Daniel Cherkas
Sr. Director Enterprise Architecture
Carlson Companies, Inc.

Daniel Cherkas is Carlson Companies Senior Director of Enterprise Architecture. He has over 25 years experience across a plethora of business types from retail through manufacturing, as well as different technologies. A few years ago, he was one of the founding members within IBM’s ‘thought leadership’ team that started “architecture ‘on demand’” which is now known as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). He was one of the first to develop, lead, and teach end-to-end ‘SOA Strategy and Roadmap’ at IBM’s Software University and client engagements. 

Daniel has helped many organization’s successfully transform away from their current IT state that requires business alignment, towards a leveragability business-driven future. He says that he leads “where the business wants to go” and then “strategically aligns IT towards tactically driven business initiatives based upon viable strategies”. 

Daniel is a Certified Master IT Architect from the Open Systems Group, is a Member of Open Group Enterprise Architects, and is a member of International Association of Application Architects (IASA). Daniel is a Veteran from being in the US Navy aboard a Nuclear Powered Fast Attack Submarine and after the US Navy, Daniel attended Trident College then, The Citadel for a B.S. in Electrical Engineering.  

His objectives are, “There must be a solid bridge between the strategies of the business and those things that enable realizations which are derived from IT based technologies”. However, he will casually tell anyone that “Until they know that ‘the spaghetti is made with noodles and not worms, it will be hard to swallow’”. We believe he means both the business as well as IT; but one must ask him to be sure.