Digital Enterprise Architecture Forum

Shared Economy and Globalization

2017-01-23T20:54:00.003-05:00

It seems the protectionism is in forming recently, which has been viewed as an action against globalization and world unity. However, the development may not stop the connections in a more organic manner, which is enabled by virtual space connections. Digital revolution and shared economy is the trend in current stage of economy, and the world is connected with or without human bureaucracy and mechanical organizations. The world is growing to be a unity in its own way with reduced middle layers between product producers and product consumers.

Shared economy and world unity are not necessarily measured by man-made structure and organizations; rather it can be accomplished by underneath organic growth and connections. The looser the human imposed control the easier for the organic growth of the underneath connections; although we should balance governance with organic growth to maintain the order in this world.

The digital economy enabled connections are evolving to connect the end points and eliminate the middle layers for efficiency and cost effectiveness (e.g. world is becoming flat), which are enabled by Internet connections, service oriented infrastructures (cloud computing is an enabler), Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and many other technology advancements. This shared economy built on top of digital connections is irreversible, and is parallel to man-made connections via politics and bureaucratic organizations, though we need both.

Also, capital is live blood for economy that flows through the vessels via digital connections, it likes water in nature, will flow to places where costs are low and have better potential for investment gains. Internet provides the pipes that enable the flow and make the flow easier across the world.

The competition landscape is moving to suit more constructive and “win-win” approaches, due to the complex inter-connections we are experiencing that beyond human recognition. The biggest enemy for us will be the limitation in understanding the complexities brought by the digital connections in this unified world, which is far beyond the challenges from business competitors.

Data Management and Data Analytics

2016-09-16T23:38:00.000-04:00

Information and data management is getting more challenging these days, with the velocity of data we are producing and the tendency of increased data production. Actually, the key for the solution is beyond information and data management. It is about how and what data should be collected.

I still remembered the data collection from web sites for data preservation. The amount of data growing makes me wonder even we can store them, how we can catch up in processing them to make them meaningful, e.g. to transform the data into information, let alone transform information into useful knowledge, or perform data analytics. If data processing speeds continue lagging behind data collection speeds, the data collected will not be useful, but add burden to the slow process. If more meaningless data involved, it’ll add more burden to the process. Therefore, we need to improve the data collection machanism, to collect the data with purpose, e.g. use a Service Oriented Data Collection and Management mechanism, and collect the data cleanly, or have a data cleansing process in place.

Digital Age and Current Economy

2016-06-24T19:24:00.002-04:00

Any man-made systems are bearing their limitations, due to the limitations of human. Therefore, these systems will run down eventually just a matter of time. The evidence can be found in the stream of human civilizations, let alone the man-made computer systems. This includes the man-made social systems and structures. To survive, we need continuous evolution and revolution. The current revolution towards Digital Age can be considered as a case in line.

Our current economic, financial, and social structures are mostly established to suit Industrial Age, which are distorting in Digital Age. For example, the stock markets were established to connect investors with businesses for their investments to business growth, and to benefit from such activities. However, the stock trading becomes the major business of its own since the online-trading was born in 90s, and the trading techniques and tools are improving continuously with Internet and digital technology advancement. We can see that the trading volumes dramatically increased since 90s, and began to decrease after 2009 recession. However, the financial engineering stayed in its milestone scales, due to government rescue. Gradually, the economic scale in financial engineering surpassed the one in Main Street productions, which caused and worsened wealth divide, since the rich people have more spare money to participate in financial engineering. In our capitalism system, people are chasing capital gains naturally, doesn’t matter it’s from Main Street or Wall Street.

This trend has to be broken for the society to be productive again. The current trend of connected digital world with shared economies, shared infrastructures, shared resources, and shared knowledge is shining the light for making this to happen. We may have to go through a dark period of time before dawning, such as in current stagnated world economy. The important thing is that we should know the direction we are heading to, and to build into it.

We need visionary leaders in this world!

Digital Enterprise Architecture Forum: Architecture in Digital World

2016-06-24T16:47:00.001-04:00

Digital Enterprise Architecture Forum: Architecture in Digital World: It always makes me think about the differences between the architectures in digital world (e.g. for digital enterprise/entities, solu...

Digital Enterprise Architecture Forum: Digital World, Shared Economy, and Brexit

2016-06-24T16:46:00.001-04:00

Digital Enterprise Architecture Forum: Digital World, Shared Economy, and Brexit: The hottest topics of today are about Brexit, which has been viewed as British’s action against the concept of united Europe and world u...

