Reference Architecture Implementation Guide (Preview)

CEB Enterprise Architecture Leadership Council

Reference Architecture Implementation Guide

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© 2015 CEB. All rights reserved. EAEC4283015SYN

INTRODUCTION

Enterprise Architecture (EA) groups recognize the potential benefits of reference architecture (RA). Council polling results reveal that 72% of members consider an RA extremely or very important to EA’s success—but few have been able to realize reference architecture’s full potential. Fewer than 10% of EA groups rate themselves as mature in this area.

Leading EA groups manage reference architectures as a program by establishing the processes to define, deliver, and manage them through their full lifecycle.

To help member organizations better manage their reference architectures, the Council has collected artifacts from each stage of the lifecycle and highlighted the key takeaways:

1. Initiating: Ensure that all stakeholders define reference architecture consistently, promote the associated benefits, and tailor stakeholder communications.

2. Building: Provide reference implementations that tangibly support solutions delivery teams and develop an RA portfolio to ensure focus on high priority areas.

3. Deploying: Promote adoption by focusing on the customer experience, providing easy access to resources and collaboration opportunities, and sharing ownership with subject matter experts.

4. Governing: Fast-track governance for solutions teams using reference architectures and lease RAs to ensure alignment with current standards.

5. Maintaining: Incorporate RAs into technology roadmaps and build in event-based triggers to better anticipate and respond to change.

For more information, visit our Reference Architecture topic center on our website: cebglobal.com/architecture.

Project # 114929

Catalog # EAEC1919111SYN

INTRODUCTION INITIATING A REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE PRACTICE

cebglobal.com/architecture

cebglobal.com/architecture

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100%

0.4– 1.9%

1.2– 4.4% 0.34–

1.8% 0.15– 5.4% 0.45–

6.8%

83– 98%

ECONOMIC MODEL FOR AN RA IMPLEMENTATION

Savings from a Single RA Compared to an RA Programa

Five Year Time-Horizon

Annua

l IT

Expen

diture

Pre-R

ASav

ings i

n

Applicat

ion

Main

tena

nce

Savin

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Applicat

ion

Develo

pmen

t

Reduc

ed IT

Expen

diture

Post-R

A

Cost o

f RA

Develo

pmen

t

Savin

gs in

Infra

stru

ctur

e

Main

tena

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Savin

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Infra

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Inve

stm

ents

■ Technology procurement

■ FTE costs for creation and maintenance

■ Standardization of infrastructure

■ Prescriptive patterns and reuse

■ Reduced solutions-delivery time

■ Reduction in number of trouble tickets

■ Reduced mean time to repair

■ Standardization of supporting infrastructure

■ Standardization of infrastructure

■ Reduction in number of trouble tickets

■ Reduced mean time to repair

Efficient Solutions Delivery Simplified IT Operations

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See our Reference Architecture Cost Savings Estimation Model to customize to your organization.

A successfully run RA program can deliver annual savings equivalent to 17% of the IT budget.

■ A single RA covering 5% of the portfolio reduces the IT budget by 2%.

■ Maintenance cost reductions, which constitute approximately two-thirds of the savings, mount as the RA portfolio grows and the practice matures.

Source: American Express Company; Footloose, Inc. (pseudonym); CEB 2011 Budget and Benchmarking Survey.a The cost savings ranges provided are based on the percentage of the project portfolio that uses a RA. We assume a minimum of 5% portfolio coverage and a maximum of 80%.


https://www.cebglobal.com/member/enterprise-architecture/tools/11/reference-architecture-cost-savings-estimation-model.html



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ECONOMIC MODEL FOR AN RA IMPLEMENTATION (CONTINUED)

Overall Assumptions

■ A single RA implementation will cover 5% of the project portfolio in its first year of operation.

■ A well-maintained RA program composed of multiple RAs will cover 80% of the IT portfolio after five years of operation and lead to the standardization of 70% of the infrastructure and virtualization of approximately two-thirds of the servers.

■ The use of an RA shortens solutions delivery time by at least 50%, reducing FTE costs incurred on development projects by approximately the same amount.

