Data Architecture, Solution Architecture, Platform Architecture — What’s the Difference?

Copyright Global Data Strategy, Ltd. 2021
Data Architecture, Platform Architecture, Solution Architecture
What’s the Difference?
Donna Burbank
Global Data Strategy, Ltd.
May 27, 2021
Follow on Twitter @donnaburbank
Twitter Event hashtag: #DAStrategies

How data strategy meets data
architecture at “fast”
Bryan Kirschner | VP, Strategy
May 27, 2021

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“To have reached your
destination sooner, you
should have avoided
the freeway.”

3
“To have reached your
destination sooner, you
should have avoided
the freeway.”
“Your order could have
shipped free from a different
seller.”

4
Fast data strategy = “diﬀerentiate / lead”
>15 points of CSat
uplift from data &
analytics
% of organizations by market segment
Leaders
Laggards

6
Integrations
Pulsar
Kafka
Spark
Hadoop
ODBC
JDBC
Real Time
Stream
Processing
Pulsar
Kafka
CDC
Fully managed as
a service
Self managed on prem or
anycloud
Apache Cassandra
support
Datastore
Key Value, Wide Column, Graph, Document
Fast Writes, Linear Scalability, Always On

Global Data Strategy, Ltd. 2021
Donna Burbank
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• Recognized industry expert in information
management with over 25 years of
experience in data strategy, information
management, data modeling, metadata
management, and enterprise architecture
• Managing Director at Global Data Strategy,
Ltd., an international information
management consulting company that
specializes in the alignment of business
drivers with data-centric technology
• Worked with dozens of Fortune 500
companies worldwide in the Americas,
Europe, Asia, and Africa and speaks
regularly at industry conferences
• Excellence in Data Management Award
from DAMA International
• Past President and Advisor to the DAMA
Rocky Mountain chapter
• Co-author of several books on data
management
• Regular contributor to industry
publications
• She can be reached at
donna.burbank@globaldatastrategy.com
Donna is based in Boulder, Colorado, US
Follow on Twitter @donnaburbank
@GlobalDataStrat

DATAVERSITY Data Architecture Strategies
• January Emerging Trends in Data Architecture – What’s the Next Big Thing?
• February Building a Data Strategy - Practical Steps for Aligning with Business Goals
• March Data Modeling Case Study – Business Data Modeling at Kiewit
• April Master Data Management – Aligning Data, Process, and Governance
• May Data Architecture, Solution Architecture, Platform Architecture – What’s the Difference?
• June Enterprise Architecture vs. Data Architecture
• July Best Practices in Metadata Management
• August Data Quality Best Practices (with guest Nigel Turner)
• September Data Modeling Techniques
• October Data Governance: Aligning Technical & Business Approaches
• December Data Architecture for Digital Transformation
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This Year’s Lineup

What We’ll Cover Today
• A solid data architecture is critical to the
success of any data initiative. But what is
meant by “data architecture”?
• Throughout the industry, there are many
different “flavors” of data architecture, each
with its own unique value and use cases for
describing key aspects of the data landscape.
• This webinar demystifies the various
architecture styles to understand how they
can add value to your organization.
4

What Do We Mean by Architecture?
5
A core part of Data Architecture is creating
solid business definitions for key terms
… but …. as the saying goes ….
“The cobbler’s children have no shoes.”
We’re often terrible at creating common
definitions for our own industry!

Data Architecture
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The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management defines Data Architecture as follows:

Solution Architecture
7

Platform Architecture
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A platform is a product that serves or enables other products or services. Platforms (in the
context of digital business) exist at many levels. They range from high-level platforms that enable
a platform business model to low-level platforms that provide a collection of business and/or
technology capabilities that other products or services consume to deliver their own business
capabilities. - Gartner
A platform is a group of technologies that are used as a base upon
which other applications, processes or technologies are developed. In
personal computing, a platform is the basic hardware (computer) and
software (operating system) on which software applications can be run.
This environment constitutes the basic foundation upon which any
application or software is supported and/or developed. - Techopedia
A hardware and/or software architecture that serves as
a foundation or base. - PCMag

How the Pieces Fit Together
• The TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM)
developed by the Open Group organizes architecture domains
by Business, Data, Application, and Technology
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TOGAF EA Framework
www.opengroup.org
Business
Data
Application
Technology

How the Pieces Fit Together
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Business
Data
Application
Technology
Data
Architecture
Platform
Architecture
Solution
Architecture
The design and construction of an integrated data
resource that is business-driven.
A hardware and/or software architecture that serves
as a foundation or base.
The physical technology infrastructure supporting
data management.
An architectural description of a specific solution.

