Amitabh Apte

Enterprise Frameworks: In Perfect Harmony Together…

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If you are not a practicing Enterprise Architect, words such as COBIT, TOGAF, ITIL and ZACHMAN will either mean nothing to you or will more often than not confuse you. Most IT professionals will relate these terms with concepts such as architecture framework, technology framework, standards, modelling, analysis etc. which may or may not correct depending on referring context. However, thanks to greater awareness of Enterprise Architecture in the last decade or so, it should still be easy for keen Enterprise Architecture enthusiast to find out more about the above and other similar Enterprise Frameworks. Most of above listed frameworks are available free to download for limited-time review or even free to practice if you are undertaking non-commercial internal enterprise purposes (see useful links and references below). The real question however which seldom gets asked it how do these frameworks relate with each other, if at all? How can they interact and collaborate with each other? What are considerations of such engagement across frameworks? And more importantly is it worth it from business value and relevance perspective?  Such questions would ideally demand a decent whitepaper which analyses such interactions. Given time constraints however, I am trying to present my thoughts in this blog post as an executive summary.

Before discussing a few frameworks and their potential linkage with each other, I would like to present business and IT context of such interaction. Based on my practical experience, I would propose a simple map as presented in below figure. Business goals and objectives demand strategic IT response in terms of strategic and tactical IT programs, investments and activities. They need to be governed to ensure compliance of deliverables with the business objectives. Strategy needs planning and architecture disciplines to ensure that strategic intents are given shape of tangible constructs. This is where enterprise architects convert abstract into specific plans and architectures. This is where artefacts such as business architecture, application architecture, infrastructure architecture get conceived. Such plans and architectures need to be further developed in detailed designs, transition plans and activities. More importantly, resultant IT systems and solutions are required to be operational ready and feasible. I am aware that this presents an overly simplistic picture of often much complex and complicated technology implementation reality. But the purpose here is to give a broad and high-level overview of chain of actions which need to take place in the journey of business goals to business processes, applications, solutions to their eventual technology implementations and operations.
image
Why and Where do Framework Matter?

Going back to set of initial questions which I raised in this post earlier, let us now tray and map a few leading frameworks to the above outlined concept and journey. I have picked up three leading frameworks for this purpose; COBIT, TOGAF and ITIL. COBIT framework in this map provides the overarching Strategy and Governance mechanism. It takes business goals and governance drivers as inputs and then provides a seamless mechanism to link IT Resources with planning, implementation, delivery and monitoring of delivered systems. I would like to propose that, COBIT however needs a more thorough framework such as TOGAF to further elaborate and develop the Planning and Architecture activities in the journey. TOGAF ADM provides a very good and comprehensive process discipline to take requirements through various steps such as vision, architecture, solution definition, planning and change management. At this point however, I would like to suggest that, to take the architecture to the next level of detailed design and transition planning, a framework such as ITIL will be extremely useful. ITIL takes a service view of the world in definition of systems and not a mere technology view. ITIL practitioners will put operability ahead of technology or architecture purity, and rightfully so. ITIL sees through the design through transition and operations of the service.
image
COBIT TOGAF and ITIL in Prefect Harmony

I have to clarify that, above is simply one way of arranging these very useful frameworks to work with each other. It can be argued that, TOGAF in certain instances can provide overarching umbrella for such journey from requirements to delivery. Or indeed ITIL on it’s own can be adequate to see the system design through to implementation. There is no right or wrong with Enterprise Architecture and that is the strength and weakness of the practice I would like to argue. The purpose of this post as I stated earlier was simply to showcase benefits and effectiveness of such Enterprise Frameworks work together in perfect harmony!
Now to the real question….what is the business benefit of this? Is it worth the investment and hassle? The answer is that it depends….depends on the business context. It may be worth the more complicated, complex and distributed your business requirements and resultant technology response. It may be an overkill if your requirements and responsive systems are not so complicated. In the long run however, Enterprise Architecture is about entire business and technology estate and not just one program or project and hence often you will find that medium to large size organisations will use more than one framework. In most cases, such framework do not interact well…and this is where my draft proposal above may be useful. 

References and relevant links for further reading..

