Redefining Enterprise Architecture: Responding to Tech Demands

When you think about major corporations and their approach to sustaining their business model and brand long-term, how often is information technology the first thing you think about? For most people it’s staying relevant through crafty marketing and branding initiatives, or big partnerships, all of which are important factors but none of which solely can sustain a business today. 

As we know, technology permeates every aspect of business operations. Digital transformation starts with a solid architecture, one that leverages various technological components, such as infrastructure, networks, databases, software applications, and security measures. To be clear, the exact definition for “enterprise architecture” according to Gartner is “a discipline for proactively and holistically leading enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing the execution of change toward desired business vision and outcomes”. 

Embracing a Proactive Approach

The key takeaway here is that technology is not a reactive measure; it’s something that needs to be a proactive and integral part of an organization's approach to long-term sustainability. The key term is “proactive” because the last thing an enterprise can afford is to, again, be reactive in situations where they’re caught off guard by advancements and disruptions. 

The world lucked out with AI in the sense that there’s been time for companies to explore its potential and experiment with its capabilities. AI offers transformative opportunities for corporations today who can now redefine their business models and align with the demands of the digital era.

How We’ve Always Known Enterprise Architecture (EA)

EAs have been that guidance that creates, integrates, and manages data and technology to align IT capabilities with the business's goals. The focus for enterprises is now on the tech aspect more so than project delivery or strategizing because that stuff is less comprehensive than the role technology plays in the business landscape today. What we’re outlining in this section is the elimination of the need to balance competing priorities and resources within EA.

The Key Technologies and Business Functions That EA Teams Focus on Today

In 2020, a report from Gartner estimated that 60% of organizations in 2023 would rely on EA to lead their approach to digital innovation. While we don’t have exact figures for that to compare against today, we do have an understanding of the technological and business functions that are a focus for EA teams which include:

1. Application Architecture

2. Data recovery

3. Governance, risk, and compliance

4. Cloud management

5. Mobile device management

6. Intelligent automation

7. Cybersecurity 

Think about two manufacturing companies:

One relies heavily on innovation and strategic thinking, so they establish the following:

• Dedicated space for R&D: They allocate a specific area or facility to experiment, prototype, and test concepts before integrating them into the EA.

• Agile methodologies: This could involve methodologies such as Scrum or Kanban, to promote flexibility in their development process. This is what’s going to be key for them to respond quickly to market changes and customer demands.

• Collaborate with other companies: Typically for IT operations, data governance, and business strategy. This is going to leverage expertise and resources that will contribute to innovation and consistently meet objectives. 

• Investments in new technologies: This includes exploring emerging technologies relevant to the industry and leveraging them to enhance their manufacturing processes, product development, and overall operational efficiency.

• Data-driven Decision Making: They prioritize the collection, analysis, and utilization of data in their decision-making processes. This helps them identify opportunities and inefficiencies which further contributes to consistently meeting goals. 

The other company is very project-driven so their focus is on the following: 

• Project management: This company will emphasize strong project management, with dedicated teams and resources for each project. They have well-defined plans, timelines, and milestones to ensure execution is efficient.

• Resource allocation: They prioritize allocating resources based on the specific requirements of each project. This includes assigning personnel, budgeting, and managing project dependencies.

• Stakeholder collaboration: The company emphasizes collaboration and communication with stakeholders, both internal and external, to ensure alignment on project goals, requirements, and expectations.

• Risk management: This company would likely have robust risk management processes in place to identify, assess, and mitigate potential risks and issues that could impact the success of the project.

The whole point of this comparison is for companies to understand the importance of their EA team focusing on one aspect of projects and strategy either on the side of the business or technology. The best EA teams maximize one area before moving to the next and they never skip steps. 

Actionable Recommendations

Closely align your priorities with your business's goals when defining your focus. Gain as much expertise and capabilities as possible in that area, collaborate with stakeholders, and consistently monitor how much you progress. 

You always want to make the value of your EA known to decision-makers by demonstrating how it helps meet objectives. Showcase tangible outcomes and demonstrate the ROI of EA initiatives.

Written By Ben Brown

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ISU Corp is an award-winning software development company, with over 17 years of experience in multiple industries, providing cost-effective custom software development, technology management, and IT outsourcing.

