REAL Talk With Sam Holcman

The Analyst Architect and Real Talk With Sam Holcman:

Is enterprise architecture still relevant in the age of AI, or is it dead?

In the first episode of Making Architecture Matter, Samuel Holcman argues it matters more than ever, and that most of what passes for enterprise architecture today is really IT planning in disguise.

This is a conversation about why enterprise architecture matters, what enterprise architects actually do, and how to connect architecture to business strategy.

Omar Gawad sits down with Samuel Holcman, President of ZIFA and Chairman of the EACOE, to clear away the myths: why AI fabricates rather than hallucinates, why data quality decides whether AI works, and why you cannot build a 100-story building the way you write code.

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I began my career in 1972, and we were called Data Processing. What we were doing in 1972 was processing data. Today, we are called Information Technology, or the AI Division, or whatever. And do you know what we are doing today? Processing data. Any questions?

Today I want to build on an article by Joe Procopio titled “The End of AI as Human Replacement?” which explores a fascinating recent move by Ford Motor Company. His core story is this: Ford just rehired 350 experienced “gray beard” engineers after discovering that artificial intelligence and automated systems “failed to deliver the desired quality level.” In other words, a flagship BigCo bet heavily on replacing seasoned human talent with AI—and then had to reverse course.

What has your team been able to hand to a business leader from your TOGAF or other enterprise architecture work, that they could read and make a strategic decision from, without an architect in the room to explain it?" That question almost always surfaces the gap EACOE is built to fill.

Why Record Numbers of Enterprise Architects and Business Architects Are Still Failing Stakeholders

The enterprise architecture and business architecture professions face a disturbing paradox. With certifications surpassing 100,000 worldwide and the architecture market valued at $1.44 billion, we have never had more certified practitioners. Certified professionals commanding 25% higher salaries. There are more certified practitioners in the market than ever, and architecture certifications have grown substantially worldwide over the last decade. Yet stakeholder satisfaction with the relevance, usability, and impact of architecture recommendations remains weak, reinforcing a growing concern that credentials are increasing faster than practical competence. The certification industry has created a gold rush, but what are practitioners actually learning?

That is not a coincidence. It is the predictable result of a profession that has overinvested in exam performance and underinvested in actual skill development.

The InfoWorld article “Small language models: Rethinking enterprise AI architecture” argues that as large language models (LLMs) hit limits of scale, cost, and risk, enterprises are shifting toward small language models (SLMs) that are faster, cheaper, and more private for well-defined, repetitive tasks. It highlights three primary advantages: division of labor between small and large models, radical economic efficiency for high‑volume workloads, and improved privacy at the edge when models run on devices or on‑premises. The underlying message is that competitive advantage will increasingly come from how well organizations architect and orchestrate multiple models around their own data, workflows, and governance.