Category: erwin Expert Blog

We are excited to announce the acquisition of Casewise, a leading provider of business process modeling solutions. Click here to read our press release, issued this afternoon.

Organizations have massive amounts of data scattered throughout their enterprise and often struggle to see this data in the context of where and how it’s being used by enterprise processes, technologies and applications. This visibility and understanding is critical to building the data-driven enterprise and to the solid foundation of every big data initiative. That’s why erwin and Casewise is such a compelling combination.

Casewise powerful process modeling integrated deeply into the erwin data management platform delivers the following key benefits for customers and the larger big data marketplace:

• Data Interoperability and Lineage: Through visualization of models, identify where and how data elements are being used throughout the organization
• Data Impact Analysis: Shows data in context, with the ability to identify applications, processes and technologies that will directly be impacted by changes to the data design
• Design and Create Database Structures: Create database design and data definition language (DDL) directly from visual models
• Business Process Simulation: After analyzing existing operations, assess the impact of potential changes before expensive and time consuming implementations

In less than 9 months since we took erwin out of CA and launched erwin, Inc., and we’ve done two transformational acquisitions and have developed a very exciting vision and roadmap. erwin is truly building the foundation for the new data-driven enterprise and we believe this has powerful benefits for our customers and our partners.

Please join us at our upcoming customer and partner webcasts to learn more about our vision, market view and what this means for you.

Register for our customer webcast, Monday, December 12 at 12 PM ET

Register for our partner webcast, Thursday, December 15 at 10 AM ET

Businesses appear to have consensually agreed upon the value of a data-driven organization. Yet, studies have shown that very few businesses are maximizing the data opportunity. Senior Executives surveyed during an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) study, overwhelmingly missed out on “broad positive results”, with only 2% reaching this desired outcome.To put this into perspective, 70% of those surveyed indicated that data and analysis were high up on the organization’s agenda. So what’s going wrong?

There are multiple factors in play and the areas in which businesses need to improve are rarely black and white. However, one stand out approach to help make the most out of data, is a capable and efficient Enterprise Architecture initiative. Coupled with a robust Data Modelling strategy, data driven businesses should begin to thrive under the deeper insights offered by the approach.

Data Modelling can help structure and analyze useful data

Effective data management begins with capturing the structure and related metadata associated with your enterprise data assets. However, the native metadata available from most datasources is often cryptic. It’s also limited to a technical viewpoint, and very brittle in terms of providing a usable foundation for visibility, comprehension and analysis across the various stakeholders it concerns. These technical descriptors need to be augmented and integrated with additional viewpoints that describe the business purpose and usages of the data.

Historically, data modeling has been perceived as a design and deployment tool for creating databases.  However, data models can deliver as much or more value and utility as a vehicle to discover, document, expose, analyze and govern data sources for the wide range of stakeholders involved in collaborative data management.

Data models are visual in nature, encapsulate multiple perspectives (conceptual, logical, physical) and enable the standardization of metadata to provide a consistent, contextual view of data across disparate platforms.

Additionally, data models allow organizations to de-couple from the production environment, enable scenario analysis and planning without risk to ongoing operations, and iteratively deploy “to-be” designs in an efficient and effective manner.

Enterprise Architecture makes data easier to manage

Being data-driven isn’t just about recording and examining as much data as possible. Businesses need to be active in how they leverage data, in order to provide insights into possible strategies going forward. But to be able to effectively leverage such data, businesses need to be smart about how data is stored, segmented and applied to decision-making.

The sheer volume of data, typically kept by data driven organizations can make it difficult to cipher through to what is relevant. This can give a false impression that the data being stored isn’t useful.

To streamline the data, making it more manageable and more insightful, businesses need to focus exclusively, on the data that’s relevant to the organization’s current aims, goals and objectives.

A well actioned Enterprise Architecture practice can achieve this, as a business’ current capabilities as well as its desired future state can be highlighted. From here, a business can work out what steps it can take, and which of those it will need to take in order to reach the desired future state. A good understanding here, should indicate which areas of data to drill down on.

