Back to the drawing board for IT architects?

Better by design: Every IT decision at construction materials supplier Kingspan has to have a business benefit, according to CIO Richard Gray

The economic maelstrom has prompted many organisations to scale back activities significantly. As Gartner analyst Brian Burke notes, such times play havoc with an enterprise’s ability to think holistically about its IT infrastructure.

In this atmosphere of retrenchment, the planning horizon for strategic IT decisions has reduced significantly from the traditional three-year window.

“Enterprise architects are looking at shorter horizons and cost-cutting opportunities,” says Burke. “There are a few architects taking the longer view but, in the main, organisations are putting enterprise architects under pressure to demonstrate their value to the business. Those that don’t have a value proposition will be under threat.”

In a downturn, IT leaders are more focused on operational issues than on strategy, with increased pressure on them to do more with less.

Kingspan IT manager Richard Gray says that cost savings and efficiency are currently the two big drivers for IT within his company, which makes sustainable products for the construction industry.

“Every decision taken has to have a business benefit and that has meant that some of our European IT operations aren’t being centralised because putting them on the BT-managed corporate infrastructure is too costly,” he says.

So what impact is the downturn having on long-term infrastructure projects, such as service-oriented architecture (SOA)? Conventional wisdom has dictated that SOA is the most effective way for enterprise software to be delivered, providing a sure-fire method of delivering a flexible and business-responsive infrastructure. However, progress has been slow and the benefits not always realised, prompting cries in some quarters that SOA is dead.

SOA is a methodology, or framework, made up of components and interconnections that stresses interoperability and location transparency and allows applications to be built from software services. These concepts have evolved from various models including distributed computing and promise lower costs and easier integration.

While SOA represents a major evolution in how businesses design and implement their systems, it has not yet replaced previous paradigms but rather used them as a foundation for new initiatives.

Alan Bowling, chairman of the SAP UK & Ireland User Group, believes that there is a need for organisations to be better educated about SOA and its implementation.

“One of the problems with SOA has been that definitions of it have tended to be vague, which in turn has led to confusion about how organisations need to approach its adoption,” he says.

But SOA’s promise of agile, more business-responsive IT means firms are still pursing it, says Alan Ovenden, IT director at recruitment consultancy NetworkersMSB.

“However, the utopia of interoperable services from different suppliers seems to still be some way off,” he says. “Until one service can be swapped for another at the change of a configuration file, there will always be concern at putting your eggs in one basket.”

The real potential business value provided by SOA is not in the technology itself, but rather in the business solutions that can be built with it. These may be a new type of system ­ – for example standards-based business process management (BPM), composite applications or software-as-a-service (SaaS) application delivery. SOA also makes existing types of applications simpler, less costly and faster to implement, whether developed and supported in-house or bought in as a managed service.

“SOA helps to reduce costs, while balancing quality and service,” says Mark McMurtrie, director at global payments provider Postilion. That matters at financial institutions and retailers, which are under increased pressure to improve profit margins, while their customers want 100 per cent availability, secure channels and innovative new services.

“Consequently, many organisations are turning to SOA to enhance results by maximising development capacity and reducing complexity,” he adds.

But if the technical challenges of integrating legacy systems and delivering business-ready IT have diminished the appetite for grand visions for enterprise computing, could owning no IT be the future? The oft-mooted next big shift in enterprise IT ­ – cloud computing ­ – promises just that.

For some companies the physical infrastructure has become insignificant; the emphasis is now on service and application delivery.

“Owning hardware is something we don’t want to do and without it we are more agile. Using a cloud computing model we can multiply our capacity instantaneously,” says Andrew Shebbaere, founder of digital marketing agency Essence.

It also makes the company very portable, as demonstrated by a forthcoming office move. “Once the connectivity is in, all we have to do is move the people, desks and chairs,” says Shebbaere. “No downtime and no expensive equipment relocation, and it’s a considerably cheaper option in terms of operating costs.”

But not everyone is convinced. “Personally, I feel more comfortable being in charge of my own destiny,” says NetworkersMSB’s Ovenden. “I always have a concern, with external services, about what you are actually getting. Reliability and security need to be provided. How safe is data stored in a cloud?”

Decisions on the supply and management of enterprise infrastructure, for most organisations, could well boil down to service, security and cost.

“Blended sourcing is likely to be the route that everyone takes,” says Bowling. “The cloud still has some way to go to be an enterprise-wide option for a sustainable and safe solution.”

Clearly for an IT architecture to be attuned to organisational needs, the business and IT functions must work hand in hand, ensuring commercial priorities inform IT planning. But integration has to be achieved not only between the different technologies, but also across people and process.

“A lot of people get stuck on the technology architecture, which for the most part is about defining standards and guidelines,” says Gartner’s Burke. “However, it’s one of the necessary things that companies must invest in, but not where they are going to find the big opportunities that will help them get out of a recession –­ these are in understanding the business architecture and the information architecture and in managing the services portfolio.”