Specific Assumptions for an RA Program Implementation

■ Lessons learned from the first RA help streamline development of future RAs, lowering the cost of developing and maintaining subsequent RAs.

■ With infrastructure standardization, project software costs decrease by 30%.

■ Project hardware costs are reduced by 50% due to commodity hardware, standardization, and virtualization.

■ Over a period of five years, the widespread adoption of RAs leads to a 50% reduction in trouble tickets and an 80% reduction in mean time to repair, which reduces FTE costs for application maintenance by 50% and infrastructure maintenance by 60%.

Specific Assumptions for a Single RA Implementation

■ For the best ROI in application development, the first RA selected to pilot the program is a technology used by at least 30% of the application portfolio.

■ Standardization of the infrastructure results in more effective vendor negotiations, reducing project software costs by 5%.

■ Standardization also allows projects to share hardware capacity, bringing down project hardware costs by 20%.

■ The RA’s adoption by 10% of the platforms in the organization reduces the operating expenditure on hardware by 20%.

■ Increased technology standardization results in a 30% reduction in problems and a 20% reduction in the mean time to repair for those platforms using the RA, lowering associated FTE costs for application and infrastructure maintenance costs by about 40%.

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RA LIFECYCLE

Initiate Build Deploy Govern Maintain

Galvanize IT stakeholders with a formal RA initiative.

Partner with project teams and developers to select and develop

the most useful reference architectures.

Provide the communication, education, and

support necessary for maximum adoption.

Establish oversight mechanisms to monitor the uptake and proper

use of RAs.

Ensure RAs are kept current and relevant.

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1. INITIATING A REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE PRACTICE

EA groups looking to start an RA initiative struggle to build an effective business case because they have trouble communicating what an RA is, the benefits it can bring, and the investment necessary to manage the practice effectively.

To initiate a successful reference architecture practice, leading EA groups begin with four steps:

A. Establish a common vocabulary to communicate effectively with stakeholders.

B. Relate reference architecture to other EA activities.

C. Quantify the benefits to make the case for investment.

D. Adopt a program management approach.


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1A. DEFINE RA COMPONENTS

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Title

Business and IT Strategy

Capability and Technology Roadmaps

Project Design and Delivery

Solution and Service

Implementation

Business Capability

Enablement

PURPOSE AdoptReference

Principles: Highest level guidelines for governance of the enterprise architecture

Reference Models: A common vocabulary and taxonomy of accepted concepts used to describe an organization’s capabilities

Standards: Prescribed or preferred technology, design, data, and process elements that conform to architectural principles

Implementation Guides: Detailed user manuals to instruct solutions teams on correct usage of standards and patterns

Working Prototypes: Practical instantiation of standards and patterns to provide a proof of concept to solutions developers

Reusable Source Code: Repository of code objects used by developers to accelerate the building of frequently used functionality

To Govern and Ensure Alignment with Strategy

To Guide and Direct Solution Design

To Improve Solution Delivery

Reference Architecture Toolkit

AUDIENCE

Senior IT and EA

Leadership

Solutions Architects and SMEs

Solutions Developers

Patterns: Prepackaged and pretested design and technology combinations to build or modify a system

Decision Frameworks: Use cases and decision trees that recommend particular patterns and standards

RAs are documented best practices that help solutions delivery teams make effective design and technology choices.

■ The purpose of an RA is increasing standards adoption, speeding time to market, and advancing toward the target state architecture.

■ This toolkit includes all core deliverables needed to successfully implement an RA.


Source: CEB analysis.

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1A. RA COMPONENTS: PRINCIPLES

1. Architecture will set the strategy for technology for three to five years into the future.

2. Weighted consideration should be given to a vendor architecture that contributes to and strengthens Johnson & Johnson EA.

3. For IT investments, the project design process includes architectural review and design certification by an enterprise architect.

4. A complete architecture includes the following five components: business process, information/data, applications, integration, and infrastructure.

5. Global use will be a determining factor in design:

■ Every application should be designed with the expectation to be global, scalable, and flexible.

■ Applications must have a planned lifecycle and asset map.

■ Architect applications as systems, and engineer them for supportability.

