UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The Center for Enterprise Architecture (EA) at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) is the beneficiary of a gift-in-kind of software materials valued at more than $1 million. The materials are being donated by alfabet, a global provider of software for strategic information technology planning and business change management.
Founded in 1997, alfabet has headquarters in Berlin; Cambridge, Mass.; and Singapore. Alfabet provides a comprehensive software suite that supports all aspects of business IT management.
The company is donating a tool suite of software products to the Center for EA, said Brian Cameron, the center’s executive director. The software will be used in a laboratory that the center will be building over the next year, he added.
The center, launched in January 2011, seeks to gather intellectual resources across Penn State to address research concerns and questions that span the design, functioning and governance of contemporary, information-driven enterprises. The center is guided, in part, by an external advisory board consisting of representatives from leading corporations, government and professional organizations. Alfabet is a member of the external advisory board.
In the past several months, the center has received other gifts-in-kind from corporations that are part of the external advisory group, including the Pinnacle Business Group and Armstrong Process Group. The center also has received a number of donations of software and hardware materials for the laboratory and more donations are in the works, Cameron said.
“We are getting great international support for what we are doing in the center,” he added.
According to Ulrich Kalex, head of the product line management team at alfabet, the donation to the center is part of an initiative to gain greater insight into user and market behavior and nurture talent in the enterprise architecture and strategic IT planning areas. Since the initiation of the alfabet academic program in 2006, the company has been supporting universities, academic institutions and research centers in Europe in their academic and research programs for EA management and strategic IT planning.
“Alfabet intends to use its span of reach from its position in the heart of Europe to its U.S. operations to drive international exchange among universities and between universities and its international customer base,” Kalex said.
Last year, he added, alfabet hosted the Colloquium on International Cooperation for Enterprise Architecture Academic and Research Programs. Representatives from 12 academic institutions attended. Cameron was one of the invited speakers at the colloquium.
“As so many planning IT customers have a global reach, we are very much interested in supporting international exchange between the academic institutions we partner with,” Kalex said. “IT doesn’t stop at national borders and neither should learning.”