Digital World, Shared Economy, and Brexit

2016-06-24T16:38:00.001-04:00

The hottest topics of today are about Brexit, which has been viewed as British’s action against the concept of united Europe and world unity. However, the reality could be that it may enhance the pace and opportunities for UK to connect with the world with freedom in a more organic manner, which is enabled by virtual space connections. Digital revolution and shared economy will be the trend to stay, and the world will be connected with or without human bureaucracy and organizations. The world is growing to be a unity in this sense.

Shared economy and world unity are not measured by man-made structure and organizations; rather it is measured by underneath organic growth and connections. In the contrary, the looser the human imposed control, the easier for the organic growth of the underneath connections, although we should balance governance with organic growth to maintain the order of this world.

The digital economy enabled connections are evolving to connect the end points and eliminate the middle layers for efficiency and cost effectiveness (e.g. world is becoming flat), which are enabled by Internet connections, service oriented infrastructures (cloud computing is an enabler), Internet of Things (IoT), and many other technology advancements with human adoptions. This shared economy is irreversible, and is different from man-made connections via politics and bureaucratic organizations, though we need both to balance in this human world.

Also, capital is live blood for economy that flows through the vessels via digital connections, it likes water in nature, will flow to places where cost are low and have better potential for investment gains. Internet provides the pipes that enable the flow and make the flow easier across the world.

Architecture in Digital World

2016-06-23T18:20:00.002-04:00

It always makes me think about the differences between the architectures in digital world (e.g. for digital enterprise/entities, solutions, and systems) and the architectures in physical world (e.g. for buildings and cities). The later has mature disciplines with less changeable targets, while the former does not have such fortunate. On another hand, the former also provides more opportunities to explore, to make progress, and to evolve towards maturity and discipline.

For architecture in digital world, the aspects to explore include:

1) The Conceptual Model

This is the starting point and also the foundation layer for architecture creation. The architecture concept generation for digital world entity construction is more abstract than the one for physical world. In addition, it also has to consider the interconnections and mutual relationships among the widely-networked entities, as indicated earlier in my article “Inter-Enterprise Architecture”. A well-established conceptual model has to consider this world-wide networked environment with shared economy, as well as potential activity models.

2) Open and Flexibility

Open and flexibility are characteristics must to have for architectures in digital world, due to the continuous advancement in technologies, business requirements, and people behaviors in the inter-connected environments. Architectures must be able to evolve along the way. Open and flexibility are usually associated with technology-agnostic concepts, models, and solutions. To enable them, the creative, well-thought-of, and solid conceptual and logical architectures and frameworks should be in place, before they can be further developed and be implemented by various technology options.

3) Guidance + Governance vs. Organic Growth

It is the intrinsic role of architecture to provide guidance and governance for its engineering construction, as is in physical world. However, in digital world, there should be a balance between architectural guidance + governance and organic growth, due to human limitations in comprehend the widely-connected big pictures in digital world. If it is too strong in guidance + governance, human limitations could restrict the meaningful natural growth for further advancement. If there is too much in organic growth without regulation and guidance, things may end up in a place where we don’t want to be, or even be dangerous considering the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and smart machines with self-learning capabilities.

4) On-Demand Requirements

Standardized production is mainly associated with Industrial Age, while Digital Age is associated with on-demand production and services. Product and service tends to be provided in on-demand fashion to meet the specific requirements, which are one-on-one based, instead of mass production. The architectures have to enable such capabilities, which means unique in creation and flexible in customization.

5) Discipline vs. Standard

Architecture practice should form discipline to become mature. However, it may be hard to imagine any standards to form. Actually, we don’t have standards for building architectures or for city planning in physical world either, which is how we get landmark buildings and new cities, although we do need and have standards for engineering. Current architecture practices in digital world are lean to engineering aspects too much, which lost their own identities as architecture practices in certain degree.

In summary: architectures in digital world have both similarities and differences from the ones in physical world. For architectures in digital world, we have seen too much influence from engineering disciplines, instead of forming one for its own. It is worthwhile to explore the discipline of architectures for the continuous evolving digital world.

