Enterprise Architecture at Curtin University Maureen Murray

Why did we need it?  Good ideas acted on independently  Duplication of projects and infrastructure  “Solutions” rather than strategies  No common standards  Projects not connected to what we were doing  IT driven

How will we use it?  Investment decisions  Evaluation and prioritisation of projects  Design and development of systems and infrastructure  Evaluation and acquisition  Management and use of assets, including data The architecture provides a framework for:

How did we go about it?  Developed and agreed a framework  Did lots of research, developed from first principles  Guiding principle was “How are we going to use it?”  Added detail to the framework  Kept it simple, limited detail  Already had lots of stuff

Challenges  Resources  Hard to get IT people involved  Hard to get IT staff to “abstract”  Hard to justify our approach  Hard to get people to contribute

Curtin’s Enterprise Architecture Framework  Business Context  Guidelines and Design Principles  Enterprise Information Architecture  Systems Architecture  Technical Architecture

States the business strategy, the services provided by the university and the information required to meet the objectives of the university Strategic Plans Defines how information is used and managed through its lifecycle to support the business Defines the systems that store and manage the information Defines the infrastructure required to support the systems and the business CHANGE Staff Students Community Policy/Legislation Emerging Technology Social ClimateEconomic ClimateCompetition Alumni Prospective Students Research Collaborators Technical Architecture Systems Architecture Information Architecture Business Context Industry Partners

Business Context  Business Guidelines and Principles  Business Environment  ICT Strategies to Meet Business Objectives  Business Architecture

Business Architecture

ICT Enterprise Guidelines and Design Principles  Information systems for business needs  Shared access  Defined authoritative sources  Secure information  Proven standards and technology  Lifecycle cost  Agility  Allow exceptions sometimes

Enterprise Information Architecture  Information Guidelines and Principles  Classification and Categorisation  Unstructured Content  Structured Data

Information Management Strategy

Systems Architecture  Objectives of the architecture  Business Systems and Services  Recommended Architecture N-tier Web services and web enabled Standards for integration/interoperability SOA

Business Systems and Services

Technical Architecture  Objectives of the architecture  Key technology strategies to achieve objectives  Recommended Architecture Virtualisation Advanced use of storage technology Use of clustered commodity servers Capacity management  Appendix containing more technical information

Technical Architecture

Security and IM

Where to from here?  Need to develop a governance framework  Distribute it widely and educate the university  Start using it and see if it works  Identify the next steps in further development of the architecture

What did we learn??  Need to develop an information management strategy  Technical areas need to focus on services rather than technologies  Don’t document for the sake of it  It will never be finished!!