Expand Your SOA Skills and Opportunities:
Become a Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA)

• Are you an enterprise architect or an aspiring architect looking to get third-party backing for your SOA capabilities?
  
• Are you not finding what you want in self-serving, vendor-specific "certifications" that don't provide the credentials you need to advance your architecture skills, career, and future direction?
  
• What does it even mean to have SOA on your list of qualifications?
  
• Do you want to leverage ZapThink's brand, reach, reputation, and network to advance your SOA efforts?
  

If so, then the Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) program is for you. One of the biggest challenges facing the SOA marketplace is the lack of skilled architecture resources that are proficient on SOA methodologies, techniques, and approaches in ways that are not specific to the particular technology du-jour or an individual vendor implementation.

Increasingly, individuals like you are looking to get the backing of a qualified third-party organization to not only endorse their existing SOA skills, but also enable continuous improvement, enhanced networking with those looking for architecture resources, or enhance their current SOA-enabled careers. ZapThink is filling the unmet need for knowledge and credentials in this area, and we want you to be a part!

What does it mean for ZapThink to Endorse your Capabilities?

While Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) is clearly returning significant and tangible benefits to those that know how to implement the architectural approach properly, to many others, it simply represents the buzzword du jour. Frankly, if you are a end-user architect practitioner, a consultant at a large firm or an independent, or even a vendor with a professional services practice, saying that you "know how to do SOA" is simply not enough. Smart organizations are asking now to dig deeper behind the buzz and want to know what specific skills, capabilities, and credentials you have as a qualified architect.

This is where the LZA program steps in. Rather than you having to back your own word that you know how to do SOA. Let us share the burden. We want to not only qualify and credential you to represent yourself with certain skills, but we will prominently mention that fact in our online LZA directory and be willing to provide the credential evidence you need to show that you have what it takes.

What does an LZA Credential mean for your SOA Skills?

Service-oriented Architecture, and indeed all of Enterprise Architecture, is a continuously evolving field. What might be today's best practices might be yesterday's inefficient methods. Furthermore, many SOA "practitioners" lack critical skills around Service design, analysis, organizational alignment, and domain modeling, among other key skills, as well as knowing which artifacts and approaches to use to get the best value from those skills. LZAs are constantly on the cutting edge of the best thought-leadership, expertise, and methodologies for SOA. Learn not only from ZapThink Master Architects on how to do SOA with the best, emerging practices, but also learn from other LZAs. Like a true skills-development program, the LZA credential is an opportunity to sharpen, develop, and extend your skills in SOA.

LZA Credential Levels and Requirements

Since architects come in all shapes and sizes, and since the credential program sets a quality bar for those that go through it, ZapThink has the following levels of credential to match your skills and capabilities:
Junior Licensed ZapThink Architect

1. Completion of three-day LZA Bootcamp including completion of all the exercises at the Bootcamp within the previous twelve months.

Senior Licensed ZapThink Architect

1. Senior LZA credential OR two years of experience as an Enterprise Architect AND
2. Completion of three-day LZA Bootcamp including completion of all the exercises at the Bootcamp within the previous 12 months; AND
3. Passing scores on written exercises at the Bootcamp, as determined by the instructor(s)

Licensed ZapThink Architect Fellow (Trainer)

1. Active Senior LZA credential; AND
2. Five years of experience as an architect; AND
3. Participation as an apprentice ZapThink trainer at two three-day ZapThink training events.

The LZA Credentialing Process

The LZA credential is an annual credential. Since SOA and enterprise architecture as a whole undergoes continuous change, our ability to back your capabilities lasts as long as the knowledge is still thought-leading. As such, we offer our LZA program on an annual basis. The process for becoming a Licensed ZapThink Architect is straigth-forward and simple if you already have some enterprise architecture skills.

• Pre-Qualifications: You must have at least some demonstrable enterprise architect experience as an individual, with an enterprise end-user firm, or at a consulting practice with a consulting firm or vendor company with a consulting practice. We ask that you submit your current CV or resume and answer a few survey questions as a means to ascertain your applicable skills.
  
• The LZA Bootcamp: The credentialing process itself consists of a three-day workshop structured as a means to exchange the latest SOA practices, methodologies, and artifacts, and finishes on the last day with a one-on-one evaluation of your capabilities for credentialing. You leave the LZA bootcamp with a credential for your efforts, and with our knowledge of your expertise. LZA bootcamps are offered multiple times a year at designated training locations. Class sizes are limited to no more than fifty (50) so that we can properly credential each individual architect.
  

If you think you have the interest, skills, and time to get an LZA credential, the opportunity awaits! Please sign up today for an LZA bootcamp and get on board the fastest-growing SOA credential in the industry.

Licensed ZapThink Architect Course Agenda

Day One

1. Service-Oriented Architecture: Establishing The Business Case -- Upon completion of this module, you will be able to explain Service Orientation within a business context, and describe both its benefits and challenges.
2. Thinking Service-Oriented -- Upon completion of this module, you will be able to explain Services and SOA to a technical audience, present the architectural context for SOA, explain the different views required to understand the full scope of SOA, and explain the role metadata have in SOA implementations.
3. Introducing the ZapThink SOA Roadmap -- Upon completion of this module, you will be able to apply data about a corporate situation to customize a SOA implementation roadmap and present it to stakeholders.
4. Getting Started with SOA -- Upon of this module, you will be able to create a high-level, iterative plan for a SOA rollout initiative, understand the pitfalls with such a plan, and also understand various organizational techniques that can improve the chances of success of SOA initiatives.