Federal Forum and Step to New Economy

2016-06-16T16:03:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I attended the “2016 Federal Forum: The Intersection of Innovation and Action” in Washington D.C. Thanks Brocade Communication Systems for organizing such great event. The messages conveyed are clear and in good timing, especially with the directional keynotes from Tony Scott, U.S. CIO, Executive Office of the President, and Terry Halvorsen, CIO of DOD. Government is looking for proposals for next generation IT. With Silicon Valley tech fever winding down, this is the time that we should adopt the great new technology innovations to enhance the main street economy, in both private and public sectors. We should carry further the innovations to business applications and adoptions.

It is not unknown that the IT spending in business programs has grown rapidly. However, such growth is mainly due to the increasing maintenance and operation cost dealing with the silo legacy systems accumulated since 80s and 90s. As Tony mentioned, about 80% Federal IT spending is on operation and maintenance, while other 20% has been used mostly to support policy changes that imposed to systems. There has been little capital spending that supports new system constructions. However, this is supposedly to change now. In order to take advantages from the new generation technology innovations and to evolve into digital new economy, government is looking for ideas to build next generation IT. Action is Now!

In order to build the next generation systems, the big picture understanding is essential, due to the inter-connection and inter-relationship in currently Internet-connected environment. The notion and practice of Inter-Enterprise Architecture (as introduced in previous articles) can play an important role in this endeavor. Technology innovations provide us with point solutions and better construction components and materials; we also need next level innovations to put things together with new technology adoptions and utilizations in business domains.

We need to build common infrastructures for shared economy, where the business and operation models need to be well-designed. We may need to rethink the currently private ownership of the infrastructures for public utilization, how far this can go, who should be the owners of various common infrastructures in operation (e.g. for different business domains, geographical areas, communities, etc.), and what the eco-system should look like. The Inter-Enterprise Architecture is in a good position to unit them and to help new model designs.

Inter-Enterprise Architecture Paper

2016-04-23T12:28:00.002-04:00

Inter-Enterprise Architecture paper:
http://www.architechllc.com/uploads/Publications/jea_march2016_zhao.pdf

Foundation-Based Approach for Digital Business Transformation

2015-10-30T18:31:00.002-04:00

Big changes are going on towards digital enterprise and business. Businesses and governments are adopting shared services and cloud computing, which implies a paradigm shift in how digital transformation and IT can impact business opportunities, performance, processes, and organization dynamics. Businesses increasingly rely upon IT to achieve its goals and to implement its strategies. With technologies and products of many generations, and with stove-piped implementations, current IT complexity is growing faster than ever in replying to the required changes, integrations, and transformations. IT costs are increasing exponentially. Enterprise architecture, SOA, and Cloud Computing are aimed at meeting these challenges. We proposed a Foundation-Based Approach with an Enterprise Foundation Framework© to provide a cohesive practice in EA, SOA, and Cloud Computing. This solution is essential in providing a disciplined manner to achieve the modernization and evolution objectives for digital and IT enables businesses.

For instance, it would be helpful to have an Enterprise Architecture in place during cloud computing adoption and digital transformation. While cloud computing may be over stated with its indirect influences during the hype, it is a practical implementation mechanism for Service Oriented Infrastructure, which is a subset for Service Oriented Architecture adoption. Business advantages are gained mainly via shared services in many different ways.

About Digital Eco-System

2015-07-30T18:24:00.003-04:00

Talking about eco-system, our universe is an inter-connected and harmonic natural eco-system. It’s well designed by nature or superpower, while it’s up to human to find the natural laws. The digital eco-system is one step forward in human efforts to be connected in digital manners. Our work and life are emerging into a universally connected digital eco-system. The increasing networking in digital manner and boundary-less data flow are the new trendy characters in forming. The dynamic nature of such digital eco-system is revolutionizing our current autonomic social structure, culture, and environment. Some noticeable phenomenons include:

Correlation and Unity
Digital eco-system brings the correlation and unity to this world. We are an Internet connected one world now. Any local event can cause much broader influence, and also any local optimization may not be good enough to achieve desired results due to the complex connections and influence from the outside world. We have to understand the big picture and relationships of the involved components. This is what “architecture” and “landscaping” supposed to do, and have to do it in extended scales and scopes, with including components in all forms: material, digital, and human; and with identification of relationships, establishment of connections, and suitability of context.

