We are in the era of competitive advantage through smart information and analytics. Process automation and leveraging transactional systems is a "thing of the past". To advance organizations need to start designing their architecture leveraging microservices and focus on data management / analytics efficiency.

1. May 201654| |
The Evolution of the Architecture of
Enterprises -AKA Enterprise Architecture
By Leo Barella, VP-Enterprise Architecture, AstraZeneca
Y
ou have probably heard your
organization refer to Enterprise
Architecture (EA) as a team
rather than a corporate discipline
like strategy, R&D, sales or
supply chain.
EA defines and documents
the physical representation and
implementation of the corporate
strategy via its business capabilities, processes, functions and
the information, integration, applications, and technologies
blueprints.
The Problem with Thinking this Way
Most organizations nestle their EA function within their IT
department, which is likely why typical EA organizations
struggle to provide their corporations or enterprises with
measurable value. Few organizations leverage their EA
blueprints from capabilities to technology. Organizations
need to diagnose the overall performance of the enterprise and
be able to make corporate-wide changes that can impact the
overall performance of the enterprise.
Once you start to analyze how the processes—that bring
the enterprise the most amount of value (value streams)—are
supported by the technologies, you realize the enterprise
evolution has continually added technologies with the hope of
simplifying an individual component of the value stream. This
eventually leads to increasing the overall complexity and cost of
the overall value stream process. It is a complicated science—
especially in organizations that do not focus on optimization at
the enterprise level, and instead, focus on micro-optimizations
at the department or at the single business process level.
While EA should have strong ties to IT, since IT enables
the process automation and analytics necessary to produce cost
savings and competitive advantage, it should not be perceived
as a discipline that only has to do with IT and is provided by
an IT organization.
An Era of Digital Enterprise
A decade ago, IT was a support function and in some cases a
strong enabler for services that enterprises would provide their
customers. Today, the best performing organizations start
as technology companies that sell a specialized set of services
powered by analytics to measure
efficiency and throttle scalability on
demand.
Data analytics as a product helps
you differentiate yourself from your
competitors. This changes everything,
especially the relationship between
the business and IT.
What this Means:
• Some large enterprises are still
focusing on growth through acquisition, but the architecture
of the enterprise model is quickly evolving into a temporary
assembly of inter-connected companies and services that can
outperform the traditional enterprise.
• It is going to be difficult for non-tech businesses to
understand how the level of flexibility and scaling a digitally
connected network of businesses can drive more value and be
quicker than a traditional enterprise.
• The emergence of “micro services organizations” will disrupt
the established enterprise model.
• You can reduce the time to market by using micro services
architecture.
• The monolithic enterprise model is evolving to the assembly
of high performing micro services organizations.
What Needs to Happen?
Enterprise Architecture needs to be viewed as a strategic
discipline by the enterprise and not only by IT.
EA organizations will have to “sell” the new role of IT
in the overall corporate strategy and attempt to gain a better
seat at the table to be able to influence the move to a digital
enterprise.
From a technical standpoint, EA organizations must
shift the focus of their IT organization from an Application/
Transactional focused portfolio of projects onto enterprise data
and integration foundational capabilities.
Transactional processing will still drive incremental value,
but not as much value as an enterprise capability derives
around data, integration and analytics. EA organizations are
in the best position to promote this transformation, yet they
need to shift their focus from technology solutions to business
strategy enablement.
CXO INSIGHTS
Leo Barella
Ken Spangler,
SVP & CIO-FedEx Ground and
FedEx Freight, FedEx Services IT
Khalil Yazdi,
Consulting CIO & Principal,
Yazdi and Associates
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