Additionally, Enterprise Architecture tools supporting a View Manager can help further, still. Views are essentially a real-time snapshot of information, based on parameters decided by the user. Manipulating data into different views by changing the parameters can give an organization a better idea of what to prioritize (through sorting), but also give the organization a generally more manageable representation of data by removing everything that isn’t relevant.

Enterprise Architecture breaks down business and data silos

In the section above, we talked about the merits of sifting through data, to de-clutter and help the information be deciphered more readily. But although data is far easier to understand in smaller, specific chunks, it needs to be whole in the first place to be truly accurate.

Many businesses cite wanting to improve communication across the organization – especially communication that happens between departments. Often, they want to improve communication in the literal sense – sharing ideas, updates and goals through some form of conversation. However, what some organizations are missing, is that these issues in communication are often rooted in misalignment of departments.

Businesses are forced into giving updates – verbal, written or otherwise – because the departments aren’t transparent enough for employees and other departments to see for themselves. Departments operate as siloed, independent areas of the business, instead of as smaller parts of one larger cohesive unit.

Data suffers because of this too. If data is fragmented across different departmental silos that aren’t implicitly open to one another, the data will never show the full picture.

Enterprise Architecture works to align these departments by instilling a common perspective of the current state of the architecture and wider business, as mentioned above. But it also helps align the business in its processes and systems, by highlighting areas of duplication (where two systems/processes are used in place of one), enabling the organization to move to one system, and unify the back end data contained in both.

We in erwin Technical Support are busily implementing our new Zendesk ticket tracking system to improve our ability to support you, our partners, and our valued erwin customers. Releasing soon, our Zendesk system will provide you with the usual features you expect in a ticket tracking system, such as an online interface to track your tickets, community support, and our knowledgebase.

We’ve got some great new features, too, like an improved “search while you type” question field, integrated chat for developing inquiries into tickets, a modern search algorithm in the knowledgebase, and many other modern, omnichannel support functions that we all expect these days. We are looking forward to seeing you on our new platform!

The results from a Nomura Holdings study interviewing CIOs about 2017 plans, hint at another good year for Enterprise Architecture. Much of what CIOs are looking to achieve will benefit greatly from a well deployed EA initiative.

The United States based study interviewed 50 CIOs who consensually indicated Big Data, Security and Cloud Computing, would take priority in upcoming budget cycles.

A CIO priority mainstay, Security, topped the chart for ‘Top Drivers of IT spending’ with 82% of the vote from CIOs. Cloud Computing earned 62%, and Big Data 60%.

Nomura Holdings study should make Enterprise Architects very happy, as it’s likely that their services will be needed in order to implement, or get the most out of technologies behind the IT spending drivers listed above.

Security

With so many cases of high profile data leaks, breaches and DDoS attacks, it’s no surprise that security was again seen as the top budgetary priority for CIOs. With the amount of sensitive information a business has to store, and the escalation of said sensitive information where a Big Data strategy is involved, the stakes haven’t been higher.

It’s important that business get security right.

That said, many businesses get security wrong for the same reasons. Sometimes its necessary for security to be implemented on a reactionary basis, following the uncovering of a security threat or breach. This can often lead to rushed decisions, and a haphazard approach to tacked on new solutions, rather than going the lengths to ensure the business is secure from its foundations up.

Of course, a perfectly secure organization is an impossible task, but Enterprise Architecture can help in bringing a business as close to secure as possible.

The holistic view Enterprise Architecture has of the business is great for combing through the organization and ensuring no stone is unturned. This can help a business plug security issues at the source.

It will also likely save a business money in the long run, avoiding hastily implemented tools/processes that could introduce duplications in process, add to a businesses shelfware, or even expose other security flaws elsewhere in the business’ architecture.

Big Data

Big Data is taking the tech world by storm, so it stands to reason that many CIOs will have a Big Data strategy high on the agenda for 2017. The Nomura Holdings study only goes to further back this assumption up.

