Session Abstract

The grace period for organizations to get their act together and position themselves for the next wave of tech is growing much shorter. The margin for error is much narrower. The churn in cloud technology today will produce big winners and surprise losers. Ecosystem-Oriented Architecture (EOA) is the new path forward, allowing organizations that embrace it to more readily absorb successive waves of technological change in the era of AI, data, and beyond. So, what must Ecosystem Architects know to thrive professionally and move their organizations and their customers forward? Well, you'll need to move away from placing big point solutions like ERP and CRM at the center of your architecture, place data at the core, and adopt composable development approaches such that when one workload is added or removed, the rest of the ecosystem continues to function and evolve. Join us to explore the application and real-world examples of ecosystem-oriented architecture, as well as the principles of platform first, composability, evolution, restraint, artistry, and following the money that will help you be the kind of Ecosystem Architect that leads winning organizations and their projects in the years to come!

Andrew Welch

Ana’s husband and Alexandra’s dad :-) Also a cloud technology leader, Founder and CTO of Cloud Lighthouse, Microsoft MVP, speaker, published author, and regular writer of essays and white papers on cloud technology including the multi-edition “Crafting your Future-Ready Enterprise AI Strategy”, “Ecosystem-Oriented Architecture in the Public Sector”, “Power Platform in a Modern Data Platform Architecture”, “Scaling your Enterprise Cloud with Power Platform”, and more. I have served as CTO, global Vice President, Practice Director, and VP of Operations, and other tech and business focused roles at various Microsoft partners. I work directly with CXOs, Microsoft partners, Microsoft product engineering groups, technologists, investors, and global humanitarian and governance organizations to guide strategy and ecosystem architecture across the cloud. Previously I have led some of the world’s largest Microsoft adoptions on all seven continents (yes, including Antarctica), serving startup to Fortune 100 organizations, public sector agencies, and global NGOs.