  • TOGAF – The Open Group Architecture Framework
  • ITIL – Information Technology Information Library
  • COBIT – Control Objectives for Information and related Technology
  • ZACHMAN – named after inventor John Zachman

Enterprise Frameworks: In Perfect Harmony Together…

by
If you are not a practicing Enterprise Architect, words such as COBIT, TOGAF, ITIL and ZACHMAN will either mean nothing to you or will more often than not confuse you. Most IT professionals will relate these terms with concepts such as architecture framework, technology framework, standards, modelling, analysis etc. which may or may not correct depending on referring context. However, thanks to greater awareness of Enterprise Architecture in the last decade or so, it should still be easy for keen Enterprise Architecture enthusiast to find out more about the above and other similar Enterprise Frameworks. Most of above listed frameworks are available free to download for limited-time review or even free to practice if you are undertaking non-commercial internal enterprise purposes (see useful links and references below). The real question however which seldom gets asked it how do these frameworks relate with each other, if at all? How can they interact and collaborate with each other? What are considerations of such engagement across frameworks? And more importantly is it worth it from business value and relevance perspective?  Such questions would ideally demand a decent whitepaper which analyses such interactions. Given time constraints however, I am trying to present my thoughts in this blog post as an executive summary.
Before discussing a few frameworks and their potential linkage with each other, I would like to present business and IT context of such interaction. Based on my practical experience, I would propose a simple map as presented in below figure. Business goals and objectives demand strategic IT response in terms of strategic and tactical IT programs, investments and activities. They need to be governed to ensure compliance of deliverables with the business objectives. Strategy needs planning and architecture disciplines to ensure that strategic intents are given shape of tangible constructs. This is where enterprise architects convert abstract into specific plans and architectures. This is where artefacts such as business architecture, application architecture, infrastructure architecture get conceived. Such plans and architectures need to be further developed in detailed designs, transition plans and activities. More importantly, resultant IT systems and solutions are required to be operational ready and feasible. I am aware that this presents an overly simplistic picture of often much complex and complicated technology implementation reality. But the purpose here is to give a broad and high-level overview of chain of actions which need to take place in the journey of business goals to business processes, applications, solutions to their eventual technology implementations and operations.
image
Why and Where do Framework Matter?
Going back to set of initial questions which I raised in this post earlier, let us now tray and map a few leading frameworks to the above outlined concept and journey. I have picked up three leading frameworks for this purpose; COBIT, TOGAF and ITIL. COBIT framework in this map provides the overarching Strategy and Governance mechanism. It takes business goals and governance drivers as inputs and then provides a seamless mechanism to link IT Resources with planning, implementation, delivery and monitoring of delivered systems. I would like to propose that, COBIT however needs a more thorough framework such as TOGAF to further elaborate and develop the Planning and Architecture activities in the journey. TOGAF ADM provides a very good and comprehensive process discipline to take requirements through various steps such as vision, architecture, solution definition, planning and change management. At this point however, I would like to suggest that, to take the architecture to the next level of detailed design and transition planning, a framework such as ITIL will be extremely useful. ITIL takes a service view of the world in definition of systems and not a mere technology view. ITIL practitioners will put operability ahead of technology or architecture purity, and rightfully so. ITIL sees through the design through transition and operations of the service.
image
COBIT TOGAF and ITIL in Prefect Harmony
I have to clarify that, above is simply one way of arranging these very useful frameworks to work with each other. It can be argued that, TOGAF in certain instances can provide overarching umbrella for such journey from requirements to delivery. Or indeed ITIL on it’s own can be adequate to see the system design through to implementation. There is no right or wrong with Enterprise Architecture and that is the strength and weakness of the practice I would like to argue. The purpose of this post as I stated earlier was simply to showcase benefits and effectiveness of such Enterprise Frameworks work together in perfect harmony!
Now to the real question….what is the business benefit of this? Is it worth the investment and hassle? The answer is that it depends….depends on the business context. It may be worth the more complicated, complex and distributed your business requirements and resultant technology response. It may be an overkill if your requirements and responsive systems are not so complicated. In the long run however, Enterprise Architecture is about entire business and technology estate and not just one program or project and hence often you will find that medium to large size organisations will use more than one framework. In most cases, such framework do not interact well…and this is where my draft proposal above may be useful. 

References and relevant links for further reading..