New Characters in Digital Age
Our current social structure, culture, and environment are pretty much formed to suit the industrial age, while digital age requires differences in many ways:

Social Structure: changing from autonomic groups to widely connected social communities on Internet.
Organizational structure: changing from vertical to horizontal and flattened
Culture: changing from territory focused to collaboration
Communication channels: extending from traditional face-to-face to new media with digital multi-channel connections and social networking. We are seeing people talking to their smart devices and computers more frequently than human
Communication style: moving from out spoken in person to writing, composing, and publishing in digital media and on Internet
Leadership and management style: moving from command-control to motivation and inspiration focused, due to the increasing mobility of the work force
Competition landscape: moving to suit more constructive and “win-win” approaches, due to the complex inter-connections we are experiencing that beyond human recognition. The biggest enemy for us will be the limitation in understanding the complexities brought by the digital connections in this unified world, which is far beyond the challenges from business competitors.

The Man-Machine Relationships
During this evolution, we need to re-think about our relationships with digital systems and mechanical elements. We need to ensure that the purpose of our design is to benefit human being with digital assistance, instead of being hijacked by them or having to compete with them. We need to think about what to automate, where need human intelligence, how human work and live with the digital components and smart mechanical objects introduced by IoT (Internet of Things), We need to explore how to best use human’s potential, and the meaning of an enjoyable life for human.

Also, it is necessary and important to explore how business should be architected to overcome the challenges and to take advantage from this in forming digital eco-system environment. This is becoming essential for new age business conduct, to keep business agile, and to take advantages from collaboration across organization boundaries.

Note: I have presented the content in this article as a panelist in the recent Open Group conference:
http://events.opengroup.org/events/the-open-group-baltimore-2015/speakers-c552ab4d26ff4eaea2bb465aea5e0755.aspx

IT as a Service

2014-11-10T18:55:00.000-05:00

In order to provide effective and efficient IT support and reduce complexity and cost, IT is evolving to provide commodity services that enable the separation of business functions from common shareable IT services. As identified in the Federal Line of Business Initiatives, IT management is becoming one of the Line of Businesses (LoBs). The growth of cloud computing is helping IT business to achieve its commodity service goal. The term of “X as a Service” is becoming popular accordingly as well. Therefore, the term of “IT as a Service” is unavoidably coming up for discussion.

In general, we can consider IT with three major components: information processing (e.g. with software applications), IT infrastructure, and IT management and operation. The IT as a Service (ITaaS) is to apply the shared service concept to the three components respectively. For the shared services in information processing, we have the concept of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and Software as a Service (SaaS) in cloud computing arena; For the shared services in IT infrastructure, we have the concept of Service Oriented Infrastructure (SOI), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in cloud computing arena; For the shared services in IT management and operation, we have talked about a new generation IT operating model (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140920161406-7206455-the-new-generation-it-operating-model), i.e. a service oriented IT operating model, which can work together with ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library).

The role of SOA: SOA is an architectural style and modeling approach that emphasizes well-defined, loosely coupled, reusable and shareable services. SOA concept can be well adopted in both software applications (e.g. for information processing) and IT infrastructure, as well as in IT business services. The core of SOA architecture style consists of three components: 1) Service Provider: who publish services to Service Registry; 2) Service Consumer: who find services from Service Registry and use them; 3) Service Registry: where contains information for available services.

The role of Cloud Computing: Cloud Computing enables a practical implementation mechanism for SOA concept, with software as a service, platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service running on cloud. However, ITaaS has a larger scope than cloud computing.

The role of the new generation IT operating model and ITIL: The New Generation IT Operating Model is mostly associated with the current trend of service orientation. The“Plan/Build/Run” is a typical and simple IT operating model, which is still valid if we apply lifecycle with it, and have service orientation content being imbedded into all its operating stages. The lifecycle presented in ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) can be considered as its extension from IT service management prospective. ITIL has five stages instead of three: Service Strategy (plan), Service Design (build), Service Transition, Service Operation (run), Continual Service Improvement. ITIL can be an integral part that fits into the Plan/Build/Run model, with focus on IT service portfolio management and IT service management lifecycle.

In conclusion, the concept of ITaaS is to apply service orientation to its three components respectively, to enable IT being operated as commodity service and as a line of business by itself.