Our unique owners’ mindset reduces development costs and fast-tracks timelines. We help craft the specifications of your project based on your company's needs, to produce the best ROI. Find out why startups, all the way to Fortune 500 companies like General Electric, Heinz, and many others have trusted us with their projects. Contact us here.

The Ultimate Guide to the Role of a Solutions Architect

The technology community is rapidly evolving especially with the incorporation of new realms. With that organizations feel it is necessary to adjust their operating methods and techniques to stay current with the ever-changing business challenges.

In simpler terms, businesses are required to perform their core operations through digital transformation. This is what transfers the core processes to software solutions.

The digital transformation transition is complicated, to say the least, and requires close attention to every little detail. This then requires every company to acquire an expert with a particular skill set for balancing the business needs, especially when there are different nuances of technology involved.

We know these experts as ‘a solutions architect’. They are one of the most skilled client-based roles within the IT industry, and the importance is often overlooked or even completely ignored by the companies on either end.

In order for a software solution to operate effectively, scale, and reach the business needs, it is required to have a well-planned architecture that accounts for several technical and customer implications. In short, this means that the long-term success of any IT project is reliant on the input of a solutions architect, who needs to have:

• Wide-ranging technical expertise

• Business analysis skills

• Project management skills, etc.

Now, what does a Solutions Architect do for a company?

They are responsible for developing a comprehensive architecture for a software solution, while also providing a strategic direction for the development process.

The solutions architect also needs to ensure that the new solution works well with the existing enterprise architecture from the technical, business, user, and other perspectives.

To do this, they will work together with every team that is involved in the development process and understand how every product and service work in the architecture. A solutions architect requires the knowledge to oversee a successful delivery of a quality end product to the end-user.

But what does a Solutions Architect do in general?

Having a clear understanding of a client’s project and business needs, the role of a solutions architect is to map out the parts that will constitute the software solution and how they are going to work together.

In summary, a solutions architect’s job begins in the early stages of a project because they are laying out what is to come. Their tasks usually start with choosing the correct technology for the business problem and then taking charge of the architectural concerns to ensure there are more productive and effective outcomes.

They are also responsible for the translation of a project vision to the development team. This plays a pivotal part throughout the entire systems development lifecycle.

Every job title comes with its own set of responsibilities, as a solutions architect you are primarily focused on solution-level decisions and evaluation of their impact on a client’s overall business objectives and their outcomes.

Here are the main responsibilities of a Solutions Architect:

• Create and run the process of integrating IT systems for them to meet an organization’s requirements

• Conducts a system architecture evaluation and collaborate with project management

• Evaluate the project constraints for new alternatives to alleviate risks and perform process re-engineering if required

• Update stakeholders on the status of product development and budgets

• Notify stakeholders about any issues that may have occurred

• Repair technical issues as they arise

• Analyze the business impact that certain technical choices may have on a client’s business process

• Monitor and guide the development teams

• Consistently research new technologies and propose changes to the existing architecture

In order to successfully design, create, and lead the development of a software solution, solutions architects not only need to pursue the above responsibilities, but they need to have a specific set of skills to help them do the job best.

The most important skills needed for a Solutions Architect include:

Excellent Communication

Having the ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders, project managers, developers, and software vendors involved with the development process is an extremely important asset for a solutions architect because you’ll be able to listen and understand all the problems and suggestions that may come up.

Project and Resource Management

A solutions architect is not directly related to the project development, it is still important they need to ensure that the resources are being utilized responsibly.

In-depth analysis

Software architecture and systems have the ability to have several details integrated for them to work together. With that, a solutions architect needs to pay close attention to those details, because anything overlooked could be a recipe for disaster and may hinder the development process.

Risk identification and management

A solutions architect must be able to analyze and identify potential short and long-term risks, that may cause technical issues and impede business operations for future projects.

Technical skills

A solutions architect must have a good technical education with hands-on experience in all major areas of the software development process, as well as hardware engineering expertise, for any software projects that rely on hardware.

Overall, a solutions architect is responsible for building and implementing IT systems architecture for a set business requirement. Their role works closely with the project specifics and the pre-existing systems.