■ The architecture frameworks for all components must be designed to support internal and external customers and interfaces on a global level.

■ Johnson & Johnson data standards will be established and globally used by all applications.

■ Industry standards will be used wherever feasible.

6. Johnson & Johnson information is a valued asset and use must be designed and protected at the enterprise level, not by a specific company or project.

7. Applications will be designed for the adoption of, not mapping to, data standards.

8. Data quality management and transparency will govern design to establish authoritative data sources and ownership.

9. IT standards will be used; a nonstandard IT will require an exception waiver, and all required resources will be fully funded by the owner.

10. Information Security services and solutions will be standards based.

11. Security decisions will be based on a risk management process: “a risk taken by one is a risk shared by all.”

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Principles are the highest level of guidance outlined for governance of the overall enterprise architecture.

■ They help retain consistency of the overall architecture, while aligning IT implementations with the priorities of the organization.


Source: Johnson and Johnson; CEB analysis.

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1A. RA COMPONENTS: REFERENCE MODEL

Information Systems Reference Model

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A reference model is a common vocabulary and taxonomy of unifying concepts used to describe an organization’s capabilities.

■ Reference models are usually defined either at the enterprise or BU level for a specific functional or technology domain.

System Information Provider User

Network Layer

MPLS Leased Line VPN (Internet) LAN/WAN

Business Applications

Chemicals Pharma Shared Group

Security Services

Access Management Service

Directory Services

Single Sign-On Service

Identification Service

Identity and Access Management

Entitlement Service

Authorization Service

Provisioning Service

Identity Management Service

Reporting Services

BI Report Delivery Service

Report Management Service

Business Process Management

Process Definition Service

Process Execution Service

Content Management Service

Document Service

Aggregation Service

Information Services

Information Integration Service

Extract-Transform-Load Service

Metadata Management Service

Definition Service

Repository Service

Enterprise Service Bus

Transformation Service

Routing Service

Channel Services

Gateway Services User Interaction Services

File Gateway Service Internet Gateway Service

Presentation Services

Composite User Interface Service

User Interface Metadata ServiceSFTP

Scheduling Service

Service Management

Application Integration Service

Transactional Database

Data Mart Operational Data Store

Data Warehouse

Source: Merck KGaA; CEB analysis.

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1A. RA COMPONENTS: STANDARDS

List of Technology StandardsAcross 132 Products

Server, Desktop, Network, and Edge Protection Application SecuritySSL VPN—F5 L7 Firewall—F5 Vulnerability

Tool—FoundstoneProxy—Bluecoat Vulnerability Scanner—Cenzic Source Code Review—Fortify

L2 Firewall—Juniper

NAC—Cisco ILP—Vontu AV—McAfee Risk Assessment/Management—RSAM

DB Compliance/Enforcement—Guardiam

Authentication/Authorization Data Protection/Encryption Account ManagementActive Directory CA ACF2 Oracle LDAP 6.x SecureFX Voltage SecureData SecureCRT TIM 5.1

EMC RSA Vintella VAS TAM 6.1 Vshell 3.x Pointsec Voltage Secure Mail

Tumbleweed TDI 7.0

Security

End-User Computing

Collaboration, Presentation, and

Application Services

Integration, Messaging, and Data Transport

Desktop Print Mobility Messaging Client SystemsWindows XP Xerox Blackberry Exchange Microsoft Internet

ExplorerMicrosoft Offi ce Microsoft IM

Portal/Web Content Management

Collaboration BPM/Workfl ow/Process Management/Rules Engines

Vigenette Sharepoint FileNet BPM Blaze Guidewire

Miscellaneous Application Servers

WebSphere Application Server

Jboss/Tomcat NET and II V6.1

Mainframe CICS Application Integration Application Messaging

V4.1 AmberPoint (Service Gateway)

Bridje SOA IBM WebSphere MQ v6

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Standards are the prescribed or preferred technology, design, data, and process elements that help project teams conform to architectural principles.


Source: CNA; CEB analysis.

© 2014 CEB. All rights reserved. CIO9884614SYN

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Reference Architecture Implementation Guide (Preview)