1. Changing the Way IT Delivers Application Services Through Architecture for Increased Agility
Marina Arseniev
Associate Director / Enterprise Architecture
Administrative Computing Services, UC Irvine

2. Agenda Challenges Enterprise Architecture - An Overview Vision
Steps to get there…
Value
EA and Web Services/SOA?

3. Our Challenges Hundreds of systems - IBM Mainframe, Solaris, Windows
Lack of Real-time integration
Users use disparate systems, user interfaces = Training
IT skill-set reuse
New compliance regulations, security threats
Define processes that govern technology changes, investments and future strategy
Lifecycle management –focused on inventorying, building, maintaining, acquiring, consolidating, and retiring technology
Informed IT decisions
UC Irvine Campus Overview
Year Founded:  1965
2004 Enrollment:  24K students
Carnegie Classification:  Doctoral/Research
Extramural Contracts & Grants Awarded:  $235M for 2002 – 2003
Significant enrollment growth
California State budget
Administrative systems must adapt!
Systems:
CICS/Cobol, Powerbuilder, Web/Java Applications, Vendor packages
VSAM, DB2, Mysql, Foxpro and Sybase
Lack of Real-time integration
Integration based on FTP = Time lags
Data inconsistency and quality issues = High technical and business labor costs for repair or reconciliation
Users use disparate systems, user interfaces = Training

4. Our Challenges (cont’d)
Customers know technology can make serious improvements
Demand business process automation
Forms, Document Management, Workflow, Imaging...
Growing queue of application projects
IT Agility as business pressures/needs change
Complex project management became critical to mission
Project justification, selection, prioritization, sequencing
Extraction of common requirements for horizontal, reusable solutions. Application “assembly”, not customization.
Enterprise Architecture (EA) Initiative identified
IT department of 25 programmers
Mainframe programmers, Powerbuilder developers, Java/Web technologists, Database and System administrators.
Resources, competency, training, governance
Sound familiar?

5. What do we have already in place?
Overview: What is EA?
A blueprint of an organization to analyze and plan changes.
The structure of (Enterprise) components, relationships, and principles and guidelines governing their evolution over time.
A strategic asset repository which defines the current and target architecture environments.
New application?
What do we have already in place?
Impact?

6. EA Planning Consists of
A standard methodology or framework
Logical framework – not technology
Not to be confused with J2EE, .Net, Portal, or Web Services
A model
A repository of knowledge (populated model)
A change management process
Business needs define application and required infrastructure change
Project-oriented approach to EA
Project = Change Agent

7. Vision Imagine the perfect world… goals articulated
initiatives, roadmaps, projects linked to goals
technology linked
change strategy
agility
Before you can make change, you must understand your EA - business processes, information/data, and technology.
How?
Irvine’s model – based on Zachman Framework

8. Steps to start with EA
1: Create a list of specific questions, focusing on critical areas.
2: Identify senior technical and business people to gather knowledge from; their roles and responsibilities
3: Develop change impact analysis methodology
4: Choose an Enterprise Architecture Framework

9. Steps to start with EA
5: Choose a tool to model and populate Enterprise Architecture Asset Repository
Goal: easily accessible and maintainable repository
6: Plan communication methods
7: Document Technical Reference Architecture
Principles, standards, and governance
8: Enforce architectural control
Choose key technologies and standardize. Constrain new development.

10. The step that never ends…
Step 9: Incremental EA model development and population
Create and populate model as defined by questions
Define As-is:
Business model and processes.
Applications, data, components.
How technology supports the business processes.
Identify desired enhancements to business as projects. For complex enhancements, organize projects into roadmaps.
Communicate, assess and track impact of change.

11. Specific Questions Life cycle management, governance
Control proliferation and retirement of technology?
What database technology should I use today? When will it be retired?
How many workflow engines do we own? Where are they used?
Application and data security for HIPAA, PCI, and California Privacy compliance?
Which applications use SSN? Encryption?
How can we extract “Common Requirements” across projects into patterns for Web Services/SOA?
What reusable, tested, horizontal components implement which requirements?
Which applications satisfy what requirements? Which ones operate together?
What interface(s) create an Invoice? Timecard? Web Service candidate?
How were these steps handled at UC Irvine? I will go over a few of the steps in more detail.
How should we prioritize our projects and assign resources?
Why are we doing project X?
How can we “assemble” applications by implementing common requirements across projects into reusable, tested components?
How much reuse do we have today?
How many reporting tools do we own? What are they used for?
What technology should I use today for a web app and database? When will it be retired from our organization?
What data is subject to HIPAA or State Bill 1386 compliance?
Which applications use this data and how secure are they?
What technologies does this project use? What projects does this technology support? Touch points between components?

12. Develop Change Impact Analysis Methodology
Need a change… How do you know which one, when, and how?
Analyze and articulate impact of change to business or technology.
Measure impact of moving from a current to targeted practice.
Freely available Sloan School of Management’s “Matrix of Change” tool. (

14. Enterprise Architecture Framework
Need direction and guidance?
Many frameworks to choose from. Comparison at:
Adopted the Zachman Framework (
What is it?
A language that helps people think about complex concepts and communicate in less technical terminology.
Planning tool

