Gardening in the services jungle - Via Nova Architectura - Digital, Enterprise, IT Architecture

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Gardening in the services jungle

Lydia Duijvestijn

Sunday, 23 March 2008

The new world, in which everything you could possibly think of will be packaged "as a service" (business processes, applications, information and even infrastructure ...) calls for strict governance and management. After all, how can an enterprise be sure that the services landscape upon which their business depends, does not grow into an impenetrable jungle. We all have seen "enterprise systems charts" that have the shape of complex labyrinths with corners that nobody likes to visit. Most of us have been working on engagements that aspired to bring order in this labyrinth by implementing some form of an "enterprise architecture".

Imagine a Japanese garden with blossoming cherry trees, waterfalls, a "sea of pebbles" and a tea pavillion. The garden plan for this garden was made by an experienced master gardener. After the garden has been built, the master gardener and his apprentices make sure that no tree or flower enters the garden if it doesn't belong there. They mow the lawns, they prune the trees and they sweep the pebbles. Regularly they meet in the tea pavillion to contemplate the essence of the garden and discuss its future. If a tree or flower doesn't grow well they decide how it should be healed and if that is impossible, to replace it.

The ideal (service oriented) architecture resembles such a garden. It needs a garden plan (the SOA), a team of master gardeners (the design authority) and processes to ensure compliance to the garden plan (SOA governance). This is not new. It was the same in the monolithic era, the client-server era and in the network centric era. All experience from those eras can be re-used.

An important difference between a service oriented environment and a (closed) traditional environment is that the service oriented environment will be more and more dependent upon external service providers. Another important tendency (not necessarily service oriented) is the increasing virtualisation of infrastructure which makes it hard to know where a service is actually deployed.

Governance and management will therefore become more important, but also more difficult than
before.

In the old days the Japanese garden had its own well. Nowadays they have to collect water from one of the local water companies. The master gardener must therefore invite representatives from the water companies to the tea pavillion to discuss the quality of service he requires and the terms and conditions he is prepared to accept. This requires very good negotiation skills!

Comments (1)

	Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 14-07-2009 15:02
	Better late than not at all......... Wat is also interesting in this context is the fact that to realize an IT system to support a business(-model) can be done using the same methodology as that used to realize a Japanese garden. Based or not on a SOA and how such is done, will eventually not or almost not be visible to the end-user, but is essential for the correct functioning, being future-proof end the cost/yield ratio. See: http://www.karesansui.nl/html/zen_garden_design_approach.htm Like it is for a Japanese garden, early and correct typification of such an IT-system, is of utmost importance and crucial for success. Talking about "a Japanese garden" is as risky (will probably less costly in most cases) as talking about "an IT system". Although for sure there is a common denominator, it often is the smaller part of the whole where unique features and characteristics are becoming more and more important. For that reason with regard to realization of "a Japanese garden", I have emphasized early typification, as part of the "Vision-phase" so as to put focus on the decired type, in this case a Karesansui or Zen-garden, right from the beginning. See: http://www.karesansui.nl/html/zen_garden_design_approach.htm#METHOD Report

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