With the harsh economic climate forcing IT departments to continue delivering efficiency gains to their organisations with an ever-shrinking pot of capital and operating expenditure, integrating a variety of technology investments into a unified enterprise architecture is higher up on the agenda than ever before.
Without a clear understanding of what enterprise architecture entails from an IT perspective, however, let alone the skills to implement one, organisations are doomed to fail.
Ryan Purvis, head of custom development, integration and business process management at local Microsoft development powerhouse and Britehouse subsidiary, 3fiftfeen, says rather than speaking to the physical layout of a company's IT environment, enterprise architecture is the strategic plan or strategy an organisation implements to ensure the technical services required for the business to function optimally are in place.
“Extending this a little further, it's safe to say that enterprise architecture is strongly related to the structure, relationships and characteristics across a number of entities that make up the IT infrastructure of an organisation,” he says.
“And unlike the common perception in the market, this is not limited to merely hardware. It stretches across to the software and services needed to cater for the overall business strategy.
“Technology is merely an enabler for the business and has little value, unless used as such,” he adds.
Purvis says in a design context, enterprise architecture relates purely to the technical services required by a focused system.
“Invariably, the system in question only makes up a portion of the overall architecture and therefore will need to subscribe to the overall requirements of the enterprise architecture, such as flexibility, scalability, availability, disaster recovery and performance considerations,” he adds.
That said, however, Purvis admits there are times that technologies outside of the prescribed approach need to be employed to achieve the ends set out in the business's overall strategy.
“So, although for the most part, it's best to stick to a common platform or brand of partner, there are cases where a mix of different platforms will better cater for the business's needs.”
Purvis says that generally, the building of an enterprise architecture is undertaken by professionals with business and technical knowledge, with the ability to communicate, inspire and lead others along the path that is set.
This is in essence the strategy that stretches and moulds the current architecture from the “AS-IS” to the “TO-BE”.
“The business needs its enterprise architecture to be aligned in order for it to be effective. Therefore, although it tends to be a largely technical competency, enterprise architecture is a key part of the business strategy,” he says.
Purvis believes an enterprise architecture should be viewed as an investment and managed as such, by astute and capable individuals - the enterprise architecture either sets the platform for business growth or conversely can set the stage for a dramatic crash.
“While, as mentioned, it's occasionally necessary for the business to deviate from a prescribed path or technology choice, it's important to note that this poses a clear risk, since there are different skills that will be required to support each flavour of technology.
“Should the required skill not be easily available, staff will need to be trained, contractors will need to be hired or vendors with the required skill will have to step in, something that can have a substantial cost impact,” he explains.
Purvis says that right now, the focus for all IT projects should be to look for business value - whether that takes the form of reducing unnecessary spend, redeploying this spend towards more critical line of business systems or reducing of complexity in the IT environment.
The following are options that could be considered:
* Reduce time that is wasted on manual tasks
* Consolidate systems that fulfil the same or similar tasks
* Ensure that business and separate units are investing in systems in line with the EA strategy
* Optimise interactions between departments and systems
* Reduce the number of differently flavoured technologies
“All of these points, in one way or another, strive for a more effective organisation and will require that the business and IT are aligned on the objectives. In this vein, the plan must exist considering all elements in the environment with metrics to determine success or failure,” he says.
“Therefore the enterprise architecture and the business plan are both long-term strategies made up of short phases of measured goals, with the investment in enterprise ownership to business value ratio being paramount as a measure for both strategies together,” he concludes.
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