There are currently several organizations offering certification of technical architects, including Microsoft, the BCS, and the Independent Association of Software Architects, IASA. But as we reported last Tuesday, Matt Deacon, chief architectural adviser of Microsoft UK, is calling on all of the groups to work together on a new internationally recognized certification for technology architects.

But the BCS’s chief executive David Clark told us that he does not agree that another certification scheme is needed. I disagree [with Microsoft], said Clark. I think it should be the BCS, we offer a Chartered standard already.

We think you should be a Chartered IT Professional [CITP] as the main certification and then there are various streams in which you can specialize, he said. So there is a stream for architects and we have been working on that with a large group of international organizations. Chartered IT Professional, architects stream, is something that is recognized around the world. A lot of companies believe that the certification standard should be theirs, for instance Oracle thinks that the one that counts is the Oracle DBA standard. But they can only get so far, there is an extra element that manufacturers can’t bring to the table.

As for whether the IASA, of which Deacon is also UK chair, is a better place than the BCS to set the recognized standard for technical architects, Clark said: if you have a separate independent body for every stream, it gets incredibly confusing.

But he insisted that the CITP qualification, architects stream, is not so very far from what Microsoft wants to see. He said that it may be possible to map the Microsoft Certified Architect scheme into the BCS certification, something the BCS has been doing for some of IBM’s internal certifications. He said dialogue with Microsoft is ongoing.

The BCS is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. It says it has over 60,000 members in more than 10 countries, and is currently adding 1,200 new members every month. BCS was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1984, and is a registered charity with the objective of promoting the study and practice of computing and to advance knowledge of and education in IT for the benefit of the public.