Many businesses worldwide have already caught on to the potential Big Data has to offer in terms of insight and strategic planning going forward. However, without the necessary approach, many business end up missing out on Big Data’s peak potential.

Enterprise Architecture is one way businesses can help get the most out of Big Data. The sheer scope of Big Data means that at any one time, only some of the information is useful to the business. By adopting a functioning Enterprise Architecture initiative, businesses can effectively sieve through Big Data data to get greater value from it.

One such way Enterprise Architecture achieves this, is through the perspective it provides on a business’ desired outcomes. Having a better, and more clear understanding of what the business is trying to achieve makes finding the relevant information within Big Data far easier, as the business need only focus on the outputs and metrics that influence the roadmap.

An Enterprise Architecture tool, boasting a view manager makes this an even more useful strategy to adopt. A view manager streamlines information into different ‘views’, effectively washing out the noise and allowing EAs to focus on any one, or group of elements at a time, and in turn, making comparisons easier to make.

Cloud Computing

A deeper dive into the study revealed that by 2017, 46% of the CIOs respective business’ applications will be SaaS based, rising to 56% by 2022.

Enterprise Architecture will help with the adoption of such new technology by indicating which current technologies could be phased out.

CIOs could also advocate for and implement an EA strategy in order to determine which areas will benefit most in adopting cloud-based solutions, by weighing up the business’ current capabilities, with the desired future-state enterprise.

Of course, the benefits of SaaS based solutions typically concern price and ease of installation. But one benefit that shouldn’t be overlooked is how SaaS can aid in aligning the business. The online, connected nature of the tools, mean that different business departments will find collaborating with one another positively, far more achievable. In order to fully realize this benefit though, Enterprise Architecture would have to be leveraged in order to remove the current, detached business departments from their silos.

Businesses may even consider turning to SaaS tools for Enterprise Architecture itself. Historically, EA tools have been expensive to introduce and notoriously difficult to facilitate the engagement of the wider business. A SaaS Enterprise Architecture solution can tackle both of these issues. The flexibility in pricing and licensing, and with no software to implement, business and technical stakeholders are more willing to invest in tools to support the EA practice.

Additionally, the collaborative nature of SaaS-based Enterprise Architecture tools helps architects to truly engage with the wider business. It can facilitate the involvement of relevant departments directly, rather than the lethargic cycle of presenting results, waiting for feedback, and relaying any changes after the fact.

For most, putting the pace of technology’s progression into perspective, only takes a quick look around the room. It seems we’ve now reached a tipping point where the science fiction dreams of ten years ago, are being realized in reality today. Even Hollywood interpretations of artificial intelligence for example, can now be found in most smartphones.

At a Gartner event this year, Peter Sondergaard described the situation aptly. On these recent technological advancements, he said they “all approached gradually and arrived suddenly.” But what now?

After years establishing a precedent of constantly evolving technology, it’s unlikely that it’ll  suddenly slow down. Businesses will have to respond accordingly or face being left behind.

Enterprise Architecture’s role in managing and maintaining bimodal IT

One of the drawbacks of technology improving so rapidly, is that businesses have rarely had an opportunity to be fully prepared, or caught up. This has led to a situation whereby, many businesses understand the need to adopt new technologies, but are still in the process of phasing out the old.

In essence, this is the root behind the call for bimodal IT.

Thought leaders at many of the world’s top tech analytic firms believe the Gartner-backed take on IT is the answer to juggling core, legacy systems and newer tech.

It’s referred to as bimodal IT for its two “modes”. The first dealing with the tried and tested, the predictable, and the tasks associated with “keeping on the lights”. The second pertains to the opposite. The unpredictable, the disruptive and the experimental.

It can be easy to shrug off the likes of bimodal IT as just another buzzword in the light of some business’ less than convincing implementation of the practice. But what is more valuable to business and to the industry as a whole is to look at why bimodal IT might have failed.

Without proper management, the vast differences between the aforementioned modes can lead to disaster, and is likely the reason bimodal IT has been met with some push back, after attempted forays into the strategy come up short.

