Enterprise Architecture Assessment
According to Gartner Group, “Enterprise architecture is a top-down, business strategic driven process that coordinates the parallel, internally consistent development of an enterprise business architecture (EBA), an enterprise information architecture (EIA), and an enterprise-wide technology architecture (EWTA), as well as the enterprise application portfolio (EAP). It represents the holistic expression of the enterprise’s key business, information, application, and technology strategies and their impact on business functions and processes.”
Most information and data lifecycle management engagements begin with an assessment of an enterprise’s architecture. In particular, the process focuses on business strategy, and assisting corporate architects and strategists to develop an enterprise business architecture that encompasses the enterprise’s business strategies, the assets and processes to support the strategies, and how to assess the effect of these elements on the business.
This study digs deeply into an organization’s structure and techniques to identify major functions, and intersections that might lead to duplicated efforts or missed opportunities. As an example, workflow simplification is one of the usual outcomes of this type of architectural review. Most large complex enterprises have a surprising amount of redundancy in their organizational systems, and this type of study can lead to a significant reduction in operational costs.
A second reason behind such an assessment is that corporate or regulatory governance greatly affects information and data management policies. Thus, it can be very useful to perform an enterprise architecture assessment to ensure that business and IT strategies are properly aligned.
Service-Level Agreements/Objectives
No matter where you go or what you do, service level agreements are vital. No where is that more true than when the lifecycle management of information are involved. However, industry studies have repeatedly shown that most service level agreements fail to cover critical aspects of corporate information such as retention and availability. Furthermore, as companies implement policies and procedures for Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and other corporate and regulatory governance, deficiencies in data protection are exposed.
Information classification is a major factor in creating service level agreements and objectives. Information classification is part of that “holistic” process cited by Meta Group of associating an enterprise business architecture, with the enterprise portfolio, and its information lifecycle needs.
This study gets to the root of recovery point, recovery time, and other data protection requirements and objectives as well as the more traditional IT-related and business-related SLA metrics for the “lines of business” within the enterprise.
Business Activity Monitoring
Analyst John Hagel defines four levels of accountability ranging from network and systems monitoring systems (most IT detail/least business-centric) to Business Operations Performance Management (least IT detail/most business information). Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) falls into the middle tier of providing business process information tied to IT performance. Defining the linkages between business process and IT resource usage is one of the more challenging exercises in the industry today.