Updates on the UAF Standard and UAF Certification

Aurelijus Morkevicius of Dassault Systèmes and Chair of the OMG's UPDM/UAF Group, chats with OMG Chairman & CEO Bill Hoffman about recent momentum for the Unified Architecture Framework® standard and its new certification program.

Learn more about UAF® at the OMG Standards Development Organization website: https://www.omg.org/uaf/

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
Hello, I'm Karen, Quatromoni,
Director of Public Relationsfor Object Management Group.
Welcome to our OMG Podcast series. At OMG,
we're known for driving industrystandards and building tech communities.
Today we're focusing on OMGStandards Development Orrganization,
which maintains and owns its ownstandards for the benefit of the industry.

(00:31):
Thanks in large.
Prior to the passion of our members andthe organizations that sponsor them,
we are here today with
OMG CEO and Chairman Bill Hoffman whowill lead today's podcast session with OMG
member, Dr. Aurelijus Morkevicius,
Industry Process ConsultingDirector at Dassault Systèmes..

(00:52):
Hey. Thank you Aurelijus.Thank you for joining us today.
Can you tell us a little bit aboutyourself, your experience with the UAF,
why Dassault Systèmes joined and issuch an active member of the OMG?
Sure. Thank you for having me. I'mwith UAF since the very beginning.
I took part in preparing RFPfor the initial submission

(01:15):
before I was engaged with
UPDMA unified profile for DAF and moaf.
It's the predecessor of the UAFand I've been involved since
2010,
so it's going to be my 15year anniversary OMG in March.
And in general I'm working withArchitecture Framework since 2008 when

(01:38):
I joined Nomad Inc.
Which was later acquiredby Dassault Systèmes.
Excellent, excellent. WellI go back the same as you.
I remember when we started UAF and Iremember when we designed the first logo
for it and we were hoping that itwas going to gain some traction.
So here we are now many, many years later.

(02:00):
Can you describe a little bit aboutthe history we've gone through?
Well before UAF, we hadwhat I mentioned UPDM,
the purpose of which was toenable interoperability between
Department of Defense ArchitectureFramework and Ministry of Defense
Architecture Framework.

(02:21):
Later UAF became frameworkof its own still keeping
relationships to DOD andMOD and NATO frameworks.
But UAF expanded towards otherindustries and applications.
In other words, we commercializedit and the major purpose of
UAF is to provide the vocabulary

(02:44):
organization and processworkflow to develop
architectures of complex systemssuch as enterprises mission,
system of system, military programs.
It's primarily, it's calledEnterprise Architecture Framework.
And basically it is toarchitect everything that

(03:08):
falls under the definition of enterprise,
which according to Inco isdefined as a large undertaking,
especially one of the largescope complication and risk
in general. People constantlymix it with organization,
but enterprise organization isan enterprise but enterprise

(03:30):
can be much more than the organization.And in contrast to system L,
we are taking all the bestpractices from CML and on top of it
provide vocabulary used byarchitects and engineers every
day. Example, concepts ofcapability function system,

(03:52):
it's all there in new a f language.
So you mentioned the architecturefor both the military
and also non-military applications.Can you talk a little bit about that?
Because most people think of UAF andthey think of Department of Defense or.
MOD that that's very true, yes.

(04:13):
But as I mentioned,
as we commercialize UAF andwe get rid of some of the
very specific military termsthat we had in the previous
UPDM,
it start gaining some traction indifferent industries And from time to
time we see different applications in UAF

(04:35):
summit, which we organizetogether with OMG every March.
Like last year for example,
there was a brilliant presentationfrom John Deere applying UAF for a
system of system in the farming area.
Also, in the past we've seen multipleapplications and for example,

(04:57):
electric road developments in Sweden
and Veteran hospital in us.
So there are definitely moreand more of these applications,
but at the same time we have toour work together before MGS to
really increase awareness of suchuse cases so that we gain even

(05:21):
more traction from Iwould say even broader
scope of industries reallycoming and adapting UAF.
That's interesting. So howdo you see UAF evolving?
Well, UAF evolved
more from the military context,

(05:41):
but now as we get more and morefeedback from these organizations who
join OMG and participate in the OMG,
they actually bring a lot ofrequirements that we take in account
developing new versions ofthe specification of UAF.

