Week 6, Chapter 5: ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

Blog Questions

What is information architecture and what is information infrastructure and how do they differ and how do they relate to each other?

At the core, an architecture is a formal description (i.e. purpose, intent and structure) of a system to guide its implementation. It encompasses structure of components, their inter-relationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time

An Enterprise Architecture can be defines as: The organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the firm’s operating model.

Information architecture is the term used to describe the structure of a system, i.e the way information is grouped, the navigation methods and terminology used within the system.

An effective information architecture enables people to step logically through a system confident they are getting closer to the information they require. Information architecture is most commonly associated with websites and intranets, but it can be used in the context of any information structures or computer systems.

Information infrastructure is a structured collection of information system components and organization processes enabling flow of information to effect enterprise integration

Describe how an organisation can implement a solid information architecture 

Effective information architecture comes from understanding business objectives and constraints, the content, and the requirements of the people that will use the site.

The following steps define a process for creating effective information architectures.

·         Understand the business/contextual requirements and the proposed content for the system. Read all existing documentation, interview stakeholders and conduct a content inventory.

·         Conduct cards sorting exercises with a number of representative users.

·         Evaluate the output of the card sorting exercises. Look for trends in grouping and labeling.

·          Develop a draft information architecture (i.e. information groupings and hierarchy).

·          Evaluate the draft information architecture using the card-based classification evaluation technique.

·          Don’t expect to get the information architecture right first time. Capturing the right terminology and hierarchy may take several iterations.

·          Document the information architecture in a site map. This is not the final site map, the site map will only be finalised after page layouts have been defined.

·          Define a number of common user tasks, such as finding out about how to request holiday leave. On paper sketch page layouts to define how the user will step through the site.
This technique is known as storyboarding.

·          Walk other members of the project team through the storyboards and leave them in shared workspaces for comments.

·          If possible within the constraints of the project, it is good to conduct task-based usability tests on paper prototypes as it provides valuable feedback without going to the expense of creating higher quality designs.

·          Create detailed page layouts to support key user tasks. Page layouts should be annotated with guidance for visual designers and developers.

Developing an information architecture in this way enables you to design and build a system confident that it will be successful.

List and describe the five requirement characteristics of infrastructure architecture. 

-Flexibility (adaptability) e.g. Have application in architecture, have to make sure website accommodates extra requirement to use multi languages when business expands globally. The same applies when different currencies. Current architecture to accommodate future requirements.

-Scalability: how well a system can accommodate and respond to an increase in demand. Architecture must be designed to scale up when required E.g. Amazon

-Reliability (accuracy). All systems must function correctly and provide accurate information (e.g. we trust the banks calculations

-Availability: that business is available all the time. In order to do this is have multiple systems performing the same thing in case of an emergency

-Performance: system that has been designed processes data immediately. If not the user should be notified immediately.

Describe the business value in deploying a service-oriented architecture

SOA promotes reuse and, for the first time, allows non-specialist developers to rapidly become productive developers.

Service oriented architecture (SOA) is a business-driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating a business as linked, repeatable tasks or services

SOA ensures IT systems can adapt quickly, easily, and economically to support rapidly changing business needs

Using meta data and existing applications, users can re-use applications (services) many times for different tasks, making development cheaper and more flexible

Companies can now realistically achieve their business goals by implementing a best-practice service-oriented IT architecture as the foundation of their future success. Now, more than ever, IT can be a strategic business asset, along side other key assets such as employees and intellectual property. In SOA-enabled environments, enterprises can begin to bridge the fundamental gap that has existed between business requirements and IT capabilities.

How else is SOA helping facilitate strategic value?

·           Faster time to market - SOA promotes reuse for development and integration teams. With reuse of services and components, new applications can be quickly assembled to respond to changing market conditions or business demand. With the shortening of project time frames comes a faster response rate to changing business requirements.

·          Operational efficiencies - Most packaged enterprise applications perform well in streamlining processes related to standard tasks. SOA eliminates interapplication complexity barriers allowing IT to more rapidly change to the needs of the business so that IT can create a culture and an infrastructure of business adaptability.

·          Faster, less expensive application integration and B2B integration - An SOA framework provides support for services across the network and reduces the overall costs of application integration and deployment by automating these time-consuming processes. It also allows extension of integration across business boundaries.A SOA enables the definition of any process in any network configuration, even spanning multiple enterprise boundaries. This is done through peer-to-peer messaging infrastructure with distributed security mechanisms that allow efficient intercompany data exchanges, while enabling each enterprise to enforce its own security policies. This allows SOA to increase operational efficiency across the entire value chain.

·          Easier application development and deployment. - Processes can be more easily translated into distributed services, which are easier to develop, manipulate, and debug; and the services are easily composed into implementation-level data flows.

·          Leverage existing investments - Organizations have spent time and money developing their existing infrastructure. Today's dynamic environment demands new uses of systems and processes information to help enable more efficient processing and cost effective business operations. Extending the lifetimes and ROI of legacy applications by repurposing systems, processes and data from existing systems provides one means of managing cost. Exposing legacy systems as services also creates an environment that shares information and processes from systems that were previously isolated or integrated via point solutions.

·         Risk mitigation - SOA-based efforts increase the level of project success of an implementation. Through reuse of core services and processes that have been previously developed, tested and thoroughly understood, potential bug introduction is reduced. Those project team members with a stronger business background can focus on orchestration, the assembling of services into processes, workflows or applications. Others with a stronger technical background can manage the design and development of the services and underlying infrastructure. Risk management is improved from an organizational perspective with this separation of skills that enables effective allocation of resources to efficiently deliver development tasks.

·          Continuous improvement – SOA provides an opportunity for continually improving and optimizing the underlying code base without affecting the use of the service.

·           Increased user acceptance - This is due to the consistent look and feel among various Web services.

What is an event? 

Events are the expressions of business technology. They identify threats and opportunities and inform the appropriate people who are able to act upon this information.

For example, stock-out in the warehouse, alerts to people to change passwords, etc.

A Web Service is triggered as soon as a n event occurs (e.g. Password is now 85 days year old – this requires a service to remind user to change password).

What is a service?

They are pieces of software to perform a specific business task

For example, “Credit Check”, “ “Print Balance”, etc.

They are triggered by Events and are the most appropriate tool to integrate different architectures.

What emerging technologies can companies use to increase performance and utilize their infrastructure more effectively?

Infrastructure optimization is Microsoft's structured, systematic process for assessing an organization's IT infrastructure and application platform across capabilities in order to provide an optimization roadmap toward a Dynamic IT. The roadmap helps companies to define and implement optimization initiatives that will enable proactive, IT management and deliver cost and risk reductions across the IT organization. These optimization initiatives also enhance user needs and user experience in order to increase productivity and amplify the impact of employees. Optimization enables a business to realize the full value of its IT infrastructure and platform investments and establishes IT as a strategic business assets that can facilitate innovation and help organizations respond quickly to change.

In order to help customers assess the effectiveness and potential of their IT infrastructure and application platform, create agility, and reduce costs, Microsoft has developed three Optimization models based on industry and analyst work. 

Optimization can be viewed in three perspectives:

1. Core Infrastructure

2. Business Productivity Infrastructure

3. Application Platform