Dubai, UAE, March 7th, 2011 - The Second MENA Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference held in the Middle East took place at The Intercontinental Hotel, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates on February 22nd, 2011. The event was hosted by Shift Technologies, sponsored by IBM and Maptech and attended by over 70 executives who shared their experiences on the event's theme "Enabling Best Practices Implementation Using Enterprise Architecture".

Enterprise Architecture is an international best practice that has been adopted by key organizations in the Middle East region. Enterprise architecture provides the discipline, methodology, and practice for translating business vision and strategy into the fundamental structures and dynamics of an enterprise at various levels of abstraction. The models, principles, guidelines, and policies focus the creativity of the organization in areas that need innovation and transformation to establish organizational capabilities aligned with the business strategic intents.

The event featured global leaders in the Enterprise Architecture field including Chris Parnell, Director of The Open Group, Abdallah El Kadi, Managing Director of Open Group Arabia and CEO of Shift Technologies, Jim Hietala, the Vice President of Security for The Open Group, Dr. Christopher Harding, Director for SOA, Semantic Interoperability, and Cloud Computing for The Open Group, and Paul van der Merwe, one of South Africa's most dynamic and insightful EA thought leaders. The event also featured implementation testimonies from organizations including the National Bank of Abu Dhabi by Saher Arar, Head of IT Strategy & Planning, who have endorsed an Enterprise Architecture-driven approach to deliver successful transformation results. To complement these topics the event also featured Dr. Tariq Aslam, IBM MENA Rational Regional Manager, and Sari Eldadah, Advisory IT Specialist, from IBM, the international leader in Enterprise Architecture solutions, who demonstrated how effective tooling is used to achieve efficient Enterprise Architecture results.

The event celebrated the outstanding achievements of industry professionals in the field of Enterprise Architecture and relevant excellence practices through the awarding of The Open Group Arabia Awards. The winners of the awards included, Dubai Customs, Dubai Municipality, Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, Oman Information Technology Authority, National Bank of Abu Dhabi and UAE Ministry Of Economy.

"This event represents the starting point for a long-term engagement for The Open Group in the Arab world. Our mission at The Open Group Arabia is to work closely with regional professionals to develop a working group that can effectively contribute to the initiatives of the enterprise architecture forum.

In the process, The Open Group Arabia will focus on raising the awareness of governments, banking, telecom, oil & gas and other private companies about the value of enterprise architecture and its associated methods, processes and tools" said Abdallah El Kadi, Managing Director of The Open Group Arabia, CEO of Shift Technologies.

 "We are planning monthly activities for the new members of The Open Group Arabia and a number of seminars and workshops around the Arab world to help establish a common understanding of what enterprise architecture means and how it can be applied effectively to provide a solid platform for effective organizational transformation" he added.

About The Honors
Dubai Municipality / Winner: Strategic Planning Category
One of the renowned schools of excellence, in general, and a recognized leader in strategic planning and performance management, in particular, Dubai Municipality (DM) has taken a pioneering approach to integrating strategic planning and performance management with their enterprise architecture practice.

The partnership between the Information Technology and the Strategy and Performance Management departments has led to the implementation of one of the first EA-driven strategic planning and performance management lifecycle automation solutions.

The implementation of this solution will enable DM to enhance the effectiveness of strategic planning through an integrated and holistic view of the organization, all the while, transforming performance management from a reporting practice to the source of continuous improvement supported by an actionable enterprise architecture platform.

Abu Dhabi Judicial Department / Winner: Performance Management Category
The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department (ADJD) is a previous winner of the Open Group's Enterprise Architecture Practitioners awards, where they won in the Technology Excellence category in 2009.

ADJD's submission for this year highlighted their leadership, vision and commitment toward an extended enterprise architecture practice. Their application showcased one of the very first EA-driven portfolio management practices in the region.

This implementation was built on their maturing EA practice and had the objective of enabling management to direct investment where it would deliver the highest performance improvement - essentially, maximizing the return of their allocated budgets.

UAE Ministry of Economy / Winner: IT Strategic Planning Category
A ministry vital to the success of any government, the UAE's Ministry of Economy (MOE) had the challenge of developing an Information Technology (IT) strategy that would enable it to modernize its technology capabilities in line with the set business strategy and its related priorities.