This is where enterprise architecture fits into the picture. Businesses need to leverage EA’s holistic view of the organization in order to better implement a bimodal strategy. Firstly, enterprise architecture can be used in order to identify a business’ mode 1, and mode 2 assets.

Additionally, enterprise architecture’s perspective on the current state of a business and its capabilities can indicate where new technology needs to be ushered in, and where legacy tools should be ushered out, streamlining the bimodal strategy and making it easier to manage.

Without EA, bringing in new technology, can result in duplications in processes and systems. Aside from the unnecessary costs to continue maintaining both sets, this oversight leads to mis-managed data and setbacks to agility. This is because the disparity between the two competing systems/processes means that valuable information is fractured across different systems and often siloed off from the wider business.

How Bimodal benefits business

Bimodal IT can help businesses in a number of ways. Considering the current, ever changing landscape of tech in business, the most important of bimodal IT;s benefits is its enablement of agility of agility and greater flexibility. This is because one part of IT is freed up to constantly work on tackling new disruptions and chase new opportunities, while the other keeps the house in check.

This is important as a sluggish adoption of the latest industry revolutionizing technology could mean your business falls behind the competition.

Successfully implemented bimodal strategies should also see an uptick in innovation for the same reasons. This benefits a business as it can help an organization be the disruptor, as opposed to reacting in the light of disruption.

It also helps the Mode 2 side of bimodality operate with business outcomes in mind. Of course, the business as a whole should operate with business outcomes and their customer in mind, but there’s is an argument to be made that certain departments need a heavier focus on business outcomes than others. Differentiating between the two modes is one way to aid in mode two’s emphasis on delivering said business outcomes.

By now, many companies have either just started, or are in the midst of an on-going digital transformation initiative. This isn’t a trend likely to be short lived either. The speed in which businesses have to evolve in order to keep up with new digital advancements will, in all likelihood, only increase.

Considering the nature of digital transformation – changing technologies, processes and even organizational structure – introducing Enterprise Architecture (EA) in order to govern such change seems like a no brainer.

Yet many businesses still haven’t adopted Enterprise Architecture to the degree needed to properly manage digital transformation. In some cases, an Enterprise Architecture initiative may even have been introduced, and an Architect (or Architects) employed, but the business struggles to mature the practice past lower levels of EA maturity. This is often due to the lack of immediate results and subsequent reduction in funding.

If this sounds familiar, it’s likely the false start into EA is down to one of these key reasons.

The Lack of a Business Outcome focus

Modern day Enterprise Architecture requires Architects to look at the bigger picture. The Ad-Hoc approach typical with lower maturity EA initiatives often get caught up tending to technological issues and concerns on a reactionary basis.

When we think of the old way of EA, this doesn’t seem like much of a problem. In the past, Enterprise Architecture worked much like other areas of IT – as a support arm to the main business. EAs during this time would likely be tasked with traditional IT duties, or what is dubbed “keeping on the lights”. But IT has evolved out of it’s support phase with the rise of digital business.

Now some (or even most in many cases) of a business’s most valuable assets are stored digitally (think Big Data etc), and there are a wealth of businesses who sell primarily, or solely through online avenues. But Enterprise Architecture has been slower to make the transition with the rest of IT. This could be down to the legacy nature of many of the tools in the field, or that because of the old way of EA, organizations simply overlooked its vastly greater value to business in modern markets.

Organizations need to reposition EA closer to the center of the business, and not leave it to stagnate on the fringes. Working closely with CIOs, Enterprise Architects can produce roadmaps and other reports that can steer the business through digital transformation, through innovative and forward thinking approaches.

Enterprise Architects themselves have to ensure they’re not solely focused on the standard EA framework. This approach might be useful to EAs, but to senior management and the wider business, the value isn’t clear. A business outcome approach to EA can help ensure Enterprise Architecture is always focused on how it can improve the business, and help it respond readily to disruption so new avenues can be capitalized on.

