Why SOEA?
CEA suggest to provide services and building blocks for business owner to talor their own applicaiton solucaiton instead designing a one size fit all solution which do not server well for enterprise in the competitive world.Although each enterprise in the same line of business may apears to be the same, but each enterprise must also maintain uniqueness to justfy its existance. In the analogy of snow flake, It all looks alike but each snow flake is different. The direction of enterprise solution in a "one size fit all " do not serve well for each enterprise unique need. ^ TOP
Workload and performance requirement
The Engineering of Consolidation is a physical architecture effort which is driven by Enterprise business workload and performance requirment as describe in the following drawing :Enterprise Workload and perforamnce requirement analysis overview
3 Driven by workload and performance requirment
3.1 Mission workload
The enterprise infrastructure must be designed based on enterprise workload analysis rather than by each application system to eliminate the waste of redundant infrastructure. The traditional EA approach , workload and performance requirement is consider as the operational characteristic by each application system. The operational characteristics is not an engineering calculation rather, it is frequently over estimated to be on the safe side. As a result, most of enterprise infrastructure are over designed over and over by each application system. A simple calculation to add up all the users estimation by each application system, it is not difficult to find that the estimate users are far exceed the total users in the enterprise
Enterprise workload and performance analysis is essential in enterprise strategic planning , most of enterprise have established their workload and performance analysis from statistic data and future projection for their strategic planning purpose. The engineering of sharing leverage on the existing resources to establish the technology workload and performance requirement without substantial investment as it is in enterprise wide business process engineering effort. For example :
3.2 IT workload distribution
3.3 Performance requirement
3.4 Performance measurement
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enterprise infrastructure
1.0 INTRODUCTION1.1 The definition of Enterprise Infrastructure Architecture
The definition of enterprise infrastructure from the definition of IT infrastructure by Simon Liu , the Director of Office of Computer and Communication systems in the National Library of Medicine, a pioneer of Enterprise Architecture who published many EA papers on the IEEE [5] .
“IT infrastructure as a set of IT resources and organizational capability that employees share across the organization. Infrastructure provides on which to develop business application and support business processes … IT infrastructure provides standardized services offering and leverage a uniform delivery mechanism across application. Although users might select from many options, customization of infrastructure services is minimal or non-existent. . Rather than develop customized services and solutions that map to the requirement of individual applications, an infrastructure service provider seeks to provide a standard service to multiple application
Mathematically, as shown on the following figure, the traditional EA approach which is the central planed architecture design blue print is the union set of enterprise, the enterprise infrastructure which provide the foundation and building blocks is the intersection set of enterprise.
2.0 WHY ENTERPRISE INFRASTRUCTURE
Enterprise infrastructure keep EA simple for building consensus to earn architecture buy-in from the stakeholders and enable the agility for business owners support the dynamic of local business process reengineering,
In the people oriented civil community, there are difference between people, it is difficult for them to agree on every thing all the time. However, there is also a common denominator they can all agree upon with. The enterprise infrastructure is a the design of the common foundation and building blocks.
2.1 The value of EA is to enable the agility
The value of enterprise infrastructure is to enable the agility for automation development in time for practical use rather than a central planned architecture in a command and control approach. The stakeholder need the agility to support their locally reengineering business process . The enterprise infrastructure architecture establishes the common resources and building blocks for the business owners to take advantage of technology in time for their need. In a analogy of a restaurant, the chef in the restaurant does not wait for the customers to place order to prepare the ingredients. They have prepared their ingredient based on the food they offered on their manual so that they can serve their hungry customer in time for their need. If a restaurant operate business based on waterfall approach where the chief take the order from hungry customers and go to the market for ingredient , there will be disgruntle customers the restaurant business will come and go.
2.3 It is futile for EA in a command and control approach
It is futile to design a central planned blueprint in a command and control approach to impose enterprise architecture in a militaristic/totalitarian style. EA is all about people and business processes in an enterprise subject to local business reengineering based on geographical location and culture difference. The command and control approach do not serve well in a people community. The experience of central planned economy in socialism country by the social architects has very limited success. To the IT community, EA is a notion of command and control and they would like to pay for EA to go away.
