5 Digital Enterprise Architecture strategies to establish your company’s competitive edge

Some time ago, I wrote an article about what is Digital Architecture. As a continuation of that article, also as apparently I am not very creative in finding new topics, I would like to focus on Digital Enterprise Architecture this time.

A Digital Enterprise Architecture is crucial, especially for large-size enterprises to stay nimble amid increasing competition. It is no secret that Amazon, or some other digital organisation, but most likely Amazon, is sooner or later will attempt taking over your industry.

Top 5 ways to successfully fail Digital Transformation

It is nearly impossible not coming across an article or a post about digital transformation on any given day. I can at least guarantee you have seen one today.

Considering the profundity of digital, the abundance of content on digital transformation must be expected. I think all industries, governments and even the society are still in the process of comprehending what digital truly means. Everyone who has seen that mm-hmm moment would have definitely developed second thoughts about the opportunities as well as the threads that come with digital. To me, it is somewhat akin to discovering plastics; the scientific wonder of the early 1900s, now an environmental curse. It is for that reason now we are talking about everything digital; digital economy, digital culture, digital government, digital thinking and so on.

6 Superpowers of a Technology Architect

Every profession requires special skills which make an individual best or mediocre in that field. If you are a superhero, flying without engines, seeing behind the walls or firing laser beams off your eyes would certainly make you a favourite amongst the others.

Having spent close to two decades in technology architecture, I tried imagining the superpowers of a super architect. I focused on the character skills instead of domain, technology, or methodology knowledge and experience. I believe an architect who has these skills would pull off any complex design problems even they are new in the field or don’t have a shiny architecture badge.

None of these would be considered a superpower unless it comes with a flashy name. The outcome is not as striking as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, but I tried my best.

What is Digital Architecture anyway?

Best way to secure funding for your project is to put the word Digital somewhere into the name of it.

Those were the words I heard from a IT executive pretty much summarising the way IT industry reacts to Digital today. We work in digital transformation projects which would be just called transformation projects a few years ago.

Unsurprisingly companies are seeking for Digital Architects to support these projects, whereas they would be just looking for Technology Architects before digital became the fund-securing-word. Funnily enough, if you look at to required job skills, you can hardly spot any significant difference apart from some key words. So what makes an architect a Digital Architect and in fact, is there such thing as Digital Architecture?

Digital Thinking

Digital is big. It is not only big in the size of the hype it created but also big in its breadth and impact. It has become the codename for anything mixing the latest in technology with dazzling customer experience. Wikipedia’s definition of digital transformation refers to it as the next chapter in technology literacy where technology amalgamates with creativity and innovation.

It is obvious that technology is a significant component to digital transformation but one should not make the mistake of deeming it as the most essential ingredient. In fact, in some business domains a successful digital transformation could be achieved through existing, legacy technologies by just re-thinking, re-focusing and re-visiting the customer experience. That points us to the must have ingredient of digital transformation: an obsession for providing the best customer experience. Surely, customer experience has a number of aspects. It is not just about creating beautiful mobile apps. In fact, a good customer experience should exist without any technology around. It must be ubiquitous, consistent and continuous.

Surviving a Bimodal IT

Bimodal IT has lately become one of the hottest topics in the IT. In fact, if this is the first time you are hearing about Bimodal IT, you are more than a year late to the discussion.

There are lots of good resources describing what Bimodal IT is (E.g. this one, or this one) and likewise a plethora of flaming discussions why it is a good idea especially for digital or a bad one if not the worst.

I, on the other hand, see myself at the same distance to both parties. I believe, Bimodal IT is not a state you would be targeting nor a one you should avoid at all costs. Bimodal IT can be used as an interim model on the way to reaching IT nirvana.

So, What is a Reference Architecture?

This is not a blog post about an emerging technology or a hot off the press IT trend, but just some notes about one of the pillars of every successful architecture work: Reference Architectures. This one explains what reference architectures are and why and how they are used in solution architectures.

Learning magic from the "real" architects

Designing something from an idea, or as in many cases, from a problem that needs to be solved, is surely an exciting but not always an easy task. We architects have to make sure we design the best possible solution, meeting all the business requirements while adhering to global and organisational design best practices.

One challenge we commonly face is incompletely or ambiguously expressed requirements which turn the analysis process into solving a rubik’s cube problem while skydiving. Furthermore, as we architects are mostly the middleman between business teams and technology units, we have to carefully manage the perceptions and expectations while using the relevant language to our audience. And we have to do all of these within a deadline and a budget while ensuring enough level of security and compliance, performance and fault tolerance etc.

The Return of the "Digital"

As the world history repeats itself, we also see the technology repeating itself in various ways. I remember presenting an Uber cool, AJAX based application development solution to customers back in 2006. I was telling how it was different to traditional web applications that it was just updating the fragments on the UI not reloading the whole page. One day in a customer demo, a veteran developer said “We had this in 80s in mainframe terminal screens and it wasn’t a big deal! Well, it wouldn’t be a big deal for the web era as well, if HTTP was initially designed for running applications not just for document exchange but that’s another story (seriously, isn’t it surprising that young developers don’t question why there is such thing as JavaScript but start learning AngularJS straight away?).

Implementing Disruptive Technologies, 8 Lessons Learned from SOA

It is true that SOA has lost a lot of its steam now and the craze of SOA has been overtaken by the charms of new disruptive digital forces namely cloud, big data, social business and mobility. As with every emerging technology climbing up to the peak of the hype cycle, those digital forces are fully loaded with promises and expectations but it is only a matter of time that they will crash into the harsh wall of reality. This story is not new, and has also shown itself in the “SOA is the savior” era. The goal of this blog is to remember that story once again and come up with a list of lessons learned, which might hopefully guide architects and implementers of the new digital forces.