Big Data, All Data, or Just Data

2014-05-28T13:07:00.001-04:00

Big data is a hot topic these days, and it is extended to “All Data” recently. Actually, we are dealing with data from multi-sources, multi-channels, and multi-media; and the data can be from real-time business operation, data warehouse, back-office business data (e.g. financial, CRM, HR), social media, etc. The accumulated data amounts are enormous, although each individual data source can be big or small. The data correlations from different sources are as important as the analysis of “big data”. Therefore, we cannot ignore the importance of data management and processing.

Information and data management is getting more and more challenged due to the velocity and volume of data generation, as well as the tendency of increased data production. An important step for information and data management could be how and what data should be collected. The speedy growing of data could make people wonder even we can store them (e.g. using the new technologies like Hadoop), how we can catch up in processing them to make them really meaningful during analysis, e.g. to transform the data into meaningful information, and transform information into useful knowledge. Therefore, we need to improve the data collection mechanisms, e.g. to have cleaner data and better data organization mechanisms, with data/information correlation indicators. More meaningless data involved more burdens to the process. If data processing speeds continue lag behind data collection speeds, the data collected will not be as useful as expected, but add burden to the slow process. Yes, this is the new challenge in dealing with data, regardless big data or all data.

This is also published on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140528003636-7206455-big-data-all-data-or-just-data?trk=prof-post

New Training Course: Architecture for Knowledge Management

2014-05-12T19:08:00.002-04:00

We are providing a new training course: Architecture for Knowledge Management, which provide a Structure for a Cohesive KM Mechanism with Comprehensive Knowledge Sources. The abstract follows:

Internet provides us with explosive information, and enables us to collect and distribute information conveniently as well. However, information has to be organized and be comprehended to become knowledge. For an enterprise, in addition to its information and knowledge maintained internally, public Internet provides good information sources for knowledge extraction as well. The Architecture for Knowledge Management provides a structure and operation guidance for such cohesive knowledge management mechanism with comprehensive knowledge sources.

Information can be obtained through data processing, and knowledge can be obtained through information processing. The conversion from data to information usually doesn’t need to consider the information receivers. However, the conversion from information to knowledge has to consider the knowledge receivers. Knowledge to one person can be only information to another. In other words, information is target less, while knowledge has target and beholder. Therefore, for information to become knowledge, we have to interpret them for its targeted audience. In this regards, enterprise architecture is helpful in identifying the sources and targets for knowledge management. The architecture for knowledge management covers mainly three components: 1) knowledge capture, 2) knowledge management, and 3) knowledge distribution.

Architecture for Modern Enterprise

2014-04-28T18:52:00.000-04:00

I am invited to publish on LinkedIn. This is the first article I published there:

As a witness of computer and Internet evolution in the past thirty years, I’m truly impressed about the difference Internet has made to businesses and to our lives. The world is connected, businesses are connected, and components inside businesses are connected, as well as our daily lives. These connections and free information flow form a new ecosystem that breaks the traditional man-made boundaries, and are re-establishing relationships and reforming people behaviors in an intended and not intended way.

Business meets technologies in an ever closely intertwined manner. We are continuously trying to use new technologies to advance business operations. In order to deal with the complex business environment and the ever changing business requirements, the technologies and engineering practices are getting more and more complicated. Due to the difference between business and technology in nature, complex .vs. complicated, the gap cannot be closed without the help from architectures that provide simplified views of the complex to enable disciplined adoption of complicated technologies and engineering processes, without increasing the complication level beyond human capabilities. Therefore, architecture for digital and IT-enabled businesses is increasingly important in order to take advantages from the technology evolution instead of being hindered by inflexible legacies. In other words, the businesses are reforming, you can let it reform based on architectural guidance, or it will reform itself in an unexpected way.

First, I’d like to clarify the concept of Architecture and the Architecture for Modern Enterprise in this context. The original definition of Architecture by Sir Henry Watton in The Elements of Architecture stated “In architecture as in all other operative arts, the end must direct the operation. The end is to build well. Well building has three conditions: Commodity, Firmness and Delight”. This definition is applicable to our context as well, where the position of architecture for modern enterprise is similar to the position of architecture for a building construction. The purpose of the architecture for modern enterprise is for the effective and efficient operations of the enterprise. The architecture should serve all its relevant audience and stakeholders in the enterprise, should be understandable by them via various views (commodity). The architectural products has to be solid and practicable for implementation (firmness), and it has to be well accepted and appreciated (delight) to be adopted and be effective in guiding enterprise operation.