15. Zachman Framework Intro
Question
What How Where Who When Why
Data Function Network/ People/ Time/ Motive
Node Work Cycle
Planner / Scope
Owner / Enterprise Model
Designer / System Model
Builder /
Technology Model
As built
View
Semantic model
System design
Business locations
Human interface
Timing definition
Business plan
Important things
Business functions
People and groups
Events and cycles
Goals and strategy
Process model
Work Flow model
Master schedule
Application arch
Distributed system
Processing structure
Business rule model
Physical data model
Tech arch
GUI arch
Control structure
Data definition
Code
Network arch
Security arch
Rule repository
Rule design
Business logistics
Logical data model
Zachman Framework: Rows
Rows = Unique perspectives (taken from “Software Productivity Consortium”)
Scope: Corresponds to an executive summary for a planner who wants an estimate of the size, cost, and functionality of the system.
Business model: Shows all the business entities and processes and how they interact.
System model: Used by a systems analyst who must determine the data elements and software functions that represent the business model.
Technology model: Considers the constraints of tools, technology, and materials.
Components: Represent individual, independent modules that can be allocated to contractors for implementation.
Working system: Depicts the operational system as it functions.
Zachman Framework: Columns
Columns = questions (taken from “Software Productivity Consortium”)
Who: Represents the people relationships within the enterprise. The design of the enterprise organization has to do with the allocation of work and the structure of authority and responsibility. The vertical dimension represents delegation of authority, and the horizontal represents the assignment of responsibility.
When: Represents time, or the event relationships. This is useful for designing the master schedule, the processing architecture, control architecture, and timing devices.
Why: Describes the motivations of the enterprise. This reveals the enterprise goals and objectives, business plan, knowledge architecture and design.
What: Describes the entities involved in each perspective of the enterprise. Examples include business objects, relational tables, or field definitions.
How: Shows the functions within each perspective. Examples include business processes, software application function, computer hardware function, and language control loop.
Where: Shows locations and interconnections within the enterprise. This includes major business geographical locations, separate sections within a logistics network, allocation of system nodes, or even memory addresses within the system.

16. Model and Repository Management
How do I model and capture information for the EA repository that can answer my specific questions?
Zachman Framework - powerful thinking tool, not technology
Storing redundant lists of “stuff” in Word, Excel, Visio...
Application lists, critical business cycles…
One possible solution: Stanford’s Protégé
Knowledgebase and Ontology Tool
Auto generates forms for capturing information based on ontology and class definitions. Ontology defined by questions.
Open source at

17. Communication Plan Any method selected must
minimize redundancy
increase consistency of information
provide reporting
Example - our use of Protégé
meets Zachman vision of storing an enterprise artifact in a single place
Web HTML reports, plug-in for XML output
supports slicing and dicing of information via powerful link ability
customizable reports - executive to programmer, for Zachman views

18. Example of how we use Protégé to collect information for Zachman Framework.
Example of how we report from Protégé using XML

20. Example: Protege

21. Technical Reference Architecture
Documented principles, guidelines, and best practices of Architecture Domains:
Lifecycle Management
Adopt the “4 year/16 Quarter Sliding Window Methodology”
Identifies technologies that are “Approved”, “Maintained but not Upgraded”, in “Sunset”, “Retired”, or “By Approval Only”.

24. Architectural Control

25. Realized Value Technologies retired
Database servers consolidated, reduced DBA costs.
MS IIS Web Server (except where required by vendor)
Clipper, Foxpro
Applications are database neutral (Expresso/JDBC)
Tracking security and compliance (ie HIPAA)
Reduced development costs
Tested Code reuse: Java components shared between IBM, Solaris, Windows. GUIs made consistent with reusable templates.
Reuse of staff skill sets
Common infrastructure for development: ie LDAP, Workflow, uPortal, and Web Services/SOA.

26. Status
Using Protégé to model and capture information about business process, data, and technology.
Tracking common requirements across projects.
Using EA to assess and justify investment decisions and vendor selection.
Linking goals, roadmaps, projects, and technologies.
Determining “touch points” between projects and technologies to assess impact of change.
Management decisions based on more accurate and timely data.
Reduce queue and increase timeliness of projects

27. EA and Web Services? SOA?
Application agility mandated by business user community.
Business community starting to think in terms of SOA.
Revamped our Technical Reference Architecture to include Web Services to facilitate reuse.
Moving stove-pipes, 30 year-old CICS technology to Web Services, Portal, and SOAP/XML.
Examples:
Tririga Facilities Management System uses Web Services/SOAP for Integration. WSDL for Project reporting via campus business portal.
Web Services enabled Workflow Engine (Autonomy) used to eliminate “stove-pipe” workflows via Business Portal.
Kuali Financial System – open source and Web Services enabled.
Well I have shared EA plans now but what does all this have to do with Web Services and SOA in more detail?
Reduce queue and increase timeliness of projects

28. Benefits
Comprehensive approach to enterprise strategic planning that encompasses business, technology, data and logical modeling.
Management decisions based on more accurate and timely information.
A strategic road map for change with careful project selection, sequencing, and planning and technology management.
Increased Agility!
“Projects done without architecture planning cost significantly more in the long term” (John Zachman)
Management decisions based on more accurate and timely data.
Reduce queue and increase timeliness of projects

29. This presentation: apps. adcom. uci
This presentation: apps.adcom.uci.edu/EnterpriseArch/PresentationsConferences/IQPC/IQPC_ ppt
UC Irvine’s EA Web Site: apps.adcom.uci.edu/EnterpriseArch
Zachman Framework:
Sloan School of Management’s “Matrix of Change”: ccs.mit.edu/MoC
Ontology and Knowledgebase: protege.stanford.edu/
UC Irvine’s Administrative Portal: snap.uci.edu uses JA-SIG uPortal software:
Reporting using XML/XSLT:
Java Application Dev. Framework, CMS:
LDAP:
Q & A