  • TOGAF – The Open Group Architecture Framework
  • ITIL – Information Technology Information Library
  • COBIT – Control Objectives for Information and related Technology
  • ZACHMAN – named after inventor John Zachman

Multi-Channel Retailing Takes a new Meaning with Retail Apps

by
Retail Reference Architecture, it’s evolution and real-life pragmatic implementations happens to be one of my key interest area. So far on this blog I have discussed the concept of Retail Reference Architecture, proposed a concise yet complete Simplified Retail Reference Architecture and also shared some of the innovations from real-life implementations of Retailers such as ASOS. As a matter of fact I do follow fortunes of ASOS with great interest. To me this is a bold, new take on the science of retailing (…some might call is an Art of Retailing) which combines best practices from innovator’s such as Amazon.com and presents a unique and deceptively simple business model. This post shares some of my further observations about ASOS and more importantly how they continue to lead the innovative use of Information Technology in the retail space.

Since summer ASOS  has launched its App for the Apple range of mobile devices. The new service has been designed for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users, and along with the function to ‘save for later’ any item of interest sold by the trader, the app also includes a locator for local drop-off points for customers looking to return unwanted purchases.
Free to download, the new app lets you browse and shop directly from fashion editorials, very similar to Net-à-Porter’s. The app comes with trend reports and also contains content originally produced for the online version of the Asos magazine as well as exclusive footage and features such as video and 360-degree views of clothing items. The iPad app is available for free from the App Store since August this year with both Android and iPhone versions scheduled to launch by the close of 2011. 

As the App design James Davie says, “this App design provided a series of new challenges. Most importantly striking the perfect balance between giving the user the familiar ASOS shopping experience, and the equally familiar iPad navigation experience. The final result is a balance of both which should give the user a quick, painless and enjoyable shopping experience.”  Having personally used this App now I can confirm that this is one of the best fashion retailing App available out there with intuitive navigation, fresh content, catalogue, bold designs and just tons of “coolness”! Above the cosmetics, what stands out for me is the fact that, customer accounts are totally synchronised across all of the retailer’s platforms so whether they are using the new apps, the standard website or the mobile site all of their details will remain consistent.
This App and iPad appear to be made for each other and not just a lift-off from ecommerce site made to fit with iPad format. Just to clarify I am not a regular ASOS shopper but as a keen Retail Technology practitioner and follower…this company and it’s innovation are worth watching!

Multi-Channel Retailing Takes a new Meaning with Retail Apps

by
Retail Reference Architecture, it’s evolution and real-life pragmatic implementations happens to be one of my key interest area. So far on this blog I have discussed the concept of Retail Reference Architecture, proposed a concise yet complete Simplified Retail Reference Architecture and also shared some of the innovations from real-life implementations of Retailers such as ASOS. As a matter of fact I do follow fortunes of ASOS with great interest. To me this is a bold, new take on the science of retailing (…some might call is an Art of Retailing) which combines best practices from innovator’s such as Amazon.com and presents a unique and deceptively simple business model. This post shares some of my further observations about ASOS and more importantly how they continue to lead the innovative use of Information Technology in the retail space.

Since summer ASOS  has launched its App for the Apple range of mobile devices. The new service has been designed for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users, and along with the function to ‘save for later’ any item of interest sold by the trader, the app also includes a locator for local drop-off points for customers looking to return unwanted purchases.
Free to download, the new app lets you browse and shop directly from fashion editorials, very similar to Net-à-Porter’s. The app comes with trend reports and also contains content originally produced for the online version of the Asos magazine as well as exclusive footage and features such as video and 360-degree views of clothing items. The iPad app is available for free from the App Store since August this year with both Android and iPhone versions scheduled to launch by the close of 2011. 

As the App design James Davie says, “this App design provided a series of new challenges. Most importantly striking the perfect balance between giving the user the familiar ASOS shopping experience, and the equally familiar iPad navigation experience. The final result is a balance of both which should give the user a quick, painless and enjoyable shopping experience.”  Having personally used this App now I can confirm that this is one of the best fashion retailing App available out there with intuitive navigation, fresh content, catalogue, bold designs and just tons of “coolness”! Above the cosmetics, what stands out for me is the fact that, customer accounts are totally synchronised across all of the retailer’s platforms so whether they are using the new apps, the standard website or the mobile site all of their details will remain consistent.
This App and iPad appear to be made for each other and not just a lift-off from ecommerce site made to fit with iPad format. Just to clarify I am not a regular ASOS shopper but as a keen Retail Technology practitioner and follower…this company and it’s innovation are worth watching!

Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2012

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Gartner recently published the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2012. Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. It may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years. These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They are as following;

Media Tablets and Beyond. Users can choose between various form factors when it comes to mobile computing. No single platform, form factor or technology will dominate and companies should expect to manage a diverse environment with two to four intelligent clients through 2015.

