E-business is changing the way people work and communicate, requiring a different approach to enterprise architecture. Previously, systems revolved around a specific user community or platform. The system design, in most cases, coupled the user platform to the actual services. For example, a travel agency's system and applications targeted a single tier audience -- brokers -- and worked on a single platform, such as Green Screen. They supported one entry point, such as Web, fax, email, or voice response units (VRUs). In such a straightforward environment, developing systems based on the needs of that one group of users, and on the functionality of that specific platform, made sense. Today, business -- and the technology that supports it -- is more complex. During a typical work day, you may access a corporate extranet and check your inventory status at a supplier's warehouse, participate in a Web-based corporate discussion group, or receive an email message via your mobile PDA. Electronic communication now takes place across multiple platforms and among multiple companies, widening and blurring the boundaries of the individual enterprise. You can no longer neatly define users and systems, making the traditional user- or platform-focused approach to enterprise architecture inadequate. How you receive services changes over time. Currently, the Web is altering the way you conduct business; tomorrow, wireless communication will be just as influential. But the core services themselves, such as selecting and paying for products, remain consistent. Therefore, enterprise architecture must focus on delivering those services effectively, without limiting the types of users or platforms. A Dynamic Enterprise ArchitectureEnterprise architecture is a set of principles, rules, standards, products, and guidelines -- derived from business requirements -- that express and define your technology vision and implementation concept. Your enterprise architecture must be dynamic in order to exploit new technologies and support the changing nature of business. Today's architecture also needs to accommodate many factors that are not always driven by technology, such as corporate strategy, information strategy, corporate culture, business process, and security strategy. Enterprise architecture is no longer just your infrastructure (hardware and software).Enterprise architecture is also no longer contained within a company's walls. Products such as Attunity Ltd.'s Attunity B2B lets companies create, share, and automate business processes with their partners over the Web, using standards such as extensible markup language and Java 2 Enterprise Edition. Companies can now reuse and transform their legacy or new internal processes into services over the Web, linking these services with their partners' processes. As you integrate your enterprise value chain with your business partners, including application service providers (ASPs), your enterprise architecture must expand to address entire value networks. Developing or enhancing enterprise architecture involves understanding where your organization is going and what your business problems are, and then gradually decomposing the business drivers into technology services and enablers. This process requires both IT expertise and business strategy. You must analyze and update your company strategy, usually through workshops and interviews with employees at all levels from the CEO to the end users in various business lines, by asking, "Where is our company today? Where do we want to be tomorrow? How will we get there?" The answers are fundamental to matching your enterprise architecture with your business vision. (See Figure 1 ) Developing Your Enterprise ArchitectureEnterprise architecture development comprises three stages: conceptual, logical, and physical. During the conceptual phase, you articulate your business strategy in terms of what you wish to accomplish, so that your architecture will reflect and support those requirements. The logical phase addresses how these services and their components should behave. By first analyzing the conceptual services to develop their characteristics, you can determine the logical components that will act as the building blocks of the architecture.The physical phase determines the products you will use to implement the architecture. During this cycle, you select, review, and rate potential products or component functionality, which you can build, buy, or lease. You then compare this evaluation to the requirements you gathered during the logical phase to determine the best fit. Where Is Your Company Today?Examining where your company is today usually reveals problem areas in business processes and gaps in services provided by the current business applications. For example, access to data is frequently a problem with legacy systems, where programs written by developers generate needed reports. This centralized process creates a bottleneck in which employees can't easily access the information they need. If you identify such a problem during your evaluation of the current system, then the new system must strategically address that problem and provide the flexibility for users to easily generate their own reports and access the information they need in a useful format.Another common problem with legacy systems is that customers experience a different level of service when using different platforms to interact with a company. Depending on whether they use Web-based services, a call center, or VRU, they may perceive you as a different company. This problem may even force them to switch to a different platform to complete a service. The new architecture must provide consistent service that is platform independent.
Copyright © 2004 CMP Media Inc. |
|
CMP -- United Business Media
Intelligent Enterprise
Better Insight for Business Decisions