More precisely, the architecture for modern enterprise, or digital and IT-enabled business, is to provide vision and plan via comprehensive yet simplified views as a blueprint for business to evolve. It is to ensure business competence and operation optimization by effective usage of digital technology and IT during its evolution. It helps businesses to achieve high performance with reduced complexity and cost, and to achieve dynamics by design. Its concepts, value proposition, creation mechanisms, and usages must be well understood by practitioners, stakeholders, and broad audience in order to serve the purpose.

The core of architecture is its vision, insight, concepts presented, and implementation guidance. It is a practical art, a result of creation, which is not a result of engineering or process in a mechanical production manner, but it guides engineering process for implementation. The architecture for modern enterprise is in a complex domain of people, systems, and culture; and in a constantly changing environment. For such architecture development, it is important to balance discipline and control with flexibility and freedom for organic growth, due to the limitation of human capability in predicting the future and in handling complex matters.

Updated Service Portfolio

2014-04-16T13:18:00.001-04:00

ArchiTech Consulting LLC is a boutique digital world architecture firm that provides consulting, R&D, and training services to IT and digital enabled enterprises and businesses. Our updated service portfolio is summarized as the following:

1) Shared Service Platform with Cloud Computing: It is a natural step forward to have Business Domain Based Common Service Platforms for business service on demand implementations, where our project of A Platform on Cloud for Education on Demand is one example. This is where Service Oriented Architecture meets Cloud Computing with Enterprise Architecture and Inter-Enterprise Architecture as useful guidance for a cohesive, open, long-term focused, disciplined, and efficient service on demand platform. There are three major innovation aspects:

A new generation Service on Demand conceptual model based on Internet for the selected business domain
The cloud service implementation model, which involves multi-tenant based multi-media digital content management system. It will evolve from Software as a Service (SaaS) to Platform as a Service (PaaS)
The associated business model, service model, and operation model

This new paradigm common service platform demands comprehensive talent, knowledge, and skills to its Architects, where is the service we offer.

2)     The New Generation IT Operating Model: Businesses and governments are experiencing a paradigm shift in how IT, Internet, and digital technologies can impact business opportunities, performance, processes, and organization dynamics. Businesses increasingly rely upon IT to achieve its goals and to implement its strategies. With technologies and products of many generations, and with stove-piped implementations, current IT complexity is growing faster than ever in replying to the required changes and integrations. IT costs are increasing exponentially. Enterprise architecture, SOA, and Cloud Computing are aimed at meeting these challenges. Our New Generation IT Operating Model is to use a Foundation-Based Approach with a guidance framework to provide a cohesive solution involving EA, SOA, and Cloud efforts. A white paper can be found in our website.

3)     Big Data and Knowledge Management with Enterprise Architecture: Information can be obtained through data processing, and knowledge can be obtained through information processing. The conversion from data to information usually doesn’t need to consider the information receivers. However, the conversion from information to knowledge has to consider the knowledge receivers. Knowledge to one person can be only information to another, because another person cannot comprehend it. In other words, information is target less, while knowledge has target and beholder. Therefore, for information to become knowledge, we have to organize them for its targeted audience. We help enterprise in integrating a successful enterprise architecture development process with a process that transforms data to information, and transforms information to knowledge for its targeted audience via various views. We also offer a cohesive management approach for knowledge, information and data with the help of enterprise architecture.

4)     Enterprise System Modernization: The demands for enterprise system modernization are driven by mainly two reasons: 1) many systems are aging, and cannot meet current e-business and e-government requirements in digital age; and 2) most enterprise architecture (EA) are created in business layer and at a high-level with limited coverage in systems and technologies, which need to be completed for system implementation. Gaps exist in most organizations between enterprise architecture and system level modernization efforts. Our Enterprise System Modernization service is to help organizations in developing solutions to close the gaps between bottom-up system modernization efforts and top-down EA endeavors. We use a Foundation-Based Approach for this effort with a Foundation-Based Framework as guidance, which providing a disciplined and systematical way to achieve Information Technology Management expectations.

5)     Enterprise Mobile Solutions: In post PC era, we live in a world with great mobility facilitated by smart phones, tablets, laptop, etc. with wireless connections. We are living in a big Cyber Human Social System now, thanks to Internet. The impacts from this ecosystem to our lives are tremendous, across both of our work life and personal life; it is actually merging the line between them. The workforce productivity improvement from the usages of mobile computing is well recognized. The enterprise mobile solution is an integral part of the current changing paradigm in IT. The transformations can be considered from the following aspects:

Enterprise Culture Transformation
Enterprise Structure Transformation
Communication Mechanism Transformation
Enterprise Mobile Technology Transformation

Our enterprise mobile solution will address the above aspects to provide a comprehensive solution roadmap.