We hope this gave you a better insight into the role of a solutions architect, and if you want more information on the topic, reach out to one of our experts at ISU Corp today!

TOP 5 REASONS WHY USING MULTI-TENANT ARCHITECTURE IS BETTER

Typically, it is common that an organization which offers an in-house application continues to operate through a separate and dedicated server with storage space. This includes separate applications and separate infrastructure.

The transition to cloud computing has been advantageous for these organizations that have introduced multi-tenant architecture. With this new configuration, the SaaS vendor operates using the same server and storage space to provide multiple user accounts, also known as, the same application with a shared infrastructure.

The best feature of a multi-tenant environment is that each user account is unaware of other user’s existence, even when they're working on the same infrastructure, they are still acting independently.

A relevant comparison for understanding multi-tenant architecture is an apartment building. With a basic setup, you have the main building with hallways, and amenities which is the ‘cloud environment’ in the multi-tenant architecture. However, you can customize the allocated space to your name, which is the ‘user accounts’ in the multi-tenant architecture.

Now, what is Multi-Tenant Architecture?

A single instance of the software (the workable application) is set up and operates on the cloud vendor’s infrastructure like AWS, Azure, GCP, and serves the needs of several customers simultaneously.

Integrated into the multi-tenant architecture, customers are unaware of additional data that is stored exclusively. Which, however, makes the tenants invisible to one another.

What is Single-Tenant Architecture?

A single-tenancy architecture, that a single instance software functions through on a dedicated cloud server while only serving one customer at a time. The setup is possible among organizations that have resource-intensive workloads.

An easy comparable for understanding single-tenant architecture can be a villa that you create for your family. You will configure an exclusive building – which represents the dedicated server space that you own. With a single tenant you do not have to share anything with anyone, and every computing resource will only be accessible to you.

The biggest difference between single-tenancy and multi-tenancy is with multi, there is a “Noisy Neighbour” effect. This is when several tenants will make requests on the same database server, and performance issues will occur, and it will result in noisy neighbours.

To manage the allocation, and deallocation of resources to avoid starting the noisy neighbour effect is through a priority setting.

There are 2 types of Multi-Tenancy through Cloud Computing

1. One App Instance, with One Database

With this configuration, the software is supported by one database, and all the user accounts are accessed within the software product.

This style offers scalability, and increased correspondence to resources and capacity as tenants increase. The biggest downside to this style is the noisy neighbour effect.

2. One App Instance with Several Databases

With this configuration, the software is supported by several databases, and each tenant has a designated database that is independently maintained.

This version of multi tenancy can get expensive because you are asking for a separate space to store the application’s data. Scalability is not as easy with this version, but there is no noisy neighbour effect.

Okay, but how does Multi-tenancy work?

Alongside a multi-tenant architecture, a single instance of the software is contributed to the public cloud and is accessible to several tenants. However, when a new tenant starts, the software has the ability to be customized to suit their individual needs.

Here are the top benefits to Multi-Tenant Architecture:

1. Economies of Scale

This allows for renting common resources for your application on the cloud infrastructure. It includes the cost that you pay to host a multi-tenant software application that is fixed and could vary overtime.

When cloud resources that are fixed and vary with scalability are purchased the value and profits bring in improved economies of scale.

2. Easy maintenance, updates and upgrades

In the case of SaaS Multi-tenant architecture, users are not required to pay many fees to keep the software up to date. Maintenance costs are typically associated with a SaaS subscription and are not charged per case, unlike the Single tenant structure.

The maintenance costs, especially for updates, are shared between every tenant since they all use the same code from the same pool, which reduces the overall costs for each tenant.

3. Convenient onboarding of New Tenants

Multiple customer onboarding has sparked fame and become a primary focus for vendors since poor user experience can directly affect the growth prospects.  

4. The Virtue of Scalability

The more hardware that is added to a Multi-Tenant SaaS model, the more horsepower for the entire system there will be. Which will then provide excellent scalability to every tenant.

Our hope is that this gave you a better understanding for Multi-Tenant Architecture, and gave you better insight on what to use as a foundation for your business or software. Reach out to one of our experts at ISU Corp if you have any questions!