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Maximizing Enterprise Architecture for High Performance

Maximizing Enterprise Architecture for High …...5 Challenges that reinforce the need for a comprehensive and flexible enterprise architecture to enable high performance Across industries,

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Page 1: Maximizing Enterprise Architecture for High …...5 Challenges that reinforce the need for a comprehensive and flexible enterprise architecture to enable high performance Across industries,

Maximizing Enterprise Architecture for High Performance

Page 2: Maximizing Enterprise Architecture for High …...5 Challenges that reinforce the need for a comprehensive and flexible enterprise architecture to enable high performance Across industries,

Enterprise architecture defines thevision, principles, standards androadmap that guide the selection,deployment, operation, andrefreshment of technologies within an organization. Well-plannedenterprise architecture integratesinformation technology (IT) withbusiness capabilities to provide aseamless operating environment. It provides a reference point formeasuring IT investment and results in the delivery roadmap that defineshow IT systems need to change to drive future business growth.

Many organizations have allocated a significant proportion of their ITbudget to reactive “non-discretionary”spending—the maintenance ofexisting, highly complicated anddisparate IT systems—rather thaninvesting in technologies for futuregrowth and high performance.Accenture believes strategic

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Organizations that invest in flexibleenterprise architecture are providingthemselves with an accurate picture of their IT environment and areenabling their ability to support newbusiness processes, adapt to changingmarket conditions and leverage newemerging technologies. Enterprisearchitecture is not only a blueprint thataligns information technology to thedynamic business environment, but itcan also act as a monitor for the entireIT environment. Enterprise architectureuncovers gaps between businessstrategies and the technologies required to enable them, identifyingopportunities for efficiency andoptimization. This provides an ongoingprocess of business re-alignmentfollowed by high performingorganizations rather than a one-timeplanning effort of companies whoperform below industry standards.

As powerful new enterprise architecturetechnologies and computing modelsemerge-Service Oriented Architecture(SOA), Web-based services, utilitycomputing, and virtualized networks-the importance of well designedenterprise architecture will only beheightened. Powerful enterprisearchitecture reveals the effect of theintroduction of any one new technologycomponent before the technology isimplemented. With strong enterprisearchitecture, organizations will know if their IT environment can supportemerging technologies and what effectthese technologies will have across theorganization. To ensure positive impact,organizations need dynamic enterprisearchitecture to see the impact ofemerging technology on their specificenvironment before it occurs, tomanage transition and to maximize the impact of the innovation.

The upside of investing strategically inenterprise architecture

Enterprise architecture uncovers gaps betweenbusiness strategies and the technologies requiredto enable them, identifying opportunities forefficiency and optimization.

Business Strategies

Information Technology

InformationTechnologyEnablement

InformationTechnologyAlignment

Information TechnologyManagement & Delivery

As organizations increasinglystrive for high performance,CIOs are turning to enterprisearchitecture to advanceobjectives ranging from costsavings and operationalefficiency to delivering IT-enabled business innovation..

In a recent global research studyof IT executives, Accenture foundthat enterprise architecture wasreported to be a critical elementto ensuring success andmaximizing the effect of mergerand acquisitions.

investment in enterprise architectureis one of the most vital investmentsfor driving productivity and growth.This investment allows organizationsto achieve high performance.

Maximizing enterprise architecturefor high performance

Page 3: Maximizing Enterprise Architecture for High …...5 Challenges that reinforce the need for a comprehensive and flexible enterprise architecture to enable high performance Across industries,

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Smart organizations willing to make a reasonably small, upfront investmentwill not only benefit from acomprehensive enterprise architecture,but will also have the advantage ofmeasurable results that correlate to a well-supported business strategy,which in turn justifies continuedinvestment. Instead of evaluatingefforts based solely on operationalcriteria, organizations should turnaway from piecemeal enterprisearchitecture solutions toward acomprehensive, consistent programwith frameworks based on business or organizational outcomes.