(06:03):
So it's constantly dynamically growing
standard,
taking in count all the feedback wemanaged to get from different industries.
What's the nice thing about the OMGprocess is that it does future proof
the standards,
which is of course super important forlarge organizations like the MOD and the

(06:24):
Department of Defense and NATO andthese folks that have basically long,
long life cycles for their deployments.
So when organizations decide to use UAF,
what are the implementation challengesthat they might face and how would they
overcome them?
Well, in general,

(06:44):
I think overall the majorchallenge is really I
would say a fear of something unknown.
So as UAF is getting more awareness,
but it's still not very wellknown in other industries
and some of the systemengineering efforts that we

(07:05):
see today, they definitely goway beyond engineering a product.
It was really the focus in thepast. But what we see today,
the system engineering programs,they involve multiple products,
multiple services, projects, missions,
and a lot of risk which at the end,

(07:26):
according to the koi definition,
they turned these kind of programs into
enterprises. And this iswhere UAF is a perfect fit,
but as people are not somuch aware with terminology,
it's very commonly thought ofthat UAF is something to model

(07:47):
organization or as you mentioned before,
some military program.
It might be the case butmore often it could be
different and we couldhave UAF applied for
many different projects andmany different industries

(08:08):
because what I really see sometimesis that organizations that are not
aware they take A-C-M-L-C-M-Lis really foundation. It
provides you some conceptslike block activity,
but it doesn't speak your language.
And what happens is that theseorganizations, they start extending it,
they start adding their concepts,they start adding customizations.

(08:30):
This is very expensive.
We've seen many examples where if youstart customizing different software
solutions that you use forengineering and architecting,
it's a big cost at the end.
And the results they create is somethingsimilar to UAF because at the end it's
terminology that is used in this domain.

(08:50):
And we really think thatthe more awareness we create
on UAF,
more industries and more differentorganizations would become interested
in applying it towardsdifferent problem solving.
Great. I know the March event,
we had I think over 600 participants sothere's obviously a lot of interest in

(09:13):
UAF and when I went throughand looked at the attendees,
it did vary from militaryto a lot of non-military
organizations,
which was really quite surprising to meto see that it is reaching outside its
classic defense military foundation where
we started with it all way back when.

(09:35):
So one of the things we need to do tohelp this get better in place is to
certify people in the basicterminology and how to use it.
And I know we're just ready tolaunch the first UAF certification
exam.
Maybe you can talk a little bit abouthow that could help people to get used to
UAF and how it might help themto jumpstart their activities.

(09:59):
Absolutely.
I think it's a great example of howwe try to raise awareness of UAF
and it's been a goal forus in the UAF working group
to get to the certification.
But first we needed to achievesome maturity in terms of adoption so that we can
really justify there is a need and wecan get all the sponsorship in place and

(10:23):
we can get people to do questions.
I think it's almost about a time,
as you mentioned in UAF summit,
we are having 600 700 participants,
which compares back 10 years ago.
I remember one of the first oneswe had eight people in the room.
You Levi, and five or six others.

(10:47):
Exactly.
And that I think explains that we are atthe right time to launch certification
program,
which is really the way forarchitects and engineers to
get recognition on their expertise.
And for OMG and the UAF team,
it's really an opportunity to raiseawareness, what we already discussed,

(11:10):
and really educate the market hopingfor more adoption in the future.
Well I think that it's great. We'vespent I think a little over 14,
15 months now building the first exam.
So we we're looking for it actually tohit the market next month in November
if all goes well.
So congratulations for a lot of hardwork to get that exam to the point

(11:33):
where it is today.
I think it's going to be a very importantoffering to help people better learn
about how to apply UAF and to see theadvantages of how it can work for their
organization. I could ask you howcompanies become certified in UAF,
but I can also tell you thatthey basically need to go to the website once we've
announced the exam register. Sothat's pretty self-explanatory.

(11:57):
Any final words you'd like to say aboutUAF and Dassault and where this is
all going?
Well in general, I'mvery happy that Dassault
is really continuing to invest in
OMG and in standards like system ML or UAF

(12:17):
and really being the sponsor of themeetings of the certification program
that shows that there is really a bigvalue in what we're actually doing.
And basically we're successfullycontinuing from the previous
being just a small company.
No magic now being apart of the big family

(12:40):
and one may be more word on thecertification to add is that,
as you mentioned,
we're going to kick off pretty soonand this first certificate will be
targeting to model readers.
So it's really targetingvery broad audience.
It's not for just superduper experts of UAF,

(13:01):
but it's basically toeveryone who is involved in
architecting in the engineeringeffort, like managers,
architects, engineers, IT people. So
it's really very broad. And thenwe will go to the other tiers.
So we will go more advanced in thesecond and third tier and we will see

(13:25):
if we are going to need the first one.
But first we are going to kick off withthe basic model reader certificate.
Excellent. Excellent.
Well it sounds great and it isbeen exciting watching UAF take the
position it has now in the industry.
So my thanks to you and to the teamfor pushing it as hard and as fast as

(13:45):
you did and look where it got ustoday. So once again, Mike, thanks.
Well thank you for all the support.
Thank you. We talked with OMGmember, Dr. Aurelijus Morkevicius,
industry Process Consultingdirector at Dassault Systèmes.
We hope you learned more aboutOMG's UAF certification program.

(14:06):
UAF certification makes usingUAF easier for enterprise and IT
systems architects, systemsengineers, business executives,
enterprise and program managers,
hardware and software developersand modelers. Thank you.