To accomplish this IT development and ensure its alignment to business, it was imperative that the organization be able to visualize the current IT state, define the future state and develop the execution strategy and steps which would enable the realization of that future state, and, in turn, support the attainment of the set business strategy.

Upon review of the business imperatives, outlining of the current IT state and defining the future state, MOE embarked on a capability evolution program that enabled the optimization of key IT processes and the development of the required competencies. The outcome was a solid foundation for effective business transformation built on top of the EA repository and supported by a competent team.

National Bank of Abu Dhabi / Winner: Technology Excellence Category 
The National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) has positioned their EA practice as one of the core capabilities necessary for the effective planning and successful implementation of the latest technologies in support of their customer ever-evolving needs and continuously changing market conditions.

The initiation of NBAD's EA practice included the definition of all the key elements necessary for achieving and sustaining architecture value, including the definition of a program charter, EA content framework, EA lifecycle, segment architecture, EA governance, and maturity model supported by an EA repository.

Currently, the practice is focusing on assessing the technology landscape to consolidate technologies, eliminate redundancy, maximize utilization and minimize support and maintenance costs and efforts.

Moreover, NBAD is in the planning stages to direct the EA practice's efforts toward demystifying the complexity of its operating model and managing the associated business challenges through a disciplined approach and effective partnerships with the different business stakeholders.

Oman ITA / Special Recognition : Enterprise Architecture Excellence : Foundation
Oman's Information Technology Authority (ITA) is responsible for the entire country's e-government initiative with the mandate of building an efficient and transparent platform for public services.

Oman ITA has laid down exceptional EA ground work that will provide a very solid foundation for them to successfully act on their responsibilities as an organization.

The definition of a comprehensive set of reference models, a content framework supported by an integrated metamodel and governance structure, the definition of an architecture lifecycle and an architecture assessment tool are outcomes of the exemplary efforts exerted by Oman ITA. All of these are key constituents for enabling Oman Government to ensure alignment and standardization in the deployment of the e-government integrated services.

Dubai Customs / Special Recognition : Enterprise Architecture Excellence : Implementation
Dubai Customs (DC) received this award for their pioneering enterprise architecture practice.

DC's EA practice application attracted the evaluation committee's attention by its ability to sustain its value to the business over a period of almost 5 years. While many organizations succeed in establishing EA practices, only few succeed in maintaining those practices let alone evolving them into business advisory bodies, as Dubai Customs has done.

In recognition of their EA practice's overall performance over the last 5 years and in recognition of their leadership in the enterprise architecture domain, the committee has decided to grant this special award to Dubai Customs.

- Ends -

About The Sponsors
About The Open Group
The Open Group is a vendor-neutral and technology-neutral international consortium that works towards enabling integrated access to information within and between enterprises based on open standards and global interoperability.

About Shift Technologies
Shift Technologies is a pioneering IT and Business consulting firm that enables government and commercial clients to transform best practice concepts into effective organizational capabilities. Shift Technologies has for some time been an established member of The Open Group in the United Arab Emirates through the TOGAF training and certification program it provides. Shift Technologies has now partnered with The Open Group to launch The Open Group Arabia to promote global standards to companies in the region. This is an important step toward The Open Group's goal of facilitating better access to information among different enterprises, firewalls and borders.

About The Open Group Arabia
The Open Group Arabia is the latest branch of The Open Group that provides localized access to information such as The Open Group Architecture Framework™ (TOGAF™), as well as hosting conferences and events that bring executives and practitioners in the region together to share and learn how enterprise architecture frameworks and security standards can be of benefit to company operations. The Open Group Arabia is open for members to join from the Arabic-speaking countries of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemen.

About Maptech
Maptech, a member of AlMazroui Group of Companies, is a business and IT consultancy firm that provides complete high level Enterprise Lifecycle management solutions. Based on International standards and best practices, Maptech helps organizations, government ministries and departments to achieve their strategic goals and transforming them into the new business era where alignment and inter coordination between the components and departments through building the organization models.

About IBM
IBM is a global technology and innovation company that stands for progress. With operations in over 170 countries, IBMers around the world invent and integrate hardware, software and services to help forward-thinking enterprises, institutions and people everywhere succeed in building a smarter planet.

© Press Release 2011