Presentation in The BIT's 3rd Annual World Congress of Cloud Computing 2014

2014-03-29T17:01:00.001-04:00

I am invited to present in China this June, in The BIT's 3rd Annual World Congress of Cloud Computing 2014. It seems to be a big event. There are other two conferences happening at the same time and location:

The BIT's 3rd Annual World Congress of Info Tech 2014
The BIT's 4th Annual World Congress of U-World (IoT) 2014

http://www.bitcongress.com/CloudCon2014/

The hosting organizations are:

Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China

Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China

Ministry of Industry and Information Technologyof the People's Republic of China

Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China

China Council for the Promotion of International Trade

Liaoning Provincial People's Government

China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Dalian Sub-Council

The Era of Service on Demand

2014-01-06T23:08:00.000-05:00

I touched the concept of Service on Demand in mid 90s when I worked for IBM. Some of our folks had worked on TV on Demand as well back then. This is becoming popular in real life now after 20 years.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the foundation to enable the service on demand. The basic concept of SOA is illustrated in the following figure:

Now, Internet is playing the service registry role that connects service providers with service consumers by the help from search engine. The service providers and service consumers can be both organizations and individuals. The evolution of this service model has greatly challenged the infrastructures of our society; affect both business enterprises and our daily lives.

Currently, our social infrastructures are formed to organize the resources and service providers into business entities. People, as skilled resources or service providers, work for business entities to take advantages from business infrastructures provided as common services for effective production with collective benefits. Businesses are responsible in selling products to their consumers. Therefore, businesses are the service brokers in this picture. With business brokerage service function being available on Internet, the traditional business structure and operation model will be challenged. We have seen the trend that more people are leaving big business organizations, and begin to work as individual via Internet.

At the meantime, Internet provides an environment for service organically growth, where the best will survive and mediocre will disappear naturally along time. This is the ecosystem of service on demand.

Lessons Learned from the Federal Health-Exchange

2013-10-29T22:17:00.004-04:00

I received a phone call recently asking for my opinion regarding to the lessons learned from the Federal Health Exchange (healthcare.gov). It is really on the spotlight recently, for both political and practical reasons. What I can say is that this is not a big surprise. Many IT projects are implemented this way today, just not being caught in the big stress test under spotlight like this one. One of the important lessons learned is the importance of overall planning, architecture, and leadership. Actually, the federal government has well recognized the importance of such matters, and made legislation requirement for enterprise architecture across departments and agencies. The key, however, is How to Do It Effectively.

In other words, we can say: this is an un-accomplished IT paradigm shift meets a practical challenge. The demands are moving fast then IT shifting in action. A very good alert! It also revealed how important IT is today in order to achieve business goals.

We need a good plan for the project like this one, and need a good leader with vision and subject matter expertise, as the major stakeholder.

We need good overall architecture to serve as guidance for not only the planning and development, but also for test and verification. This is the typical short fall in current practice, and this one just happened to be in the spotlight and experienced a practical stress test. Piecemeal and ad hoc don't work anymore for current big and widely connected systems. The quality of architecture products makes big difference.

We also need inter-enterprise architecture, as I proposed earlier, to guide the collaboration across organizational boundaries. The architecture products are not only for compliance or showcase, but also for real usages as its real and ultimate purpose. We need the architecture leader (i.e. the chief architect) as the expert in the subject domain, not only the coordinator and manager.

The New Generation Leadership Model

2013-10-07T00:24:00.001-04:00

In my previous articles, it has been discussed that the new generation enterprise structure and culture are evolving continuously towards collaboration with horizontal connections, which made easier by social media internally and externally. The influence of hierarchical structure with stovepipes and territory divide has been lessened. This fits the nature of Internet Era with connected and flattened world.

During such evolution, the leadership model should be an integral part as well. The old command and control leadership style associated with top-down hierarchical structure should be evolved towards the collaborative and motivational leadership style that suits the network structure. It is interesting to see that the new leadership style suits the nature of woman very well. Naturally, woman tends to be more collaborative, compassionate, and caring, can be better in gluing the team together and less in command and control. I'm look forward to seeing more leadership opportunities for woman.

