Analysis By: Frances Karamouzis
Definition: Enterprise architecture/infrastructure design and consulting fundamentally focus on the design of business architecture and its alignment with foundational technology elements that form the underlying architecture that enterprise operations rely on to run the IT environment. The technology surrounding this area includes a broad category of architecture and assets used to store and access data, as well as connectivity and transport. Elements of the infrastructure layer include, but are not limited to, connectivity software, databases and database administration, desktop components, e-mail support, help desk support, middleware, network components (including transmission equipment, such as telecommunications switches and PBXs), operating system software, security (monitoring reporting and software), servers and storage.
Enterprise architecture and infrastructure design and consulting services include:
- The collaborative process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key principles and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution
- Governance models whose fundamental focus is on managing the life cycle of IT service requirements for the underlying technology of business processes, applications portfolios and infrastructure assets
- Activities associated with assessing, designing, automating, managing and optimizing IT operations for the enablement of the business vision and strategy
- IT asset and cost management, which captures and integrates physical, financial and contractual data that supports the management functions needed to manage and optimize IT asset performance
Position and Adoption Speed Justification: Enterprises must possess an ongoing understanding of numerous factors (such as economic impacts, compliance issues, market forces affecting their business, as well as new disruptive technologies, solutions or paradigm shifts) to maintain competitive parity with rivals or go beyond for this for a competitive advantage. To achieve competitive parity and more, enterprises often turn to external service providers (ESPs) to help navigate business issues, new technology and potential solutions to tie back in to their business. In this regard, the use of business and IT consulting to help determine potential business outcomes, technology implications, along with the enterprise architecture design, infrastructure requirements and implementation schemas, is a long-standing consulting practice area. It becomes heightened when new options represent significant shifts that require large capital investments, critical windows of opportunity, high potential for process improvement or business agility, and, most
importantly, scarce skill sets.
As such, this particular Hype Cycle profile recurs when these disruptions reach a tipping point. At this juncture, the tipping point demanding the need for significant enterprise architecture and infrastructure analysis, design and implementation has been fueled by the need to determine the impact on the enterprise of trends -
service-oriented architecture (SOA), composite applications, open-source options, software as a service (SaaS) opportunities - and products - SAP’s NetWeaver proposition, Oracle’s Fusion approach and a myriad of
other technologies that continue to influence key enterprise architecture decision making.
The primary reasons for the current positioning and adoption of this type of consulting and system integration work is twofold:
- First, there is an increasing need to create more agility in translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change.
- Second, technologies all are impacting the very foundation of the enterprise IT environment, namely architecture and infrastructure.
Thus, the long-term implications of these key decisions are significant. Furthermore, as combinations of these new solutions extend beyond technology to involve critical service provider choices, external partners and constituents, and governance models, there are larger and less for giving financial and brand implications to potential missteps.
User Advice: Many enterprise architecture initiatives require several critical elements:
- Link back to your business goals with a clear “line of site” as to how and when the promise of new solutions will enable the enterprise to realize business benefits.
- Conduct an application portfolio analysis combined with an infrastructure baseline to determine risk analysis and potential implications of various future options.
- Establish a solid approach for the selection and evaluation of an ESP.
- Organizations that are considering engaging a service provider must have a clear statement of the business objectives and success criteria for the initiative.
Business Impact: Enterprise architecture/infrastructure design initiatives can result in the following:
- Improved alignment between business directives, business processes, IT standards and processes, compliance, risk management and overall governance structures
- Ability to implement more standardization and industrialized processes
- Increased business agility
- Enhanced business processes through improved functionality, access to critical information flow and broader interoperability
- Addition of significant automation to business process for more-efficient and costeffective delivery of business process
Benefit Rating: High
Market Penetration: 5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Embryonic
Sample Vendors: Accenture; Capgemini; Cognizant; EDS; HP; IBM; Infosys Technologies; Satyam Computer Services; Tata Consultancy Services; Wipro Technologies
Recommended Reading: “Gartner Defines the Term ‘Enterprise Architecture’”
“A Framework of Patterns, Services, Domains and Components Defines the Technology Viewpoint”