Overview - Technology Infrastructure

In my previous blog, i talked about big data concepts and how data is very important and essential to an enterprise as a whole. In today's blog, i will be giving my overview on technology infrastructure, major trends surrounding this layer and understanding the opportunities.

Technology layer supports both hardware and software technology. According to http://www.enterprise-architecture.org/techology-architecture-tutorials/58-techology-architecture-overview , technology layer is split into three views; Conceptual, Logical and Physical.

1. Conceptual layer: The question of "what", meaning what technology capabilities are required to provide the appropriate technology infrastructure for the enterprise
2. Logical layer: The question of "how", meaning how the technology infrastructure for the enterprise will be achieved. 
3. Physical Layer: this captures the implementation and deployments of technology in the enterprise.

How is this different from a system architecture? According to the chapter read " While system architecture, applied specifically within the context of information systems, encompasses both the application architecture and data assets, and their logical interrelations to the business processes they support; the technical architecture describes in detail the software and hardware capabilities to fully enable such application and data services" In other words, system architecture provides an umbrella over application architecture and data assets, whereas technical architecture focuses on the software and hardware capabilities to support system architecture. Technology architecture is dependent on application architecture and hence it is very important to make sure that within an enterprise various components of an application architecture are well defined. A very detailed mapping needs to happen between both technology and application architecture, so that both of them can work in sync and be overall beneficial to the enterprise.