Enterprise Architecture

Thoughts on developing a strategic plan for implementing EA programs, how to provide your teams with the technical skills needed to implement a service-oriented architecture, understanding what’s involved in creating a business architecture, and more.

Marketects: Delivering Good Enterprise Architecture

Roger Evernden | Apr 9, 2013 2 Responses

Apr 092013

Marketects: Delivering Good Enterprise Architecture

Good architects also need to be good “marketects”: they must be able to sell and promote their cause as well as publicize their achievements, outcomes, and results. But how do they do this? What tips and guidelines from the world of marketing can architects adopt to their advantage? First of all, what do we mean by “marketecture”? With a cynical hat on, some might argue that marketecture is about selling something that you don’t really need. In a Dilbert cartoon from 2009, the Director of Marketecture says that “it is better to seem good than to be good. A misleading benchmark test can accomplish in minutes what years of good engineering can never do.” In …

A Business Architecture Approach to Building a Mobile Strategy

Mike Rosen | Jan 29, 2013 No Responses

Jan 292013

Although mobile computing is not new, there has been a lot of discussion lately about it, and about having an effective mobile/social strategy. The first question we need to ask is: what should your mobile strategy be? Of course, this ought to be related to your business strategy, but we still have to dig into a lot of details and answer a lot of questions to properly formulate the strategy, perform a cost/benefit analysis, and create a roadmap and plan. So how can we go about investigating this? It should come as no surprise that I would suggest business architecture as an approach. The first step would be to identify the stakeholders that you are …

Enterprise Architects Will Need To …

Roger Evernden | Dec 19, 2012 No Responses

Dec 192012

Like last year, I focus my predictions on how current trends will impact Enterprise Architecture in 2013. I see three things coming: 1. Make sense of big data. Big data will continue to get a lot of press, and vendors will be keen to show off new tricks with data integration. The enterprise architecture teams need to beef up their information architecture capability and develop appropriate Enterprise Patterns to participate in this debate and to be able to respond intelligently to this pressure. 2. Mobilize for mobile. The EA team need to expand application patterns to show how a multitude of disparate apps work in conjunction with a more traditional legacy application landscape. 3. The forecast …

Mobile Goes Mobile

Mike Rosen | Nov 29, 2012 1 Response

Nov 292012

For years I’ve been writing about and implementing a multi-channel, multi-device, n-tier architecture and often would say “I don’t know what the next device is going to be, but I’m sure there’s going to be one, and this architecture will allow us to be prepared”. Well, I think that era is upon us now and I’m ready to predict what the next device will be: It’s your car. New cars these days are equipped with multiple computers, multifunction touch screens, voice recognition, GPS, and much more. So where are we prepared for this, and where will we need to think differently? Architecturally (if we have done things right in the past) we should be ready …

The Business of Understanding

Roger Evernden | Nov 20, 2012 No Responses

Nov 202012

Contrary to popular belief, the term “information architecture” is not synonymous with designing and structuring websites or developing an Internet-based information base. The phrase was first introduced in 1975 by Richard Saul Wurman, who is probably best known for founding TED Conferences and TEDTalks. When he introduced this concept, Wurman was thinking of information in a broad sense. He was one of the first to recognize that modern technologies were likely to produce “a stream of bytes that leaves us inundated with data but starved for the tools & patterns that give them meaning. In reality there has not been an information explosion, but rather an explosion of noninformation, or data that simply doesn’t inform” (Information …

Taking an Adaptive Approach to Improving Business Performance

Andrew Spanyi and Mike Rosen | Nov 5, 2012 1 Response

Nov 052012

Global competition, increasing customer power, and quantum advances in technology have combined to demand a new and more adaptive approach to managing the business. In spite of significant advances in methods to improve business performance, such as TQM, Six Sigma, Lean, BPR, ERP, CRM, SaaS, and the cloud, many organizations continue to struggle in executing improvements to business performance. In many cases, the culprit is a traditional functional view of the business, where organizations develop plans, budgets, and even reward systems mainly in a functional or departmental context, paying little attention to the “critical few” measures of performance that matter to customers and failing to gain clarity on the type of cross-departmental collaboration needed to …

Cloud Computing Standards: Talk About Interoperability…

Mitchell Ummel | Oct 9, 2012 No Responses

Oct 092012

The analogy between the evolution of the electric energy industry and cloud computing is oftentimes used, and for good reason. It’s likely the most applicable predictor of where this industry is heading over the next 10-20 years. Although slight regional variances exist, it’s generally the case that I, as a consumer of electric power, can plug in my appliance anywhere in the world and expect it to work efficiently, safely, and reliably. Standards for voltage regulation, plug/outlet design, and circuit protection are mature and widely embraced, and the electric appliance industry can compete, and innovate, on a level playing field for the benefit of consumers worldwide. The clock radio in my office is one of …

Call for Papers: Enterprise Patterns to the Rescue?

Christine Generali | Sep 19, 2012 No Responses

Sep 192012

Change at an architectural level is always transformational. But too often architects have struggled to demonstrate or realize this potential for making a significant, positive difference at the enterprise level. Instead, big changes are more frequently driven by the architectural opportunities from new technologies. This is starting to change, and leading enterprises are planning architectural change that genuinely combines the organizational, business, and technology perspectives. Enterprise transformation that successfully unites all three viewpoints requires a new technique to raise the architectural debate to the level of senior decision makers. Enterprise Patterns elevate the debate by: * Providing a means for aggregating viewpoints and lower level patterns into a holistic visualization of architectural possibilities. * Focusing …

Role of the Solution Architect — a Summary Table

Mike Rosen | Aug 1, 2012 13 Responses

Aug 012012

Last week I wrote an Advisor for our Business & Enterprise Architecture practice about the role of the solution architect. I thought I’d share my overview of how that role compares to the enterprise architect’s. Is this how the roles are delineated in your company? Topic Solution Architecture Enterprise Architecture Scope Single solution or set of related solutions All current and future solutions and COTS Primary Goals Ensure that the solution fits within the enterprise context Define the enterprise context including business, information, application, and technology Responsibility Translates nonfunctional and functional requirements into design, within enterprise context Translates strategies into target architectures and roadmaps Tradeoffs Enterprisestrategy and goals vs. solution tactical and delivery requirements Prioritization and rationalization …

Identity Management in Technology-Assisted Educational Systems

John Tibbetts | Jul 17, 2012 1 Response

Jul 172012

On that long list of venerable institutions primed for a high-tech overhaul, higher education is near the top. Its shortcomings are much discussed: universities are expensive, inaccessible, inflexible, and out of touch with the needs of students and the world economy. A diploma that demands four (or more) years on campus, long lectures, fend-for-yourself homework, and massive final exams seems as much a relic of the 19th century as of the 20th. Educating the millions of people that our future depends on will require not just a productivity boost but something fundamentally different. These days “something fundamentally different” usually involves the Internet. Decades of desultory experiments with “computer-aided education” have now yielded exciting, scalable, measurably …

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