The pIT stop Q&A: Can enterprise architecture bridge the IT-business divide?

The pIT stop panel answer your questions

Peter Child asks the pIT stop panel:

Is the concept of “enterprise architecture” a route to bridging the IT-business divide? If so, how do you sell this to business decision-makers?

The pIT stop panel’s replies:

If I had a polo mint for every time I heard that a technology or approach would provide “alignment” between IT and the business I would walk around with permanently fresh breath. From architecture to ITIL, 4GL to BPM, agile to Zachman, the list is near endless; sadly the reality is more prosaic – there are no silver bullets that will help businesses to better communicate their requirements, and IT to meet these needs. Beware consultants bearing architecture diagrams - here be dragons.

That said - establishing formal “enterprise architecture” should help to lower operational and capital expenditure, for example providing a framework to potentially enable the much-vaunted and seldom-delivered notion of “code reuse”. What is more, we have seen some progress in IT and business discussions, notably when it comes to service-oriented architecture. Businesses are seemingly more comfortable talking about the services they need to provide than the applications that support such services. But it’s best to start small and work with a canonical information service – customer record, say, a piece of information that any business person is comfortable with, and build from there, rather than pursuing a Big Bang.

Generally however, success is predicated on human factors, rather than a nebulous notion of enterprise architecture. Good people, taking responsibility, and communicating effectively - that is the real key to bridging IT and business. Frankly there is little point trying to sell enterprise architecture to the business - you need to sell the sizzle (the benefits) not the sausage (the process). Why would a business person want to buy architecture? It’s better to invest in people that are adept at working with a range of stakeholders, and understand IT and business, to get things done.

By James Governor, co-founder and principal analyst, RedMonk

So what do we mean by enterprise architecture? At a high level it is quite straightforward – a series of products that have certain features targeted at an enterprise user, for example a server that has great remote access service (RAS) capabilities, processors that are consummate in handling virtualised workloads, and so on. So far, so good, but there can be issues with this, in that there are so many features that soon it can become harder to differentiate which of those features are the ones that will address the business needs. Despite the illusion of apparent commoditisation, today’s IT hardware and software offer more and more choice, more and more features, more and more capabilities. What is more, they are sold on the basis of these features, as they offer a means for making a choice of one product over another.

So where is the issue? There is increasing data that suggests a lot of these features and capabilities are not being put into practice, or as we prefer to say at Intel, they are not being activated. Take the business client as an example. Today’s business client offers more potential - assuming the right feature set - than ever before to provide genuine return on investment to the business, but these features and technologies need to be activated. Therefore desk-side visits can be reduced, the PC fleet can be more effectively managed from a power and security standpoint, and the client fleet becomes less of a burden on the business and more importantly the IT department.

How to sell this to the business decision-maker is, in theory at least, quite straightforward. As with any good sales approach it is all about understanding the requirements of the user. Anticipating these requirements, or finding these out, and then mapping the capabilities of IT as a solution to those issues should be the way forward. Improved management of IT hardware can save the business money in and of itself. This is a tangible benefit relevant to most decision-makers.

It does not stop there though. If the IT department is able, through the implementation of new practices and technologies, to reduce the need for it to be an organisation dedicated to issue resolution, it can then focus much more on what it wants to do, and that is drive IT as a means to delivering increased productivity. Deliver this, and the sell becomes easy, and gets easier.

By Stuart Dommett, enterprise client product manager, Intel

Enterprise architecture is often seen as one of those rather nebulous terms, typically invented by an analyst firm as way of selling more research reports or consultancy. I’ve seen several interpretations of the term, each of which is usually subtly different to cater for the particular bias required by whoever is promoting the concept. If I sound cynical, there’s a reason.

The Institute for Enterprise Architecture Developments defines enterprise architecture as: “A complete expression of the enterprise; a master plan which acts as a collaboration force between aspects of business planning such as goals, visions, strategies and governance principles; aspects of business operations such as business terms, organisation structures, processes and data; aspects of automation such as information systems and databases; and the enabling technological infrastructure of the business such as computers, operating systems and networks.”

To my mind, that’s pretty much a definition of what should already be best practice in modern, IT-enabled organisations. If you were able to put that definition into practice, it would certainly bridge the IT-business divide very satisfactorily.

The reality of course is quite different. IT usually takes the blame – and not without justification – for the gap between business and IT. But the business is not entirely innocent. How often do you hear an IT manager, when asked how he supports the firm’s business strategy, reply: “What business strategy?”

Enterprise architecture is a useful concept in that it can provide a framework for IT and business working together to devise integrated strategies to develop and improve the organisation and its processes. If it works for you, then do it. And certainly, IT should have a formal architectural plan to guide the use and implementation of new technology. But if you want to bridge the business-IT divide, then any plan or framework is only ever going to be as good as the ability of both sides to communicate with each as human beings.

Bridging the divide means businesspeople understanding the potential of IT and being realistic about what can be achieved. It means IT professionals talking the language of business – and not tech jargon – and using their knowledge of technology to show the business how its processes can be enhanced. It means talking to each other. Without good lines of communication, enterprise architecture is just a name on an expensively-produced folder somewhere gathering dust.

If your decision-makers respond best to the idea of formal frameworks as a means to define the way the organisation works best, then enterprise architecture is well worth investigating because it may give you a common structure and language through which to converse. But if you don’t have the relationships and communication in place first, it will be a very hard sell.

By Bryan Glick, editor, Computing

Read more about the pIT stop here: www.computing.co.uk/pitstop