About the Enterprise Information Technology Stack

Post No. 1- The Technology Stack and future topics

I will continue to share with you my thoughts and learnings on the domain of enterprise architecture. What have been published so far has always discussed enterprise architecture from the viewpoint of the business; which is great, as business the true driver of EA initiatives .In the coming few months my blogs will cover topics in enterprise architecture from view angle of technology leaders.

The Open Group’s Allen Brown once said “The goal of enterprise architecture is boundary-less information flow, where all systems, IT and non IT, interoperate”. Whether you agree or not with how he expressed the goal of EA, the saying puts it simply: EA involves IT and non IT domains and that’s business.

Aside from the business part of EA, which I have covered heavily in my previous posts, there are several layers that collectively describe what we call the Enterprise Information Technology Stack. These layers are:

• ·      Applications
• ·       Data or Information
• ·       Infrastructure
• ·       And the cross cutting thread: Security

Gartner defines the Enterprise Technology architecture (ETA) viewpoint as “the reusable standards, guidelines, individual parts and configurations that are technology-related”. Across all the stack layers standards and guidelines should be supporting not only interoperability but principles, objectives and requirements set by the business layer of EA.

The terminology stack itself is very technology specific. Often used by and to CIOs and CTOs and technology experts to describe a visual representation of the interaction between layers. The understanding of how the stack is composed in terms of interactions and boundaries allows them to develop capabilities as well as managing change by governing the impact of the new capabilities.

I will continue to share with you my thoughts and learnings on the domain of enterprise architecture. In the coming few months my blogs will cover topics in enterprise architecture from view angle of technology leaders. It is however important to note that my intention won’t be on bringing down topics of mere technical nature. But rather, the guidelines, principles, standards and components that represent the technology related domains, such as applications, data, infrastructure, in the overall enterprise architecture. Security related posts, which is a critical crosscutting thread in EA, will find its way to this blog.

Post No. 2- The application stack or the software services network

As part of my readings this week about technology stack layers, I came across a Forbes tech page article by Larry Hawes, titled “Enterprise software Architecture: a Network of Services, Not a Layered Stack”. It has been the source of this post.

If we would like to focus on the application layer of the enterprise technology stack; how would we like to visualize it: as a stack or as a network of services?

The term application stack gives the indication of hierarchical interaction, where every layer can only interact with the layers above and beneath it. This representation does not go well with the guidelines and principles that are set by any decent EA program that calls for scalability, performance and flexibility.

Software vendors are no longer adopting these traditional stacked architecture. Their architectures can be described as a network of functionalities and services. Multiple services can be combined to form an application for a specific purpose. With this designs application developers can build solutions that allows enterprise to reach and connect with their larger ecosystem, by pulling data from on service node to be used by several internal and external service nodes.

The dynamic nature of this network architecture will be of a profound value to the business. It will allow business to be able to face changes, adopt technology advances and even try and embrace new business models without worrying to limited by the limitations of the traditional hierarchical application architecture.

Post No. 3- Skills required by every stack layer

Someone is ought to carry the architectural work.  But what is this talent that should have a good level of expertise in every layer of the stack, along with in-depth understanding of the business!!!

Fortunately, FEAPO (Federation of Enterprise Architectural Professional Organizations) developed a framework that can be used for identifying competencies and critical skilled required in an EA team.

No surprise, the framework is based on the BAIT+S (Business, application and information, technology and security). Competencies are identified for each of the following roles:

• ·       Business Architect : to answer why the change is needed
• ·       Information architect : to answer how information moves
• ·       Application Services Architect: to answer how systems deliver services
• ·       Tech Architect : how technology support them all
• ·       Security Architect : for the management of secure data

An article by Gartner presented two different thoughts: An Enterprise architect as a higher level role and not a maturing role, and that business’s, information, technology and solution architect roles have a specific expertise that is measurable.

To summaries, thanks to FEAPO and Gartner, we do now have guidelines that organizations can adhere to when establishing and progressing an EA career path. Internal staff can be prepared to take such roles, or if organizations wishes, selection criteria can be tailored to hire from outside.

Fellow Penn Staters interested in this post can contact me to give them a copy of a paper which my group have prepared on EA careers as part of a course requirement.