Architecture: the latest designs include a return to basics - but with a flexible twist.
Reader ROI
-Why the time is right for re-examining enterprise architecture.
-Where your architecture needs to be solid and where it can bend.
-Strategies for getting companywide buy-in.
Not so long ago, enterprise architecture was the loser at any business mixer: big, unwieldy, unyielding and nearly always out of date. Heck, architecture wasn't even invited to the three-year rave party hosted by Y2K, Nasdaq and the letter e. But when the nightclub door finally opened and the corporate world staggered out, wincing in the daylight and fresh out of cash, there was architecture, looking better than it had in years. While the tech party is over for now, CIOs are re-embracing the corporate standardised platforms and applications that compose enterprise architecture as a way to contain costs and ensure business alignment. But this time around, the focus is on flexibility. As companies struggle to regain control but retain enough vision to accommodate the next big thing, some are building an architecture that's rock steady on the bottom with quite a bit of play on top. Think of a well-built skyscraper with upper floors that intentionally sway in the wind. That design may give some CIOs vertigo, but not David Watson, a long-time IT executive who has served as corporate vice president of technology at several Fortune 500 companies. Though Watson puts his foot down - hard - when it comes to choosing IP protocols, networking operating systems and cabling, he's willing to give ground at the database/hardware/OS level and, at the top, is perfectly happy to support a fairly wide range of business applications - provided, of course, they return strategic value.
"We are quite rigid at the bottom of the hierarchy, and that actually improves our ability to flex in the upper tiers," says Watson, now CIO at Enfrastructure, a California-based start-up offering outsourced infrastructure and facilities to other companies. "You have to have an architecture, and it has to be flexible, but some parts should be less flexible than others."
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