Data-centric architecture, for better services

John Schmidt of Informatica argues that the digital transformation of an organisation is better supported by focussing on the organisation's data, rather than its IT applications. An application-centric approach structures an organisation's IT by the applications, each of which has a business owner and defined functions. This works as long as these functions remain separate. But when more processes are moved online, when the processes become more complex and involve multiple business areas, the emphasis needs to shift away from the individual applications, to the processes and the data that they use.

I agree with this point of view. Software development (of individual programs) moved to this approach a long time ago, primarily with the introduction of object-oriented programming. Basing the structure of programs around the data elements, rather than the processes, made it easier to change the processes. A data-centric approach to architecture is taking the same approach on a larger scale.

The difficulty can be in explaining the advantages to the business areas. In software development, the choice of program structure is an internal matter for the programmers to decide. In architecture, the decision is more visible, because it is often the business areas who pay for, and choose, the IT applications that we deploy. So we need materials to explain why this is a good idea, using non-technical language (or "speaking human", as a colleague put it). I don't have an easy answer for this, but I'm working on it.

My thanks to Ian Anderson for alerting me to John's post, via the UCISA EA mailing list.

Comments

Webinar: Powering your business with Cloud Computing

On October 14th, I will be hosting a Grid Computing Now! web seminar on the topic of Cloud Computing. We have lined up two very interesting speakers who are using Cloud now to make businesses work. Ross Cooney had a good technological solution to sell but couldn't make it economic until Cloud Computing allowed him to pay for his computation only when he needed it. He will discuss the instant benefits and long term impact of cloud computing to the development, competitiveness and scalability of your application. Alan Williamson created the BlueDragon Java CFML runtime engine that powers MySpace.com. He advises several businesses and will give an overview of the different types of services available and how to avoid being locked-in to a single supplier. You can register for this event here .

Business Model Canvas

A Business Model Canvas is a tool for mapping the core functions and capabilities of an organisation. Compared to the Core Diagrams that I described in an earlier post , the business model canvas attempts to present more aspects of the business, starting with the value proposition – a statement of what the organisation offers to its users (in the business world, to its customers). It shows the activities and resources, as Core Diagrams do, but also shows user relationships & channels, and also benefits and costs. I’m not aware of any universities that have used this tool but you can find examples from elsewhere on the web. We are considering business model canvases as a tool for mapping the strategic capabilities of units at the University of Edinburgh. Phil Taylor, our EA contractor, sketched an outline of what a business model canvas might begin to look like for HR: This is only intended to be suggestive: the real canvas would need to result from in-de...

Changing Principles

In EA, architecture principles set a framework for making architectural decisions. They help to establish a common understanding across different groups of stakeholders, and provide guidance for portfolios and projects. Michael Durso of the LSE gave a good introduction to the idea in a webinar last week for the UCISA EA community. Many organisations take the TOGAF architecture principles as a starting point. These are based on the four architectural domains of TOGAF: business, information/data, applications, technology/infrastructure. These principles tend to describe what should be done, e.g. re-use applications, buy in software rather than build it, keep data secure. See for example the principles adopted at Plymouth University and the University of Birmingham . Recently though, I encountered a different way of looking at principles. The user experience design community tend to focus more on how we should do things. E.g. we should...

Distributed Thinking

Search This Blog