The Value of Enterprise Reference Architectures

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Integrators certainly know as well as anyone that technology infrastructures are growing increasingly complex. Today, an organization's infrastructure includes everything from network interface cards and hard drives to the business processes that drive the company forward—not to mention numerous systems and applications, some of them overlapping, and many of which are made even more complicated by a lack of integration.

The most forward-thinking organizations are always looking for ways to use technology to provide high business value, while also containing costs. That has become a significant challenge in today's environment. While IT spending may be up, IT organizations, nonetheless, seek to make the most of their existing technology investments. Many of those companies are now looking to develop an enterprise reference architecture (ERA) for their organizations—essentially, a framework that functions as a set of guidelines and practices for their technology infrastructure, which can serve as a baseline on which to make technology decisions.

ERAs are not a new concept; vendors such as IBM have been providing similar frameworks for years. But the effectiveness of such frameworks was rather limited—primarily because of the lack of standards and supporting technologies. But the technology and related standards have recently evolved to the point where it now makes sense for an organization to consider developing and adopting a common ERA.

Doculabs is seeing this trend first-hand in its consulting engagements, as more organizations express interest in the concept of the ERA. In this article, we take a look at the modern ERA, the technologies that commonly comprise one and the implications for integrators.

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Architectural Constructs

A modern ERA comprises several individual service layers that together provide an unprecedented level of flexibility in application design (see "Layers of the Modern ERA," page 68).

Architecturally, the modern ERA is service-oriented, which allows applications to be broken into services that can be accessed by other applications and systems. The modern ERA is also event-driven, which provides a fundamental mechanism to capture key changes in business needs and technical implementation. These changes can then be used to effect instantaneous changes to business processes as well as to the underlying systems that support them.

A third characteristic of the modern ERA is that it is aligned with life-cycle support processes. Organizations are constantly designing, deploying, managing and re-evaluating their applications. Until recently, however, it was not possible to make decisions on design, development and optimization based on empirical evidence and real data about application usage patterns and business model behavior. Going forward, architectures must account for the collection, dissemination and use of that information to help organizations make better decisions.

The modern ERA is also able to support assembly and integration. Once applications have been segmented into smaller functional units, the ability to assemble these components into applications is critical. In the past, writing code was the only way to achieve the goal. Today, process management technology achieves the same goals while reducing the need for code development.

Finally, the modern ERA is able to leverage existing applications and infrastructure. As organizations look for ways to minimize unnecessary technology spending, they are looking for ways to reuse existing technology. For most organizations, existing infrastructure, systems and applications are home to the core data and functions that drive the business. These systems must be leveraged to provide maximum benefit.

Modern ERA Benefits

Taking the above architectural constructs into consideration, the benefits that an ERA can provide to an organization should be fairly clear.

First, there are bottom-line benefits. Consider that an organization can reuse existing applications and build new services that can be leveraged throughout the enterprise—thereby saving money. And the ability to reuse business processes to assemble applications reduces the amount of time spent developing custom code and complex applications.

Then there are the top-line benefits. Using an ERA allows an organization to react more quickly to changing business conditions and to respond more quickly than the competition—significant top-line benefits. It also allows business users to be closely involved with changes in business processes, in some cases even allowing them to own those changes.

But almost by necessity, the ERA concept assumes that an organization will largely centralize its IT function and impose a degree of control over the technologies that will be used and supported across the enterprise. For some organizations, that might present a culture shock. In companies with a strong entrepreneurial culture, for instance, individual business units are probably accustomed to solving their own problems.

The framework provided by an ERA enables an organization to improve its overall technology architecture design by allowing it to more easily identify areas of duplicate functionality and make decisions to rationalize certain technology investments or better leverage other existing investments. Ultimately, the common set of guidelines that constitute an ERA helps an organization to recognize problems as well as areas of opportunity more quickly, saving both cost and effort and ensuring better architectural control.

Implications For Integrators

We've seen the benefits that an ERA can provide to organizations that choose to develop and use them. So what are the implications from the standpoint of the systems integrator?

Consider the level of information an ERA can provide about an organization's current state. At the very least, the client with an ERA in place will have performed a high-level systems and business process inventory, which provides a baseline understanding of the organization's existing investments. It will also provide a clear view of the standards to be used for systems development.

Just as important, however, the ERA will provide a clearly articulated layout of the technology components in place within the organization for the various layers of the architecture. This layout can then function as a road map that the integrator can reference for information about how these components must relate to each other and how they must be integrated. The ERA will also provide considerable information about the client's future architectural vision, including strategic and tactical goals—the business goals that the technology must support and the specific technology components that will be involved in achieving that vision, including which areas of its technology environment must be enhanced, where acquisitions must be made and which systems will be retired.

It should be noted that some organizations are even going so far as to develop "subreference" architectures—i.e., architectures for a subset of their technology infrastructures, such as subreference architectures enterprise content management (ECM) or business process management (BPM). These subreference architectures are even more useful because they provide additional detail on how very specific technology components must be implemented.

Other artifacts that emerge from an ERA for an application, such as data flows and process diagrams, provide value at the commencement of an engagement because they can serve as a detailed design of the work that the client will be requiring the integrator to perform. And, finally, in its capacity as a road map, an ERA can also serve as a governance document for the engagement—an overall standard for checks and balances on the progress of the project and as a change control mechanism if changes need to be made along the way.

If a client can present you with an ERA, you will have a clear picture of its vision and direction from an architecture perspective. Areas of opportunity will be readily apparent; indeed, the systems integrator can work closely with the client to help identify and prioritize the steps that will be required to bring the organization's vision closer to reality. At the end of the day, having an ERA in place and working in concert with the framework that it provides can help to ensure a better potential for the overall success of an engagement and a closer partnership between the client and systems integrator.

To derive greater value from the ERA, organizations are building a more comprehensive architectural model that includes relationships to organizational structure, geography, artifacts (like policies and guidelines), business processes and technical activities. These complex relationships should enable organizations to ask and answer complex questions like: