About Us

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Service Provider:  Prakash C. Rao

Prakash Rao has more than three decades of experience in various roles in Research and Development, IT project planning, development and execution, engineering management, co-founding startups, raising venture capital, running businesses, training, consulting and teaching both in Fortune 100 companies, US Government, Department of Defense, and in small business engagements. He is the co-author of three books published internationally by Que (Macmillan) and McGraw-Hill Education. He is the author of several published papers and has presented at many conferences. He is a pioneer of Enterprise Architecture and has been a practitioner, teacher, evangelist and advocate for more than 25 years.

Prakash also serves as honorary Chief Architect for CEdge Software Consultants LLC (Headquartered in St. Louis with offices in Missouri, Illinois and Washington)  and serves on their Technical Advisory Board. CEdge is a provider of cutting edge technical resources with contemporary skills for staffing IT and business projects. They also undertake software projects in the US and India.

Mission statement

Deliver the benefits of enterprise architecting to enterprises through coaching, consulting, training and development of custom tools.

Espoused Values

Priority – Customers’ needs come first. Above all, paying customers will be accommodated with the highest priority

Integrity – At all times consulting is providing the most accurate and truthful answers to customers regardless of influences otherwise

Honesty – Charging for services will only be undertaken on actual time spent.

Fairness  - Giving customers the benefit of doubt and resolving problems through mutual fairness
 

Inherent Assumptions

Customers are reasonable in their expectations

Problems must be solved by bilateral agreements between the consultant and the customer

There are factors beyond the control of the customer and the consultant

Scoping a project properly is essential to project success

Surfacing assumptions early in a project is essential to project success

Clarity of customer requirements is essential to project success

Executive profiles

Prakash C Rao - CEO

Prakash Rao has 40 years of experience as a researcher, innovator and entrepreneur involved with startup, management, product innovation and evolution of three different companies; as a teacher and trainer for Enterprise Architecture for the US Air Force for three years and a faculty member at the FEAC Institute for more than 7 years, and an early pioneer, consultant and practitioner of enterprise architecture for more than 20 years.

With a first degree as an Electronics Engineer, Prakash started his professional career at Honeywell Corporation in the Corporate Technology Center/ Computer Sciences Center after completing graduate studies in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota. He worked as a Research Scientist/Senior Research Scientist working on innovations in electronic Design Automation and Architecture development.

Prakash is the co-author of two books on Enterprise Architecture and one book on Data Warehousing published by McGraw-Hill and Que/Macmillan respectively and has presented at many conferences in his professional career.

Currently he is the Chief Executive Officer of Enterprise Sherpas LLC in Fairfax, Virginia, USA innovating tools and techniques in enterprise architecting that leverage and adapt some of the concepts of electronic design automation – concepts that have revolutionized the design of complex electronic systems over the last twenty years and delivered the products of today. Enterprise Sherpas LLC provides mentoring and coaching in the use of rapid EA techniques for competitive advantage and to fuel corporate fire-fighting efforts using innovative tools, technique and methodologies.

Prakash Rao has been actively working in Information Technology since 1977, and in Information Resource Management since 1988 and was one of the co-founders of the first commercial standards based IRM repository company more than 15 years ago. With more than 30 combined years of experience in computer science research and development, modeling and simulation, software engineering and life-cycle management, departmental, corporate and executive management and strategy, enterprise architecture consulting, training and coaching, he was also the author of one of the earliest books on Data Warehousing "Client Server Guide to Data Warehousing" 1995 published internationally in English, Spanish, Dutch and German. He has been involved in the training of more than 600 enterprise architects at the executive, management and staff levels over a period of three years at the US Air Force and several hundreds more as a faculty member at the FEAC Institute.

Prakash is a Certified Enterprise Architect with an MS in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and a BSEE from Bangalore University, India. He is a member of several professional societies and participates actively in outreach and advocacy for enterprise architecture amongst startup professionals, as well as seasoned corporate managers and the lay public.