It is futile because the central planed EA approach does not provide values in time for practical use. The traditional EA approach requires significant investment of time and resource to design the entire architecture blueprint. In many EA projects, the enterprise architects simply walk way to design the most efficient architecture for a long time and resurface with a architecture blueprint without stakeholder participation. The business owners can not afford to wait for a long time due to their immediate of automation .. The great promise from architecture is only a promise without practical value. They have no choice but develop the stovepipe systems.
It is futile because the central planned EA approach is lack of architecture buy-in from the stakeholders. After the hard work of design the entire architecture blueprint, the enterprise architects find out that architecture buy-in from the stakeholders is actually more difficult. The central planned EA approach does not provide enough value to earn the architecture buy-in from stakeholders. It overlook the fact that EA is all about people [] and the fact that the central planned architecture does not support the stakeholders need due to that business processes subject local business process reengineering.
EA is all about people, it is the engineering of reuse and sharing among many different business owners. In the people oriented civil community, there are always many difference due to human nature and culture. In the human society, central planed architecture in a command and control approach have very limited success for example : the experiment of Marxism and communism country in a central planned command and control approach have limited success.
Business processes subject to local business reengineering. Enterprise architecture is not an factory automation effort where business process can be optimism under the factory environment in a mechanical process. The central planned architecture approach is based on the assumption of optimized business process design and standardization as if it is in a factory automation environment. It overlook the fact that business processes subject to local business process reengineering in an enterprise based on geographical distribution and culture difference in the human community. For example : The best way for you to come to work is not necessary the best way for me because of different geographical location and culture.
3.0 HOW TO ESTABLISH THE ENTERPRISE INFRASTRUCTURE
The enterprise infrastructure approach has raised the question of how to align the infrastructure with business without the overall architecture design? From the aspect of traditional EA approach, based on the waterfall concept without learning the experience from the others, the common foundation and building blocks are derived via pattern recognition from the overall architecture design. In this approach, EA effort has to design the overall architecture as the mean to achieve the goal of resolving the challenge of stove pipe system. It requires significant investment of time and resource to design the entire architecture that the EA community has confused the mean to the end and EA is better know as the enterprise architecture blueprint.
In the LEA approach, the enterprise infrastructure is established by learning the experience from the others in the same lines of business. It is a pattern adoption effort instead of pattern recognition effort. There is nothing new under the sun, it is very unlikely that you are the first one to face new challenge. Instead of reinventing wheel, it is more practical to align the enterprise infrastructure with business by learning from the solution patterns under the same line of business.
4.0 THE ENTERPRISE INFRASTRUCTURE CONCEPT
The concept of enterprise infrastructure can be best described by the analogy of “hotdog and bun” which Mr. Jim Williams, the previous program manager of U.S. Visitor program, used to describe his concept on SOA in one occasion. It is a notion of agility to serve the customer in time for their practical use. The following figure is created to illustrate the enterprise infrastructure concept using the hotdog and bun analogy. The enterprise infrastructure consists of the application services, the information resources and technology infrastructure where application service and information resources are similar to the two sides of the bun to cradle different applications.
4.1 Enterprise infrastructure is the set of primitive
John Zachman has originally defined EA as the set of primitives and infrastructure of the Enterprise many years ago. He stated that. [10].