Day Two

1. Building the SOA Infrastructure -- Upon completion of this module, you will be able to understand and prioritize the XML performance, security, and management issues underlying successful SOA implementations.
2. Integrating the Service-Oriented Way -- Upon completion of this module, you will understand how companies have ended up with integration "rats' nests," and you'll be able to present comparative economic models for different integration approaches and describe how SOI, data integration, API-based integration, and semantic integration relate to each other.
3. Creating the SOA Metamodel -- Upon completion of this module, you will be able to design a Service model and its associated metadata artifacts, and develop a plan for SOA implementation based upon the model.

Day Three

1. Building a Governance Framework -- Upon completion of this module, you will be able to create a governance framework that structures your organization's approach to automating policy creation, management and enforcement in order to provide more effective, agile management control balanced with user empowerment.
2. Enabling Service-Oriented Business Applications -- Upon completion of this module, you will be able to explain the how a Service-Oriented Business Application (SOBA) implements a business process and how the evolving concept of the Service consumer supplies greater user empowerment in the context of flexible business processes.
3. Managing the SOA Lifecycle -- Upon completion of this module, you will be able to describe the Service lifecycle, apply agile approaches to the Service lifecycle, and describe the issues surrounding SOA quality and Service versioning.

LZAs and the Licensed ZapThink Partner (LZP) Program

Are you interested in taking your relationship with ZapThink a step further? Are you part of a company who can leverage the benefits of ZapThink's brand, network, reach, and expertise? Then, once you become an LZA, the Licensed ZapThink Partner program might be just the right thing for your company.

The LZP Program offers a number of significant benefits above and beyond LZA credential for companies who want a deeper relationship with ZapThink. This includes marketing of your offerings on the ZapThink website and ZapFlash newsletter, joint-marketing activities including partnership on local events and in-person advisory, joint-collaboration with ZapThink on SOA-related topics, a licenseable curriculum for your use in training, education, and other activities, quarterly training sessions and on-site bootcamps, partner support, and other beneifts. For more information, click here. All you need to become an LZP is just have five LZAs credentialed at your company and pay a small annual partnership fee, and you're in!

LZAs and the ZapThink Architect Resource Center (ARC)

In 2007, ZapThink will be launching its newest online feature: the ZapThink Architect Resource Center (ARC). Above and beyond the listing LZAs get on our online directory, the ZapThink ARC provides a way for indepdent consultants or consulting firms with available resources to list their resources online for firms to locate and hire. In addition, the ARC will serve as a resource for enterprises looking to hire such architects. Not all LZAs need to post their availability on the ARC, but it is made available to those who wish to use the service at no additional charge!

Exclusive LZA-only Events

As the LZA community grows, ZapThink will host exclusive events targeted and tailored specifically for our growing LZA community. Come to our LZA events and learn from other architects, find out emerging best practices, and hear from customers about what makes their SOA implementations tick or causes the most significant problems. More information on these events will be released in the upcoming year, and we want you there!

Opportunities to Contribute to the ZapThink Community

Want to get visibility in front of the over 24,000 readers of the ZapThink ZapFlash newsletter as well as tens of thousands of others who read our syndicated research? Then, become an LZA so that you can have your works published as special research on our site and in our newsletters (subject to editorial approval, of course). This unique benefit is not extended to any other type of ZapThink customer and is another exclusive benefit of becoming an LZA.

Cost and Structure

Becoming a Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) is not only straigthforward, but affordable. The annual cost for an LZA credential is just $2495 (USD), and significant discounts apply for early registration and renewal of the credential. Your only additional cost is travel, if need be, to come to one of our sessions. To book your space at an upcoming event, just click on one of the current bootcamp sessions below and we'll work to get you scheduled and confirmed right away.

LZA Boot Camp and Credentials Terms and Conditions

Attendance at an LZA Boot camp is not a guarantee of receipt of any particular level of LZA credential. To receive an LZA credential, you must meet the conditions for granting as defined above for each LZA credential level. If you attend an LZA boot camp and are unable to qualify for an LZA credential, you will be given the opportunity to attend another LZA boot camp within 12 months for no additional cost. LZA credentials are only valid for a period of 12 months from granting of the credential.

Register for an Upcoming LZA Bootcamp

ZapThink is looking at running many LZA credentialing bootcamps in 2007. The below list is our current list, but is subject to change both in time and location as we work to get LZAs scheduled. Please note that class sizes are limited to no more than 50 people, so if they are sold out, you will have to wait for the next opportunity, or joint a bootcamp that is open in another location.

Location	Date	Register Now
Baltimore, MD	April 23-25, 2007	Register Now
Boston, MA	May 9-11, 2007	Register Now
Sydney, Australia	May 28-30, 2007	Register Now
London, UK	September 24-26, 2007	Register Now
Santa Clara, CA	October 8-10, 2007	Register Now
New York, NY	October 17-19, 2007	Register Now
Stockholm, Sweden	November 12-14, 2007	Register Now
Johannesburg, South Africa	November 7-9, 2007	Register Now
Singapore	December 10-12, 2007	Register Now

Click here to Register for an LZA Boot Camp! Join the growing multitudes of enterprise architects with real SOA credentials!