WHAT WE DO
Reimagine your business with a hands, on thought partner to help you solve industry, defining challenges and solve tomorrows problems – today. Wherever you are on your transformation journey, our real-world approach to enterprise architecture paired with domain knowledge and technical know-how helps your IT organization build the capabilities to drive operational efficiency and provide tangible business outcomes.
Strategy & Roadmaps
A few years ago developing a five/ten-year strategy made sense but what worked then will probably not work today. The uncertainties caused by the pandemic, the rapid pace of digital technologies, and new regulations combined with shifts in the business’s position (to be a leader or follower) are shortening the planning horizon. Although a capability-driven strategy remains the best starting point in providing clarity around what value IT creates and how it delivers, the time horizon for strategy, roadmaps, and operating models has become fluid. All roadmaps start out with the best of intentions but often end up as shelf-ware simply because they fail to realistically represent the organization strategy and are simply not actionable.
Read More
Enterprise Architecture Governance
Not to be confused with IT Governance (ITG), Enterprise Architecture Governance (EAG) is strategic and enterprise-wide. The focus is on guiding the design of architectures your company needs and maintaining their integrity and usefulness. EAG is integral to the strategic alignment of business and IT, driving the principles of reuse and standardization, and bringing innovation into line with business requirements.
Read More
Architecture Toolkit
Strategic and operational change requires leadership backed by the guidance of enterprise-wide analysis and insight. While C-level information needs may differ from those of the Architect, it is safe to say everyone’s trying to make smarter, fact-based decisions.
Enterprise Architects are a primary ‘go-to’ source for data-driven information. They capture and connect context and metadata across the business and technology landscape to support strategic and tactical decision making. Modern-day toolkits enable Architects to store, structure, and analyze information to realize implications and present insights on the investment, development, and delivery of technology solutions. Arguably having a toolkit with the ‘right mix’ of techniques and products is essential to solving problems, deliver value, and provide accurate and timely information.
Read More
360° Assessments
What can IT do now in preparation for a post-pandemic world? As IT finds new ways to get things done and what can be accomplished, technology leaders are updating their operating models and technology landscape – at the very least, reimagining their future state.
360° Assessments provide a ‘big picture’ view to understanding the current state and objectively pinpoint areas for improvement to design the future state. 360° assessments position IT as an integrator, aggregating sets of needs into a portfolio and focusing on strengths and weaknesses, and weighing numerous elements to determine improved capabilities.
Read More
Reference Architecture and Frameworks
More than ever, enterprise architects need all the help they can get to deliver reliable, agile, resilient architectures that meet changing business needs. While the practice of enterprise architecture continues to mature, companies should leverage as many best practices as they can and learn from others who have already gone down the architecture path.
Proven reference architectures like BIAN, for banking or ACCORD, for insurance, provide you with a foundational frame of reference for a particular industry in which similar products and services are produced. Inherently rich in domain information they are used to both guide architecting efforts and drive commonality, interoperability, and flexibility. Further, they help to ensure the consistency and applicability of technology use across the enterprise.
Read More
EA as a Service EaaS
As the world emerges from the COVID-19 lockdown, the demand for Enterprise Architects will only increase – to understand the recovering business ecosystem, translate between business needs and technological innovation, and provide insights into the role IT plays in the new normal. With such demands, IT organizations are facing the challenge of hiring full-time Enterprise Architect professionals – and for many companies, maintaining a large team of seasoned architects is just not feasible.
A new outsourcing model has emerged called Enterprise Architecture-as-a-Service. Following the trend of ‘everything as a service,’ IT organizations can outsource strategic and operational architecture work and access skills and resources on-demand, paying for only the capacity needed.
Read More
Portfolio Management
Realistically COVID-19 will change business priorities, accelerate timelines and constrain resources well into 2021 and perhaps beyond. As IT organizations emerge from lockdown, technology leaders will need to begin recalibrating their application, technology, and project portfolios to meet business needs and support tomorrow unknowns.
Traditional Portfolio Management, where portfolios live within isolated silos, lack the agility, transparency, and the information needed for IT to make swift, data-driven decisions on service resiliency, sharing resources, and technology to resolve day-to-day issues and to sustain the business. The challenge to create higher business value portfolios at a
lower cost and risk has arrived. Today’s Portfolio Management practices must be flexible and provide an enterprise lens to better understand the portfolios’ inter-relationships.
Read More
Advisory Services
When Experience Matters
Virtually delivered and informed by a network of C-suite and experienced technology practitioners, this innovative service provides IT Leaders with dedicated access to experienced Chief Architects and architect advisors along with the latest industry knowledge. Our advisors have served at the most respected companies and government organizations and all bring at least 20 years of experience to help ensure:
Read More
Modernization vs. Transformation
What’s the right IT investment?
While the buzzwords of modernization and transformation sound synonymous are often used interchangeably, it is essential to recognize some key differences in deciding which is the right IT fix for your business. Even though your business can realize its goals using the current technology and processes, the focus of modernization is to bring the organization “up to speed’ through new technology, upgrading systems, platforms, and software.
The more extensive and costly transformation effort concentrates on business growth and new markets, competitive threats, evolving customer preferences, performance, or new regulatory laws. Although it is safe to assume that there will be modernizing effects in any IT transformation effort, transformation results in a fundamentally different business model and operating organization – otherwise, it should be considered a modernization effort.