Innovation with Social Responsibility

2013-09-17T23:18:00.000-04:00

I just received an interesting invitation to an event for an award entitled "Innovations with Social Responsibility" to me as an entrepreneur and to my company.

It is very true that by starting the ArchiTech Consulting LLC, I am more into enabling social advancement and benefit, as well as for the professional domain development and maturity. Current ongoing projects include:
   1) An Education Platform on Cloud
   2) New Generation IT Operating Model
   3) Common Service Platform for Inter-Enterprise Business Domains (with Inter-Enterprise Architecture)
   4) Information Technology for Smart City (involving above three)
I hope eventually we can achieve desirable results.

Vision and Strategy

2013-07-30T11:34:00.000-04:00

There is a discussion on Forbes CEO Network "Which is more difficult to develop - the vision or the strategy?"

I should say we usually need to "have" a vision instead of "developing" it (otherwise will be struggling with a vision), and then "develop" the strategy. Vision is something you have it or not (difficult to one person but not necessarily to another), while strategy development has some discipline to follow. The true architecture involves both.

Business Domain Based Common Service Platform

2013-06-16T20:20:00.002-04:00

It is a natural step moving forward to have Business Domain Based Common Service Platforms, where my project of A Cloud Platform for Education on Demand is only one example. My recent visit to Beijing, China let me recognize that the efforts are embarked globally.

This is where Service Oriented Architecture meets Cloud Computing with Enterprise Architecture and Inter-Enterprise Architecture being quite useful guidance. I’d be glad to help and to see how SOA, Cloud Computing, EA, and IEA can work together cohesively to make the new Common Service Platforms being more open, long-term focused, disciplined, and efficient than we have had experienced so far.

This is a new paradigm with comprehensive talent, knowledge, and skill demands to the Chief Architects. Yes, this type of efforts need great Chief Architects indeed, instead of being pieced together by business and engineering teams only.

Predictive Analysis and Big Data

2013-05-30T16:14:00.001-04:00

Predictive analysis is a hot topic today, especially when it is associated with big data. The research and development on the effective predictive mathematical model should be the essential part of this effort. It makes me thinking about my old days in multi-dimensional geometric modeling, especially in data interpolation and differential geometry, which creates mathematical models based on sampling data as reference or control points, with different degrees of continuities (smoothness). More data can help to make the degree of continuity higher, so that the model being more accurate. The similar mathematical models can definitely be applied to predictive analysis, using big data to tone the mathematical/computational models. Mathematics is mathematics; it’s up to us how and where to use it.

BTW: I got my Ph.D in this area J

Cloud Computing Model - My Open Group Presentation in July 2013

2013-05-06T21:16:00.000-04:00

Cloud Computing Model as Service Oriented Architecture

Yan Zhao, President, ArchiTech Consulting LLC, US

This presentation will discuss cloud computing from the evolution of service orientation point of view. It will discuss cloud computing models, the prior-arts, and the evolution path in federal government from Federal Enterprise Architecture, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and Service Oriented Infrastructure (SOI) or Federal Infrastructure Optimization Initiative, to Cloud Computing. It will also discuss the current trend of the new generation IT operating model, as well as the related business impact. While cloud computing is contributing to the enterprise evolution towards service orientation and shared services, appropriate business management and operation mechanisms must be in place in order to practice successfully, e.g. suitable business models, service models, service structure, funding models, operation models, operation structure, as well as lifecycle and governance. This presentation intends to provide a holistic view for the cloud computing evolution and shared service adoption in Federal Government.Key takeaways:

1. Cloud computing is an effort of continuous evolution in Federal Government towards service orientation and shared services, with efforts from Federal Enterprise Architecture, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and Federal Infrastructure Optimization Initiative.

2. Cloud computing is a conceptual evolution from many of our past efforts, such as grid computing, utility computing, virtualization, distributed computing, SOA, SOI, Web Service, Application Service Provider (ASP), Internet Service Provider (ISP), etc. New technologies and solutions will add more efficiency during marching in the direction.

3. Appropriate business management and operation mechanisms (e.g. suitable business models, service models, funding models, operation models) must be in place in order to practice cloud computing and shared services successfully.

4. Shared service domain is a sub-domain in an enterprise, which should be appropriately identified and implemented

http://www.opengroup.org/events/timetable/1548