Oracle Magazine - September/October 2010

Something Old,
Something New
Bridging the generation gap—in enterprise architecture

Enterprise architecture is about change, about how a business evolves from its as-is to its to-be state. But if you think getting from as-is to to-be is a simple matter of swapping out old technologies, think again.

“Enterprise architecture,” says Oracle ACE Director Mike van Alst, “has almost nothing to do with technology.” But it has almost everything to do with people.

On the organizational/human side of the enterprise architecture equation, the convergence of Baby Boomers and members of Generations X and Y—as both employees of the enterprise and as its customers—has exposed differences in each generation’s experience and expectations. Does bridging the generation gap hold an important key to enterprise architecture success?

Do fish swim?

“A lot of the old architects—well, I’m one
of them—have I T backgrounds,” observes van
Alst, an independent architect. “A lot of the
younger architects have more of a business
background. That helps the older architects
maintain a focus on business properties.”
Younger architects, in turn, can benefit
from the fact that older architects have been
around the block more than once. “We can
help them,” van Alst says, “by adding our
experience with all those solutions that did
not work well for the last 25 years.”
That experience can also help to imbue
younger architects with a long view that can
counteract the hype that often surrounds
new technologies.

“Usually, in 10 years of experience,
people have been sucked into enough hype
cycles that they get a little jaded,” says Jeff
Davies, a principal product manager at
Oracle. “They’re no longer going to believe
that Technology X is going to save the world.”
But Davies warns that hype-resistant
architects shouldn’t become closed-minded.

“You need to have a healthy skepticism of
the technologies you’re looking at, but you
need to be open to new ideas,” he says. “You
need to be looking to the future.”
Of course, any roadmap to the enterprise’s
future has a starting point in the past. “New

“Change is
happening faster
because you have
more different
generations of
people in
companies now.”

—Mike van Alst, Independent Architect

technologies are always popping up, and
things are always evolving,” says Oracle
ACE Director Jordan Braunstein, founder of
Visual Integrator Consulting. “The enterprise
architect has to keep up with the pace of
change,” says Braunstein, “but he’s got to
be retrospective as well. Maybe he’s got to
understand what that old COBOL system is
doing so that he has a better understanding of
how to support the business. The enterprise
architect has to be able to dive into these old
systems and create business models on top of
them, and abstract them and leverage them.”
Although old technologies still have a
place in the evolving enterprise, stasis at any
level poses a significant problem.

“Don’t forget that the biggest part of the
workforce is older, and those people are in
charge,” says van Alst. “So you see that the
pace of change within the organization is
usually slower than the pace of change in
the marketplace.”
But that imbalance is far from permanent.

“Change is happening faster because you have more different generations of people in companies now,” van Alst says.

Finding ways to bridge the gaps between those generations within the enterprise can help to facilitate change and keep pace with the rapidly evolving marketplace. Social computing is likely to play a significant role.

“Younger people are used to doing things
with other people even if they don’t know
them, don’t see them,” says van Alst. “These
are our potential customers for the next
few years, but they are also our potential
employees. So you have two forces to
contend with: your marketplace demands it,
and your own employees demand it. Social
computing is definitely going to change the
way we think and work.”
Bridging the enterprise generation gap is
more than just a nice idea. “Cooperation in
itself will be a very pervasive principle,” says
van Alst, adding that it’s “a guiding principle
for enterprise architecture.” W

Bob Rhubart

( bob.rhubart@oracle.com)
is manager of the
architect community
on Oracle Technology
Network, the host of the
Oracle Technology Network Arch2Arch podcast
series, and the author of the ArchBeat blog
( blogs.oracle.com/archbeat).