Cloud offerings

An interesting article on cloud services to be managed with right technology resources by Gartner; https://www.gartner.com/doc/2366916/manage-cloud-services-right-roles

With the increase in cloud services, it is very important to pick up right technology resources to establish a well defined cloud space for your organization. This means that this cloud space is flexible in terms of data, but also is secured to protect from malicious activities.

As pointed in the article, the CSB (cloud service brokerage) role will be very effective in the organization that is promoting usage of cloud services. The three primary CSB roles are

1. Aggregation Brokerage
2. Integration Brokerage
3. Customization Brokerage

The CSB will be responsible to assess what type of cloud services a customer requires, and customer demands and requirements for cloud services.

As pointed out in the article, which i also agree with is that the people in CSB role need to be proficient in cloud technologies and services as they play a very critical role in defining the next steps that will take the organization from its current maturity level to the next level of engaging with new technologies. With the CSB roles, the next defining factor is cloud management platforms or CMPs.

According to Gartner, Cloud Management Platforms are integrated products that provide for the management of public, private, and hybrid cloud environments. CMPs are incorporated within the organization by IT personnel to deliver technical cloud services to internal customers. Since these platforms are managed in cloud, they offer a faster delivery of services thus lowering the overall cost of technology. CMPs work very closely with IAAS (infrastructure as a service) platform. 

In order to summarize, CMP alongwith CSB role in an enterprise can help an organization to be more efficient in engaging with new emerging technologies such as cloud computing.

Couple things that need to be accounted for while coming up with a CMP/ CSB model, referring the gartner article

1. evaluating CMP for a hybrid cloud approach

2. Weighing options as an organization for an appropriate cloud offering vendor.

3. can the CSB aggregation tools offer an expanded option of external cloud services to internal users/ customers

4. to implement CSB, CMP tools at the portal level

 

Network Architecture - a subcomponent of technology infrastructure architecture

An important subcomponent of technology infrastructure architecture is Network Architecture.

In order to transfer information within and outside the organization, communication between resources, talking to the backed servers, databases, applications (external and internal), in all of this we need a well defined, secured network. Network is nothing but a component that keeps everything connected. In the absence of a well defined, secured, consistent network, the organization will not be able to talk to its various applications, and hence this will lead to a communication/ technology blackhole within the enterprise.

With more solutions being cloud and mobile based, it has become even more essential to define and design a network plan that can not only keep the applications and connection alive but can also handle heavy data traffic.Thus, it is important as a technology infrastructure architect to design a self sustained highly secured network diagram that is well equipped to fight malicious viruses, as well as be able to securely and efficiently let the communication flow.

An example of physical network infrastructure diagram from technet: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc961037.aspx

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.