The Open Group is a global consortium that helps you achieve business goals through IT standards. It was established in 1996 after the merger of the X/Open Company, Ltd. with the Open Software Foundation. The latter one specialized on creation of an open standard for an implementation of the operating system Unix. Currently, the Open Group is considered to be the certifying body for the UNIX trademark. In addition, it develops and publishes the tech standard for the Uniform UNIX Specification. This association is also known for developing and operating the enterprise architecture framework, simply called the TOGAF standard. The consortium contains more than 840 members (IBM, Intel, Huawei, Fujitsu, HPE, to mention a few) and offers a wide range of services, which include management, innovation, strategy, certification, standards, and test development.
The Open Group also issues diverse professional certifications, which help to boost the process of approving market standards. Through the participation of users, the Open Group creates standards that consider practical market requirements and launches certification programs that ensure that products, services, and business practices conform to industry standards. The advantages of implementing such programs for buyers include minimization of necessity for compliance testing, a guarantee of conformance to standards, and reduced cost, document complexity, along with simplified bid analysis connected with procurement. Certified suppliers of products and services by the Open Group gain verification that their products, services, or business practices comply with applicable requirements, get an opportunity to cooperate with major customers, and gain quality and speed of market entry.
So, the designations offered by the Open Group are divided into two groups, such as knowledge based and experience based.
The accreditations that testify your understanding of the Open Group standards include:
- ArchiMate Certification: testifies that you are competent in dealing with the independent modeling language for Enterprise Architecture known as the ArchiMate language. This language helps to explain the way of providing business procedures, information flows, and IT systems.
- Digital Practitioner Foundation Accreditation: verifies that you are able to create and operate products that include digital components. It also assists companies and organizations to go through a Digital Transformation.
- IT4IT Certification: proves that you understand the Reference Architecture of IT4IT, which is a standard for operating the business of IT.
- The Open Agile Architecture Practitioner testifies that you are competent in architecting at scale with agility. Besides, any candidate who deals with Digital Transformation at an architectural level is cut out for this designation.
- Open FAIR Certification is known as the Factor Analysis of Information Risk. This in its turn represents a model and taxonomy for analyzing, describing, and assessing information risk. This designation validates your proficiency in considering the needs of risk analysts and organizations that employ such professionals.
- TOGAF Certification validates that you are equipped enough to deal with the TOGAF Standard, which is the standard of the open Enterprise Architecture used by the world’s major organizations to level up business efficiency.
As one of the main certifications issued by Open Group is TOGAF, then below you can find the annual income of certified professionals, according to the PayScale website. Thus, solution architects can earn from $101 to $177 per year, senior solution architects from $116 to $185, technical architect $83-$165, enterprise architecture director $122-$207.
This group of certifications also incorporates “micro-credentials” which require less time for obtaining. These include TOGAF Essentials 2018, TOGAF Business Architecture Level 1, Integrating Risk and Security, ArchiMate Essentials 3.1.
The second large group, known as Experienced based, contains the following certifications:
- The Open CA (The Open Group Certified Architect): validates your skills that are to be used in the IT architecture community.
- The Open CDS (The Open Certified Data Scientist) proves that you, as a Data Scientist professional, is well equipped to provide an effective data analysis intended for improving business.
- The Open CTS (The Open Group Certified Technical Specialist) is designed for professionals that are able to provide an effective implementation, development, and management of IT solutions.
- The Open CTTP (The Open Group Certified Trusted Technology Practitioner) accreditation testifies that you possess the knowledge and skills necessary to ensure that security practices that relate to Trusted Technology are applied effectively.