“ Based on the Framework for Enterprise Architecture, I would suggest that Enterprise Architecture is the set of primitive, descriptive artifacts that constitute the knowledge infrastructure of the Enterprise. …Reuse or interoperabitliy does not happen by accident. It is the result of engineering “
Enterprise infrastructure is the set of primitive to enable the agility in taking advantage of IT evolution. The set of primitive does not only consist of application services, but also information resources and technology infrastructure. To enable the agility, enterprise infrastructure provide application services such as web services in services oriented architecture to support business process automation; Information resource such as data steward, data warehousing , knowledge and business intelligence to provide quality information without redundant effort; Technology infrastructure such as network, security and platforms to accommodate multiple application systems as described in the following:
The application services provide the common business process components for business process automation, the application service provide the single sign on, common GUI, report generator, workflow engine, the document management engine, to all the application systems. The data stewards provide common data such as people, organization, location, property to every application systems Distinguish service and solutions
Information resources Information resources is the effort to provide quality information to the stakeholders similar to water resource and energy resources in a city. It is an integral part of the enterprise infrastructure. A city can not function without water, power and gas, an enterprise can not function without quality information. Traditionally, IT professional has devoted on data model and data structure and consider data is the product of operation rather as part of enterprise architecture. However, the value of information management is to provide quality information to the stakeholders. Data model and structure is the mean to organizes and structure the information which is significant to IT professional but does not have much value to the customers.
The technology infrastructure Enterprise infrastructure establish common technology infrastructure such as application, integration, database, network, security and platforms in the enterprise to support multiple application systems.
4.2 Information resources is part of enterprise infrastructure architecture
Information resources such as data stewardship, data warehouse, knowledge management is part of the enterprise infrastructure architecture. It enable the agility of automaton by collecting the information resources and treat the information quality. It must be designed to align with business need rather creating redundant information islands. In an analogy of an automobile which can not move without gas to power the engine , oil to lubricate the engine, and water to cool the engine. In the same token, automation effort does not relies on a fine piece of application service but also on quality information resources.
Tradition EA approach have dedicated the effort on meta data in data model and data structure. In the object oriented concept, data architecture is tightly couples with business process as an attachment of business processes. They have overlook the information resources as part of the enterprise architecture. In the application development culture, the content of data and information is considered as the product from enterprise operation rather as part of the architecture.
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EA to define the services
The challenge of SOA is which service to provideAs SOA become the diretion of application technology evolution in the industry, the need of EA have become obvious. A major chanlenge in service oriented architecture is how to qualify the proper services for the enterprise need.
EA define the proper services
EA is the effort to identify common foundation by looking for commonality.
The services must be selected from enterprise wide consideration rather then put together in pieces. EA, which enable the agility and simplicity, provide common services via the engineering of consolidation from the enterprise wide consideration.
Many SOA projects are initiated in a stovepipe approach to catch up with technology evolution with limited consideration from the aspect of the true benefit of SOA to enable agility and simplicity.
SOA do not replace EA
SOA do not replace EA. The confussion is due the different interpretation of EA. Technical community interpret EA as the enterprise solution such as the enterprsie wide collaboration system. The enterprise wide solution can be easly interpreted as SOA.
SOA in stovepipe appraoch
Implement SOA in a stovepipe approach has totally overlook the basic of SOA to share common services. As a result, the stovepipe oriented SOA approach does not benefit from SOA in sharing resources but also pay for the overhead of SOA. To achieve the purpose of sharing common services, SOA is designed as lose coupled with wrap around, there is an overhead effort for encapuslating the services which contribute to the general concern of SOA perforamnce issue. The overhead concern can be offset via the benefit of sharing common resources in an EA environment. Howerver, It become an extraburden to the stovepipe oriencte approach.
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Enterprise Workload and performance Analysis
5.0 DRIVEN BY BUSINESS PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENT5.1 Mission workload
The enterprise infrastructure must be designed based on enterprise workload analysis rather than by each application system to eliminate the waste of redundant infrastructure. The traditional EA approach , workload and performance requirement is consider as the operational characteristic by each application system. The operational characteristics is not an engineering calculation rather, it is frequently over estimated to be on the safe side. As a result, most of enterprise infrastructure are over designed over and over by each application system. A simple calculation to add up all the users estimation by each application system, it is not difficult to find that the estimate users are far exceed the total users in the enterprise
Enterprise workload and performance analysis is essential in enterprise strategic planning , most of enterprise have established their workload and performance analysis from statistic data and future projection for their strategic planning purpose. The engineering of sharing leverage on the existing resources to establish the technology workload and performance requirement without substantial investment as it is in enterprise wide business process engineering effort. For example :
5.2 IT workload distribution
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