Leading IT organizations havedemonstrated the ability to balancethe strategic levels of investment inenterprise architecture allowing theeffective management of IT spend.They spend smarter: what makes themleaders is that they spend smallerpercentages of their budget onoperations and maintenance andlarger percentages on developing newapplications to support the strategicdirection of the business. CIOs areunder pressure to “spend smarter” not “spend more.” Some CIOs arerecognizing that they are operating in what Accenture calls an “austeritytrap.” Their efforts to “contain theproblem” have backfired becauselegacy maintenance and patchworkupgrade costs have ballooned andcritical business investment is being“starved” of essential funding.

Building a case to invest

Organizations that invest in dynamicenterprise architecture will:

• Possess the flexibility to collaborate with multiple stakeholders about the essential elements of enterprise architecture within the business.

• Maintain centralized, stable and consistent information about the enterprise and its assets such as applications, hardware, databases and human resources.

• Respond faster to business partners and manage changes as they occur.

• Show improved ROI by removing IT complexities such as the number of applications and duplication of data.

• Improve time to market by accelerating the delivery of systems from integration and outsourcing partners.

• Report more predictable results given that the information about the enterprise is more precise and supported by automated traceability.

The outcome will be higher quality resulting in better decision making.

Leading organizations that use ITeffectively understand that intelligentup-front enterprise architectureinvestment, focused on performance and cost efficiency, can producesustained returns in terms of revenuegrowth, smarter use of information and achievement their objectives.

Comprehensive enterprise architecturecapabilities

Maximizing SOA by leveragingexisting enterprise architecture

To maximize the impact of SOA,organizations need to ensureproper alignment with existingenterprise architecture to leveragetheir prior investments. Withthis integration, organizations can:

• Become more agile

• Drive cost reductions

• Boost ROI

• Simplify systems

• Lower maintenance costs

• Enhance architectural flexibility

• Lower integration costs

Page 4: Maximizing Enterprise Architecture for High …...5 Challenges that reinforce the need for a comprehensive and flexible enterprise architecture to enable high performance Across industries,
Page 5: Maximizing Enterprise Architecture for High …...5 Challenges that reinforce the need for a comprehensive and flexible enterprise architecture to enable high performance Across industries,

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Challenges that reinforce the needfor a comprehensive and flexible enterprise architecture to enablehigh performance

Across industries, there are key “globalscale” challenges emerging that arebeyond the control of specificorganizations, yet they must beprepared to handle them. The questionsthat follow highlight some of thesechallenges:

• How will enterprise architecture help governments use technology to manage cost of services as baby boomers make up the majority of the populations in developed economies?

• Across a range of fields such as biometrics, telemetry, and Internet Surveillance, how will enterprise architecture uncover which technology options will provide the best and most cost—efficient solutions for governments to secure borders and identify “individuals of interest?”

• How will enterprise architecture identify what sorts of technology—driven responses media and telecommunication providers will require to manage the impact of convergence of content and services? Will the newspaper and traditional TV networks survive unless they capitalize on new technologymedia to meet the challenge of the “culture of individualization?”

• How can enterprise architecture help utilities and energy providers integrate new technology and solutions into legacyarchitectures to meet the challenges provided by the increasing cost of commodities?

• How can enterprise architecture help financial services firms best obtain a “single view of the customer” using data sources stored in both new and legacy platforms? What complex systems do marquee investment firms need to manage volatility and “systemic” risk?

• How will enterprise architecture help retailers re—engineer their platforms to meet the challenges of global supply chains and the "individualization" of the marketplace?How will enterprise architecture help them achieve “real time insight” across all elements of their business, including sales, supply chain, and customer service?

The solution for managing thesechallenges lies in organizationsinvesting in an enterprise architecturethat enables high performance.

To achieve their enterprisearchitecture goals, organizationsinterested in high performance willlook for specialized technical expertiseand industry—specific perspective, aswell as market-tested implementationroadmaps and execution track records.They will seek out partners versed inthe cultural, organizational andfinancial implications of theirenterprise architecture challenge.Finally, they will gravitate to solutionproviders that offer complimentaryskill sets that supplement their“in—house” expertise.

Accenture has the expertise andproven solutions to help organizationsdevelop enterprise architecture thatcan achieve high performance.