A lack of Stakeholder Engagement

When looking to improve an Enterprise Architecture initiative, we can’t look solely at the Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Architects themselves. EA permeates throughout the whole business and so it stands to reason that any improvements or changes to the way a business does EA, would effect, and therefore should involve other stakeholders too.

But that’s largely the problem. EAs have found it notoriously difficult to encourage stakeholder engagement. There’s a number of reasons why this is problematic. The most clear cut being that, failure to engage business leaders makes it less likely that those business leaders will push for investment into the department.

This can stifle the potential of Enterprise Architecture and limit the future potential outcomes.

But it also has a negative effect on work an Enterprise Architect might already doing. An Enterprise Architect’s job is far easier, and more thorough, when they’re given the means to collaborate with the owners of the systems they are architecting.

Of course, in a busy work environment, collaboration can be difficult. But with tools such as Google’s  G Suite taking over the work place, largely because of their enablement of collaboration, it’s clear it can be done.

The right EA tool can encourage collaboration through gamification, convenience (being able to collaborate online rather than in person) and facilitating communication for feedback, suggestions and commenting.

Depending on who you ask, the world is either heading for, or already in the midst of a data downpour. A study as recent as 2015 found that global internet traffic will likely reach 1.4 petabits per second – the equivalent to 125 terabytes p/s.

This trend is likely to continue upward, and the implications for those monitoring such data are huge.

Most damning of such implications, is the growing threat that mass data leaks pose to the consumer and to business. Warranted public outcry following a number of high profile data leaks and breaches is more than enough to put this into perspective.

This boom in data has lead to businesses having to revise and improve their risk management policies and relevant tools. Any flaw in the way data is stored or monitored is a potential ‘in’ for cybercriminals, and so businesses have to ensure security surrounding sensitive information is thorough, and covers the whole business.

The problem is, implementations of new security tools and procedures often happen on a reactionary basis. Meaning they’re introduced as a new flaw in security is uncovered. This tends to lead to a staggered implementation, for short term fixes, rather than long term solutions.

This isn’t an effective way to implement new security protocol, as it often leads to critical areas being overlooked, misalignment and poor execution.

To effectively govern the implementation of security, we need to think in terms of Enterprise Architecture.

Enterprise Architecture’s Role in Implementing Security

Enterprise Architecture’s holistic view of the business makes it perfect for actioning new security.

Because of Enterprise Architecture’s layered approach – meaning the systems and structure on one layer dictate the systems and structure on the layer above – EAs can take a fine combed approach of introducing new security systems and ensure that nothing is missed, and that they don’t restrict the business. This ensures weaknesses are dealt with at the source, rather than quick fixes being tacked on after the fact.

With this in mind, it’s also important to recognize the need to properly integrate EA. Both in terms of systems and company ethos. The aforementioned benefits of leveraging EA to implement security, won’t be fully realized if EA is confined to an Ivory Tower.

Business leaders need to give EA the reach it requires in order to effectively impact the business. That means centralizing EA, freeing it from its dated, fringe-IT perception, as this limits the required holistic view of the organization EA needs to be effective. There’s even an argument for EAs to be recognized and utilized as a direct advisory body to the CIO.

Why Your Enterprise Architecture needs to be Agile

As with much of what Enterprise Architecture deals with, we can never be 100% prepared – or in this case, secure.

The uncertainty pertaining to EA and what it governs over was a huge catalyst in calls for a more agile take on Enterprise Architecture. Agility in EA can help businesses be prepared enough so they can respond quickly, or even capitalize on unforeseen disruptions.

In working towards securing a business’ sensitive data, organizations have a lot of variables to consider – and they’re constantly evolving. There isn’t a one size fits all solution to security as security costs money and not every department of a business has the same needs. Businesses will have to evaluate where the risks are highest, and prioritize in order to not overspend. Security has to be tailored to fit as many different areas as required.

Enterprise Architecture can help in determining which risks yield the best return, and thus, influence decision making and spending going forward.

The benefits of enterprise architecture (EA) are many, but organizations adopt EA to varying degrees of success.

