ARCHITECTURAL REQUIREMENTS FOR A CHANGING BUSINESS WORLD

1 June 1999

by Michael Guttman and Jason Matthews

The days when large organizations relied on the computing services offered by a single, homogenous platform are long past. With their huge "virtual machines" for each application, mainframes were presumed to have appropriate and sufficient computing resources and services to support all but the most unusual applications -- from a single, integrated, secure location. If more resources were required, a discrete upgrade from a single vendor could transparently provide those new resources to all relevant applications with minimal disruption of overall operations.

As we all know, today's computing environment consists of computing power that's distributed over an enterprise-wide array of heterogeneous processing units, scaled and configured for a wide variety of tasks. Variously known as client-server computing, distributed processing, and enterprise networking (to name just a few overused terms), this new environment promised businesses the greater functionality and flexibility they demanded.

However, the price for this change is largely borne by the IT organizations that must support this polyglot configuration. Today, each IT organization must become, in effect, its own systems integrator and architect. It must design, implement, and support its own unique configuration of heterogeneous computing resources, distributed logically and geographically throughout the enterprise, and connected by an appropriate enterprise-wide networking scheme.

Moreover, this configuration can be expected to change continuously, but unevenly, across the enterprise, due to changes in business requirements and in computing technology. These diverse and incremental changes must be coordinated across a distributed environment consisting of hardware and software supplied by dozens, if not hundreds, of vendors. And, of course, we expect these changes to be seamlessly incorporated without disrupting normal operations and to scale gracefully as those operations expand.

Clearly, there was little in the experience of traditional mainframe- bred information systems professionals to prepare them for this radical shift in computing system infrastructure. Nor can anyone afford to rely -- as so many once did -- on the expertise of the traditional systems vendors to support them; most of these vendors are themselves fighting to stay afloat in this new environment. Few of the old rules apply, yet all of the old functionality -- and more -- must be supported by this new information system architecture.

The advent of the Internet has intensified the pressure by increasing the demand for integration of information systems, as users come to expect a uniform information delivery vehicle. Of course, the Internet is also an important enabling factor for corporations seeking to integrate widely distributed systems. The Internet constitutes a universal network backbone and a common presentation metaphor that can carry information to disparate computing platforms both within an enterprise and beyond it.

New challenges require new approaches and tools. As a result, many organizations have been experimenting with a variety of concepts they hope will help them transition more quickly and less painfully to the new information systems architecture they require.

One of these tools is component technology. Originally, component technology was looked at primarily as a tool for improving the design and development of discrete applications, particularly those that required complex graphical user interfaces. However, through experience, some IT organizations have discovered that component technology can also be profitably applied to the process of redefining and reengineering the overall architecture of their enterprise-wide information systems infrastructure.

--Michael Guttman, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium Distributed Computing Architecture Service
http://www.cutter.com/consortium/meet-our-experts/mgbio.html

--Jason Matthews, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium Distributed Computing Architecture Service
http://www.cutter.com/consortium/meet-our-experts/jmbio.html