Accenture understands relevantindustry scenarios and then translatesan organization’s business andstrategic objectives into enterprise

Building a partnership to achieve high performancethrough enterprise architecture investment

architecture solutions. Ourorganizational structure enables us to combine the knowledge of ourindustry groups with the design andimplementation skills of our enterprisearchitecture practice. We work withclients to design customized solutionsthat meet their individual businessneeds. Flexible architecture design iscore to an approach that focuses onfuture business plans, effective use of new technology and continualoptimization. Accenture not onlydesigns enterprise architecture toyield competitive advantage andpositions an organization for growth,but it also has market—leadingdelivery capabilities to guide clientsthrough the enterprise architectureimplementation process to theachievement of ROI.

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Accenture provides the following five core enterprise architecture solutions to facilitate our end-to-end approach:

• Enterprise Architecture Planning—Accenture’s industrialized planning methods target the linkage between IT and the business. Our approach advocates joint visioning sessions with the business to craft pragmatic designs that are subsequently turned into actionable, measureable program plans.

• Architecture Governance— Accenture’s enterprise architecture governance model, developed from experience with client applications, indicates that high performance businesses use a single, corporate-wide function to balance the interests of the corporation, business division, and the IT service provider. Proven assets including operating models, processes, roles, and job descriptions help jumpstart clients seeking to deploy an architecture function.

• Application Portfolio Optimization—Application portfolio optimization gives CIOs the ability to assess application rationalization opportunities across multiple business functions and technology platforms. Investment prioritization matrices define replacement horizons and transformation opportunities.

• Infrastructure Transformation—Accenture provides infrastructure transformation skills, diagnostics and assets that accelerate the process of infrastructure transformation. They identify gaps in operational capability, levels of service and provide a road map to a high performance infrastructure. Organizations use our proven approach to gain speed to market, mitigate risk, and address tough issues of culture and organizational change while still building the capacity for sustainable, self-generated and ongoing positive changes.

• Enterprise Architecture as a Managed Service— This solution leverages our existing enterprise architecture assets and capabilities to provide a managed service arrangement, using a mixture of Accenture skills to deliver a complete enterprise architecture development and delivery capability. The managed service provides access to a global pool of enterprise architecture resources and services at an optimized cost, freeing clients to focus on the more strategic aspects of enterprise architecture and leaving them in control of overall EA governance.

Accenture is able to leverage deep analytic skills, extensive industry knowledge, creativity, and a thorough end-to-end understanding of technology issues to help organizations build a case to invest and leverage their enterprise architecture to facilitate high performance. We use our expertise, assets and solutions to translate client objectives into compelling and actionable enterprise architecture insights.

Accenture’s proven practice in enterprise architecture design and implementation

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Industry scenariosSector issue: Financial services and thesingle view of the customerHistorically, financial servicesorganizations have been heavyinvestors in proprietary IT, and havetaken great institutional pride in theiraccomplishments. The pressure, however,to find solutions that can deliver a singleview of the customer has led someleading financial services organizations to move to common platforms, unifyinginterfaces and strong governancestructures that use de-facto industry-standard solutions.

In this new customer-centric model, thecenter of attention in the IT organizationwill shift to more of a “exchange style”enterprise architecture function—monitoring, managing, costing, andreporting—while allowing for a pure“pipes-and-servers” on-demand modelfor shared services like hardware,metered software and storage.

These organizations do not view theirnew strategic direction as giving upcontrol of their architecture in return forefficiency—as culturally this is difficult toachieve. Instead, they choose to see it asan opportunity to re-deploy assetsinto customizing commodity platformsfor the organization’s advantage, withincreased transparency and control.They understand that all aspects of ITare on an inexorable commodity path,and leverage this trend to gainproprietary advantage.

Sector issue: Product-driven industriesand data miningRetail companies are finding the recentadvent of powerful data analytics toolshas created an entire new set ofchallenges as they look to create “real-time” customer advantage. Thesecompanies are already dealing withstorage, privacy and data-permissionchallenges brought about by exponentialincreases in amounts of data collected.

The responses to these challenges areleading to new data-center, networking,and dynamic provisioning strategies. IT organizations are being pressed to develop enterprise architectureapproaches that can counteractinformation overload, generateknowledge and ultimately, createvalue. In the leading organizations,these approaches combine theenterprise-wide harvesting of business

intelligence with structured andunstructured data management.

