In Step With: Sohel Aziz, Principal Architect, Infosys Technologies
Like it or not, the tidal wave of globalization over the last two decades has created the new cross-cultural contemporary. You would recognize this new international sort, sporting satellite communication devices and flitting effortlessly across continents on commercial missions of global import.
In the world of Enterprise Architecture, one such cross-cultural contemporary would be Sohel Aziz, Principal Architect and Head of Technology Consulting, Europe of Infosys Technologies Ltd. and co-author of Infosys Conducts Its Own EA Survey in this issue of Architecture & Governance Magazine.
Born in Bangladesh (back when it was still known as East Pakistan), Sohel emigrated with his family to Singapore at a very young age. There he spent his formative years and ended up studying Computer Science at the National University of Singapore.
After finishing his undergraduate work, Sohel joined Andersen Consulting (now Accenture)’s System Integration Division in 1992. At Andersen Consulting, Sohel was thrown into a variety of application development projects across multiple industries in Singapore.
“Early in my career,” says Sohel, “I decided to focus on architecture, fundamentally because it defines the blueprint for an application and provides the four walls within which the application operates. Today, you can pretty much buy an architecture “off the shelf”, like J2EE or .Net,. However these architectures are still in the realm of solution architectures and do not cover the breadth of enterprise complexity.”
In 1995, Sohel transferred to one of three global technology centers hosted by Andersen Consulting— this time in the South of France. The center was located in Sophia Antipolis which is often dubbed the “Silicon Valley of Europe.” During his five years in Sophia Antipolis, Sohel was immersed in development environment architectures and innovative middleware technologies.
Also during his time in Sophia Antipolis, Sohel began working on EA projects. Intrigued by the growing dialogue around aligning IT and business strategies, he decided to leave the business world, temporarily, and go to business school at INSEAD. One of the top MBA programs in the global business arena, INSEAD offered Sohel a better understanding of the interplay between finance, business and organizational models as well as a better understanding of the strategies required to manage innovative technologies.
Finishing an advanced degree from INSEAD, Sohel joined Infosys in the “real” Silicon Valley and was instrumental in building its US-based Technology Consulting Practice. In 2004, Infosys asked him to build the same traction in Europe and Sohel relocated back to Paris and London where he operates today.
Sohel’s days are filled with customer visits and proffering EA advice to clients on a a broad range of projects. When he is not working with clients, he spends his time managing the team and developing content and enriching Infosys’ offering around EA with his core team.
“EA’s been around for awhile now, but it’s no longer the ‘evil stepchild’ it used to be. In fact, it’s now seen as a critical enabler for Business-IT alignment,” says Sohel. “EA has become mainstream, but the profession still suffers from limited credentials and industry standards, although some organizations such as The Open Group are driving change in this space.”
But like the avid wine collector and proud new father that Sohel is, he acknowledges that things will improve with time. He now focuses on what he calls the “soft but harder to implement side” of EA i.e. Governance-related elements such as leadership, organization structure, funding and incentive mechanisms and policies and principles.
“EA is easy to do but hard to roll out effectively in order to deliver on business value and that mostly means that it’s a governance problem and not a content definition one.”
by Jessica McMahon