Key Artifacts for Each Architectural Domain
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Architectural Domain Sample Activities & Artifacts
Business Data Architecture
• Conceptual Data Models
• Logical Data Models
• Business Glossary
• Taxonomy
Technical Data Architecture
• Logical Data Models
• Physical Data Models
• Data Flow Diagrams
• Data-centric Solution Architecture Diagrams
• Application-centric Solution Architecture Diagrams
Platform Architecture • Platform Architecture Diagram

Business Data Architecture
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Business Data Architecture describes the business definitions around data, and the logical and
semantic structures that support these rules.
Conceptual Data Model
Place
Appear on
Contain
Belong to
Customer
customer identifier
first name
middle initial
last name
description
Product
product identifier
product name
description
Order
customer identifier (FK)
product identifier (FK)
order date
Product Part Combination
part identifier (FK)
Raw Material
material_identifier
Finished Good
finished good identifier
Subassembly
subassembly identifier
Part
part identifier
part name
description
Logical Data Model
Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Etc.
Taxonomy
Glossary
Employee: An Employee is a full or
part-time worker who is on the active
payroll for the organization…
Sales Rep: A Sales Rep is an Employee
who is responsible for closing new
business with current and new
Companies…
Support Rep: A Support Rep is an
Employee who handles calls and
inquires from customers in order to
resolve issues…

Technical Data Architecture
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Technical Data Architecture describes the technical data structures and data interchange patterns
that support the business data architecture and business rules.
Place
Appear on
Contain
Belong to
Customer
customer identifier
first name
middle initial
last name
description
Product
product identifier
product name
description
Order
customer identifier (FK)
order date
Product Part Combination
Raw Material
material_identifier
Finished Good
finished good identifier
Subassembly
subassembly identifier
Part
part identifier
part name
description
Logical Data Model Physical Data Model Data Flow Diagram
Customer
Mainframe
HR System
Employee
XML
Customer

High-level solution architecture diagrams can create a high-level view of how systems and their
components fit together.
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Data-centric solution architecture Application-centric solution architecture*
e.g. CRM
* From architect.salesforce.com

Platform Architecture
Platform architecture diagrams show the interaction of platforms and hosting mechanisms
(e.g. IoT integration, On premises to Cloud, etc.).
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Industrial IoT Cloud Platform Integration* On Premises & Cloud** Platforms
** From docs.microsoft.com
* From aws.com

Organizations Need a Holistic Approach
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Our goal this year is to move all
of our Mainframe applications
to the Cloud to support Digital
Transformation.
• How does the Customer Journey change in the Digital World?
-> Business Architecture
• How are we defining key business concepts (e.g. Customer?)
-> Business Data Architecture
ACME Corp
• Which Cloud platform should we use to host our data? Should we
have a mix of on-prem and Cloud?
-> Platform Architecture
• What data is being migrated?
-> Business Data Architecture
-> Technical Data Architecture
• How can we model the data for faster performance?
• What data transformation patterns and technology are we using?
• How will we handle our Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
Should we go with a SaaS solution?
-> Solution Architecture
• How will we design our Reporting & Analytics solution for a mix of
real-time analytics and BI reports?
-> Solution Architecture

Summary
• There are several inter-related architectures that
can be used together to describe the
organization to maximize business value
• It is important to:
• Focus on the business need and application
• Design fit-for-purpose solutions using the
appropriate design patterns

Who We Are: Business-Focused Data Strategy
Maximize the Organizational Value of Your Data Investment
In today’s business environment, showing rapid time to value for
any technical investment is critical.
But technology and data can be complex. At Global Data Strategy,
we help demystify technical complexity to help you:
• Demonstrate the ROI and business value of data to your
management
• Build a data strategy at your pace to match your unique culture
and organizational style.
• Create an actionable roadmap for “quick wins”, which building
towards a long-term scalable architecture.
Global Data Strategy’s shares experience from some of the largest
international organizations scaled to the pace of your unique team.
www.globaldatastrategy.com
Global Data Strategy has worked with organizations globally in the
following industries:
Finance · Retail · Social Services · Health Care · Education · Manufacturing
· Government · Public Utilities · Construction · Media & Entertainment ·
Insurance …. and more

Global Data Strategy, Ltd. 2021 www.globaldatastrategy.com
Questions?
Thoughts? Ideas?
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Data Architecture, Solution Architecture, Platform Architecture — What’s the Difference?

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Data Architecture, Solution Architecture, Platform Architecture — What’s the Difference?