IT-Architecture
A practical approach to the work with consulting, planning and implementing an IT-architecture that suits the organisation.
Sirius IT has an established concept for IT-architecture consulting. The concept is based on best practice over the years. It has the great advantage that we work systematically from a proven standard with the possibility to make modifications to each task.
Focus on IT-Architecture
Public as well as private companies focus still more on IT-architecture as an important part of the strategic process and running business development. Demands for efficiency, readjustment ability and a wish to optimise investments place severe demands on the IT platform. There is no time for long-term development projects or standard solutions acquired only from a narrow functional perspective. Solutions must be thought into a larger coherence, and at the same time they must be flexible enough to enable cross-functionality.
A Strong Method
Sirius IT’s concept for IT-architectural consulting aims at giving the companies a practical approach to the architectural work. The concept builds on a standardised method and is therefore supplier independent. The method takes a holistic and commercial perspective as its starting point, and should be seen as a tool to indentify, anchor, prioritise and implement digital solutions. We focus on bringing this work on towards a specific, implementable model and ensure a solid link between the overall architectural work and the specific solutions.
Our concept also addresses the company’s existing systems and technologies and can identify specific applications in the new architecture. If the company works after the service oriented EA architecture pattern, our concept contains a process that aims at harvesting candidates for transversal services. These candidates are often found among existing systems, which are therefore to be wrapped in a service oriented interface. Furthermore, possible candidates are indentified among the planned new solutions, thus ensuring that only relevant parts of the solution will be service oriented.
Lasting IT-Architecture
Architecture is very much about durability. You can say that architecture is the “preservative” that ensures that the palette of solutions and elements of the IT platform can be used in several connections and under changing organisational conditions (re-structuring, fusions, laying up jurisdictions etc.).
At the same time it is important to find a sound level for the architectural work, so that you reach a balance between the long-term strategies and the current situation. If the architecture is to be flexible enough and have a sufficient extent to support almost all future possible scenarios, the company risks that specific projects will “drown” in architectural limitations and principles. The architecture consulting from Sirius IT aims exactly at focusing on the relevant and necessary architectural focus areas that keep the commercial goals in view, and which ensures that architectural products are not produced “to stock”.
Getting Started Easily
We offer several options to get easily started with a holistic approach to the architectural work. A natural pre-activity is the architectural analysis, where we take a look at the company’s commercial objectives and relate them to the current situation – administration wise as well as technologically.
Thus, the architectural analysis is a mini-performance of the enterprise architecture method where strategy, business and technology are evaluated in relation to the company’s current maturity level.
If the company has already initiated an enterprise architectural work, we offer to perform a specific ’proof-of-concept’ (POC), where we identify a pilot task with a complexity that enables the company to evaluate, if the architectural components offer the adequate support of the commercial objectives. Specifically, this could be the application of service oriented infrastructure elements in the chosen technological infrastructure.
The architectural consulting is performed by enterprise architects from Sirius IT and if needed assisted by business consultants, software architects and others. Thus, the starting point for the work of Sirius IT’s enterprise architects is the customer’s wish for a more holistic architectural process with a view to streamlining processes and the technological platform, i.e. to ensure disintegration of silos and by doing so incorporating transverse process- and technology support.
Companies that have already implemented digitalisation of business processes, will often have a relatively streamlined technological foundation, why the starting point for the work of Sirius IT’s enterprise architects typically is more focused on new innovative possibilities for taking advantage of this foundation driven by a row of commercial and administrative needs with the customer.
During this work a row of architectural products is created, where the architecture is modelled from a number of perspectives (use cases, process charts, data models, solution architectures etc.)
The architectural products are placed in relation to the enterprise architecture method and create the communicative foundation between management, domain specialists, architecture group and suppliers. This work can also with advantage be supported by the development of business cases, so that the general commercial focus is maintained. The main purpose is to create an overview and a common understanding in order to realise the expected commercial profits in specific projects.
How does the Company Benefit from the Architectural Consulting?
With the architectural analysis the company will have a foretaste of how to approach the EA work in the best way. It is our belief that the EA work is best anchored with the company itself, and with the architectural analysis core personnel is well dressed for the following work (possibly under own auspices or in connection with a larger EA process where consultants are included). The POC takes it even further and tests the validity of core principles and the durability of technological bricks.