The most successful enterprise architecture initiatives benefit from better management of cost, time and resources, improvements to processes, and an increase in inter-departmental transparency through the de-siloing of operations.

They also benefit from enhanced decision making, risk management, improved internal/operational efficiencies and an uptick in innovation.

The unsuccessful however, typically lead to financial burdens, and a reminder of the initiatives false start in the form of shelfware.

But it isn’t that hard to get right. The problem, for the most part, is that many organizations attempt to cherry pick which parts of EA methodology they want to implement, based on what they think is more important.

There’s nothing wrong in an iterative adoption of enterprise architecture, beginning at level 0 on the maturity model, and moving through the stages. In fact, for most businesses, an agile approach to enterprise architecture requires this.

However, ignoring whole parts of the methodology altogether will stifle the initiatives potential.

So in order to get it right, a great starting place, is to first consider the reasons you need enterprise architecture, then establish what you’ll need to do to achieve those results.

The Aim of Enterprise Architecture

As alluded to earlier, enterprise architecture helps remove departmental silos in the business, increasing transparency on an organization-wide level. It does this by firstly, helping create, and instill a common perspective of the current state of the architecture and wider business. It also aids in creating a common vision of the future, aligning different business arms to work towards a common goal.

Enterprise architecture also works to improve processes. It highlights areas of duplication, and overlapping technology, reducing cost, and also helps businesses be more agile in the face of disruption, by removing the hurdles a complicated, unstructured architecture can create.

This leads to an organization that can be proactive for longer – through innovation and iterative improvements to strategy – instead of reactive, and help the business become a market leader, rather than playing catch up.

It also leads to an organization with a better approach to risk management, as it helps business leaders and decision makers better evaluate their current capabilities, and the blanks they need to fill in to reach the organization’s vision, of the architecture’s future state.

It provides business leaders and decision makers with a better perspective of which risks are worth taking, by making potential return on investments (ROI) more transparent.

Additionally, enterprise architecture can work to ensure alignment between IT and business, reducing the likelihood that the two arms will work against one another.

EA can also help an organization get the most out of other initiatives. One great example, considering the current business climate, is Big Data. For Big Data, EA can help unify information from various sources, allowing business to benefit from a better connected, bigger pool of data in order to make more well informed analysis, predictions and decisions.

Enterprise Architecture in Practice

In order to achieve the results cited above, enterprise architecture should adhere to the following three best practices:

A wide perspective: Enterprise architecture should be an all inclusive view of the business. A half-baked, narrow approach to enterprise architecture will lead to misalignment, and missed opportunity.

This holistic approach is great for both the organization itself, and its stakeholders as it helps drive alignment by better connecting departments, and making it more clear where those departments’ endeavors tie into the business’s overall strategy.

Collaborative: An effective enterprise architecture is a collaborative one. As mentioned above, enterprise architecture permeates the whole business, and so the input into the initiative should reflect this. Stakeholders, C-level business leaders, and departmental management should all be actively included in the Enterprise Architecture process.

In many cases, it’s the active side of collaboration that businesses miss out on. To many EAs, collaboration goes as far as sharing results and plans in the form of PDFs. This is often down to limitations of the EA tool, making true collaboration – whereby the aforementioned parties are actually involved in the strategic planning process – logistically difficult or impossible, due to location, ease of sharing etc. However, there are enterprise architecture tools with collaboration built in mind, even allowing users to contribute to the EA remotely, so stakeholders and other interested parties can be properly included.

Outcome Focused: In some cases, a business might have implemented an enterprise architecture initiative almost perfectly, but find it still lacks the promised return. This is often a case of the architects losing sight of the business outcomes. The nature of EA – the constant revisions to strategy, the ever changing landscape of the market – means that the early stages of enterprise architecture (mapping of the architecture itself) is never technically finished.

This leads to many EAs falling into the trap of doing too much, a state dubbed “analysis paralysis”. A “Just Enough” approach to enterprise architecture helps EAs be more precise and move projects through the pipeline more quickly.