Through the early 1990s Michael was focused on implementing large complex technology solutions that were oriented at either transforming how businesses or sectors operated, or optimising their operation. It was clear knowledge was required to provide an effective platform for decision making so that enterprise startegies could be effectively implemented e.g. impact analysis on large projects was particularly challenging.

Through the 1990s Michael had worked with all the major commercially available tools that purported to be suitable for Enterprise Architecture, Strategic IT planning etc. They were all found to be unsuitable, few produced produced value in the short term, and none produced sustainable value for the enterprise. A number of times Michael commissioned projects to develop solutions (e.g. based on knowledge management frameworks, document management systems, and graphical design platforms). These initiatives all initially seemed promising, but all eventually lead to the same conclusion i.e. that creating a suitable solution was a non-trivial exercise and well beyond the scope of most organisations (i.e. they lacked the funding, the experience, the committment, the focus, the knowledge).

In 2001 after many years working with all the major EA frameworks and other recommended best practice approaches for: strategy, architecture and governance - Michael concluded that the approaches and tooling being applied (office suites, software development oriented tools, process modellers, etc.) were demonstrably ineffective. His initial focus was on frameworks and methods until it became evident that none of the recommended frameworks could work with the wrong tooling. This lead to a year long research into solutions that lead eventually to Troux technology (http://www.troux.com).

Since finding Troux Michael has been involved in all the major proof-of-concept exercises and subsequent implementations of Troux in Australia and New Zealand. Experience with these projects has helped hone an understanding of what works and what does not work. Many of the issues are discussed in blogs posted a number of years ago (http://ea-in-anz.blogspot.com) or see (Thoughts).

Subsequently it became obvious that the class of tooling selected had a fairly dramatic affect of the methods that should be applied (both what method were viable and what methods were ideal). While this sounds obvious it is remarkable how many people think that their approach to what is essentially a knowledge management and decision support problem, can be made independent from the capablilities of the enabling technology.

ESTO's is now focused on supporting the adoption of Troux in Asia Pacific.