Mobile-Centric Applications and Interfaces. The user interface (IU) paradigm in place for more than 20 years is changing. UIs with windows, icons, menus, and pointers will be replaced by mobile-centric interfaces emphasizing touch, gesture, search, voice and video.

Contextual and Social User Experience. Context-aware computing uses information about an end-user or objects environment, activities, connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end-user or object.

Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that describes how the Internet will expand as sensors and intelligence are added to physical items such as consumer devices or physical assets and these objects are connected to the Internet.

App Stores and Marketplaces. Application stores by Apple and Android provide marketplaces where hundreds of thousands of applications are available to mobile users. Gartner forecasts that by 2014, there will be more than 70 billion mobile application downloads from app stores every year.

Next-Generation Analytics. Analytics is growing along three key dimensions:

  1. From traditional offline analytics to in-line embedded analytics.
  2. From analyzing historical data to explain what happened to analyzing historical and real-time data from multiple systems to simulate and predict the future.
  3. from structured and simple data analyzed by individuals to analysis of complex information of many types (text, video, etc…) from many systems

Big Data. The size, complexity of formats and speed of delivery exceeds the capabilities of traditional data management technologies; it requires the use of new or exotic technologies simply to manage the volume alone.

In-Memory Computing. Gartner sees huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. In addition, it offers a new layer of the memory hierarchy in servers that has key advantages — space, heat, performance and ruggedness among them.

Extreme Low-Energy Servers. The adoption of low-energy servers potentially delivering 30 times or more processors in a particular server unit with lower power consumption vs. current server approaches.

Cloud Computing. Cloud is a disruptive force and has the potential for broad long-term impact in most industries. While the market remains in its early stages in 2011 and 2012, it will see the full range of large enterprise providers fully engaged in delivering a range of offerings to build cloud environments and deliver cloud services.

“These top 10 technologies will be strategic for most organizations, and IT leaders should use this list in their strategic planning process by reviewing the technologies and how they fit into their expected needs,” said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner fellow.

The complete related Gartner press release can be accessed here.

Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2012

by

Gartner recently published the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2012. Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. It may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years. These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They are as following;

Media Tablets and Beyond. Users can choose between various form factors when it comes to mobile computing. No single platform, form factor or technology will dominate and companies should expect to manage a diverse environment with two to four intelligent clients through 2015.

Mobile-Centric Applications and Interfaces. The user interface (IU) paradigm in place for more than 20 years is changing. UIs with windows, icons, menus, and pointers will be replaced by mobile-centric interfaces emphasizing touch, gesture, search, voice and video.

Contextual and Social User Experience. Context-aware computing uses information about an end-user or objects environment, activities, connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end-user or object.

Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that describes how the Internet will expand as sensors and intelligence are added to physical items such as consumer devices or physical assets and these objects are connected to the Internet.

App Stores and Marketplaces. Application stores by Apple and Android provide marketplaces where hundreds of thousands of applications are available to mobile users. Gartner forecasts that by 2014, there will be more than 70 billion mobile application downloads from app stores every year.

Next-Generation Analytics. Analytics is growing along three key dimensions:

  1. From traditional offline analytics to in-line embedded analytics.
  2. From analyzing historical data to explain what happened to analyzing historical and real-time data from multiple systems to simulate and predict the future.
  3. from structured and simple data analyzed by individuals to analysis of complex information of many types (text, video, etc…) from many systems

Big Data. The size, complexity of formats and speed of delivery exceeds the capabilities of traditional data management technologies; it requires the use of new or exotic technologies simply to manage the volume alone.

In-Memory Computing. Gartner sees huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. In addition, it offers a new layer of the memory hierarchy in servers that has key advantages — space, heat, performance and ruggedness among them.

Extreme Low-Energy Servers. The adoption of low-energy servers potentially delivering 30 times or more processors in a particular server unit with lower power consumption vs. current server approaches.

Cloud Computing. Cloud is a disruptive force and has the potential for broad long-term impact in most industries. While the market remains in its early stages in 2011 and 2012, it will see the full range of large enterprise providers fully engaged in delivering a range of offerings to build cloud environments and deliver cloud services.

“These top 10 technologies will be strategic for most organizations, and IT leaders should use this list in their strategic planning process by reviewing the technologies and how they fit into their expected needs,” said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner fellow.

The complete related Gartner press release can be accessed here.