These data capabilities will come at acost, primarily in the form of stretchedarchitectures: more computing power,more storage, and bigger usage spikes.Intelligent use of enterprise architecturewill enable IT organizations to managethe cost associated with an increaseddemand profile, without affectingservice levels.

Sector issue: Resources and smart telemetryIn Ontario, Canada, the provincialgovernment's recent decision mandatingsmart metering within five years placed a triple challenge on utilities. Theymust sort out long-term questions of technology and data standards anddetermine how adoption will affectbusiness models—and they must carryout both of these tasks in a regulatoryand investor climate that is both fickleand intolerant of error.

Until now, general attention has,appropriately enough, focused on theinstalled devices themselves, as the mostvisible portion of any smart-meteringdebates. The utilities themselves,however, are preoccupied with the moreintricate “behind-the-scenes” enterprisearchitecture components, consisting ofmore flexible IT infrastructures, newdata-governance policies, and financialframeworks modified to measure thereturn on investment that explain and justify the necessary investments.

In this case, remote telemetry serves astrong resource-conservation mandate.The mitigation of liability, however, isdriving telemetry solutions in some otherresources sectors, such as petrochemicalsdistribution. Enterprise architecturedriven solutions that employ Web-basedservices are allowing enterprises to trackfar-flung, high-risk assets in real time.

Sector issue: Telecommunications and convergenceThe tectonic reconfiguration oftelecommunications markets, which has unleashed as much by consumerelectronics developments as regulatoryrequirements, has radically changed the mission of many in-house ITorganizations. Telecom companies nowmanage rapidly-shifting portfolios ofresearch and development alliances,product launches, mergers and

acquisitions and customer acquisition-driven strategies.

Telecom IT organizations, in turn, have embraced enterprise architectureplanning and execution as a way tostreamline themselves a hyper-competitive marketplace. In somecases, the streamlining has begunwith an application-portfolio reviewand consolidation, in others with an IT transformation pilot in a single marketas a preview to global replication.

Sector issue: Government and security concernsThe need to secure borders, protecthigh-value assets, and identify “partiesof interest” has pressed governmententities to re-examine both old andnew technology responses. In somecases, governments have commissionedentirely new “smart border” solutionswhich will call for the real-timeintegration of databases, streamlinedprocedures, biometric screening toolsand electronic profiles. In other cases,they have provided a favorableenvironment for the commercialdevelopment of “prior generation”solutions, such as ultra-widebandsensing technology.

Ultra-wideband was originallydeveloped for military purposes as a tangential development to radar,providing the capability to see beneathground and through walls. Until twoyears ago, when ultra-wideband was arestricted-use, niche technology thatfaced a common array of technical,financial and conceptual impedimentsto further development. Now, theability of an ultra-wideband node toproduce data not only on location andposition, but about three-dimensionalattributes such as size, weight andtemperature—all in real time—hasmajor implications for defense ITsuppliers. IT organizations will need tostep up, out of necessity, to the increased enterprisearchitecture demands for data-gathering, analysis and storageentailed by these new technologies.

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About Accenture

Accenture is a global managementconsulting, technology services andoutsourcing company. Combiningunparalled experience, comprehensivecapabilities across all industries andbusiness functions, and extensive research on the world's most successfulcompanies, Accenture collaborateswith clients to help them becomehigh-performance businesses and . governments. With more than 175,000 people in 49 countries, thecompany generated net revenuesof US$19.70 billion for the fiscal year fiscal ended August 31, 2007. Its home page is www.accenture.comwww.accenture.com

Copyright © 2008 AccentureAll rights reserved.

Accenture, its logo, andHigh Performance Deliveredare trademarks of Accenture.

Enterprise Architecture at Accenture

Accenture has more than 5,500technical architects distributedthroughout every major enterprisearchitecture marketplace in the world.Functional specialists in InformationArchitecture, Custom/PackagedArchitecture, Service OrientedArchitecture and “Next Generation”Infrastructure complement additionalpools of expertise in more than 17global industry groups.

Enterprise Architecture at Accenture isbased on the offering of globally-consistent skill sets, in order to offerany client the ability tosimultaneously scale or customizefrom a large array of sub-disciplinesand assets. For more informationabout Accenture’s EnterpriseArchitecture offerings, please contact:

• Gary [email protected]