:
Cathay Pacific Airways – Best Digital Architecture in Airlines for “Digital enablement of Flight Operations to achieve Paperless Cockpit.”
ICICI Bank - Best Digital Architecture in Agriculture / Dairy for “SatFarm Intelligence – Satellite-Based Architecture for Rural Portfolio”
TVS Credit Services - Best Digital Architecture in Financial Services for “TVSCS – A Move towards Enterprise Technology Transformation”
Public Works Authority - ASHGHAL (Qatar) - Best Digital Architecture in Federal/State Govt for “Ashghal Digital Transformation Journey”
Al Yaum for Media, Saudi Arabia - Best Digital Architecture in Media & Entertainment for “Al Yaum E-Paper Digital Solution”
Regional Municipality of Peel, Canada - Best Digital Architecture in Local Government Enterprise Architecture for “Vision, Strategy & Architecture enabling the transformation of Peel’s Digital Government Services.”
Tata Consultancy Services, India - Best Digital Architecture in IT Service Delivery Function for “DevOps Transformation of TCS Corporate IT”
Wood, India - Best Digital Architecture in Shared Services for “Transformational Journey of Wood - P&O Global Shared Services”
Philips, Netherlands - Best Digital Architecture in Healthcare (Hospitals) for “Philips HealthSuite Reference Architecture”
John A Zachman said, "The Zachman Framework is The ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE. When the Framework is employed together with Architecture Methodologies, the Architectures will guarantee Predictability and Business Agility, which is key to Innovation. Ontology plus Methodology creates Architecture. The methodology, by itself, creates Legacy. "
It’s important to create single variable architecture models than creating multi-variable implementation models and call it “Architecture”. Single variable models are key to longevity of Architecture. Also, it’s important to link strategy models to the operational models using six stages of reification.Though projects have made some efforts in this direction,more work needs to be done to realize the real value of doing Enterprise.
Krish Ayyar, Managing Partner for Australia, New Zealand, and the Asia Pacific, said,
“In recent times, senior management is facing the daunting task of fixing business realities with IT limitations (technology obsolescence, change & complexity management). Enterprise Modelling using Enterprise Architecture Framework can contribute significantly towards Business Agility.”
Dr. Alexander Samarin, the Managing Partner for Europe, said, “It is exciting to see some great Projects coming out of Europe, Canada, and the Middle East. All of the On-Site assessment presentations are of the highest quality”.
Sunil Dutt Jha – CEO of ICMG International, commented - “Digital Architecture is key to Digital Transformation. Of course, Digital Architecture is not a random set of models drawn for just a few stakeholders. Understanding of Digital Anatomy is the key to create Digital Architecture with single variable enterprise elements. We are judicious in rating and reviewing the architecture of Enterprises and the projects that contribute to the backbone of progress. We are thankful to the management and project heads who entrust us with the responsibilities of architecture rating of their projects and solutions for valuable insight.”
About ICMG :
ICMG is a leading full-service Enterprise & IT Architecture Firm, providing architectural services to a wide variety of clients (over 20 domains) across 40 countries. For nearly 20 years, we have specialized in making visions into realities by supplying “architecture ideas & models” to more than 1600 organizations across the world. In the last 14 years, ICMG Global Architecture Rating & Excellence Program, which is driven by an independent jury, has become a global benchmark of excellence with the leading companies across the globe participating every year.
Important URLs:
ICMG Architecture Ratings: https://www.architecturerating.com
Winners 2019 : https://www.architecturerating.com/global-enterprise-2019
Awards Album 2019: https://www.architecturerating.com/new-york-2019
Contact Us:
Krish Ayyar (Managing Partner, ICMG International) at krish.ayyar@icmgworld.com