Enterprise Data Center Architecture Maturity Model
Infrastructure Technology Service Management
A Data Center Enterprise Architecture (DCEA) practice will occupy the space it arguably needs to be today. Practices are now tasked with supporting digital business – a concept that occupies a mass of consumer markets, and continues to infiltrate more. This is where enterprise architecture demands innovation, and why innovation management capable EA tools are a smart and valuable investment. Enterprise Architects are now responsible for creating new business opportunities, not just support in reaching their outcomes.
This demands a different type of Enterprise Architecture (DCEA) which helps in several key ways. Firstly, improving communication throughout the organization, building accurate models and roadmaps, understanding the impact of change and identifying the real costs. Additionally, DCEA is critical in assuring project success and reliability, standardizing business and IT assets, and in traceability of objectives to projects for increased visibility.
It’s nearly impossible to experiment with innovative application development tools and cloud services on brownfield environments: the IT equivalent of spaghetti code, a byzantine tangle of systems, software and support personnel.
Instead, the bimodal approach identifies areas where IT has less to lose, but large potential gains, by using iterative development, new software tools and public cloud services. Many times, even the business model for an emergent IT service isn’t well understood and subject to rapid, market- and user-driven change. Here, it’s far better to have development and IT operations’ processes with the smallest possible overhead.
While the tortoise wins the slow, steady marathons, the hare is far better on an unpredictable course full of twists and turns.
Defining Mode 1 dependencies
To understand Mode 1 dependencies in your enterprise architecture, you should ask yourself questions such as:
• What are the key systems?
• What affect do they have on key processes?
• Which locations are impacted?
• Which organizations and roles are responsible?
• What data is affected?
• Is there any technology required?
• Which business capabilities are affected?
