The term software architecture can be more defined into 3 areas such as:

1. Enterprise Architecture – The long term architecture and how it aligns with the business strategy.
2. Data Architecture – Aligns how data is being produced and consumed and its interrelationships between other data objects etc.
3. System Architecture – How the individual application is structured

You might be asking what the purpose of having a well thought out software architecture is, it’s pretty simple:

Software Architecture is the road map to a successful customer experience

Based on the number of systems an organization has and the number of services that these applications provide, it will determine the type of software architecture you need to implement. At the end of the day, what drives the architecture is the customer experience  of the product. You want to make sure you look at both sides of the coin: the technical side and the business side. A well designed architecture that provides sub-par value to the consumer has no benefit other than creating an  interdependent system that just sits there.

Here are some of the reasons why you want a durable software architecture:

1. Strategic Advantage - Having highly flexible and scalable systems allows a team to quickly adapt to competitive environments and market conditions. The more  modular the system, the more you can align it with business objectives.

2. Designing better systems - When designing new systems you want to pay close attention and be careful about the architecture of the system. If it’s not scalable, flexible and does not perform well in  high load business environments the product or service that you are selling to your customers will NOT be sufficient.

3.  Enables re-use – A good architecture is structured into components that are easily reusable. If there is a function that is used many times it should be isolated. This lowers the cost to create additional functionality as well as it makes things easier to debug when resolving issues because the core functionality related to that function/service is on its own.

4.  Controls complexity – Systems are complex, have different uses, interactions and integration points. To meet the demand of software systems today, this complexity needs to be properly managed and scoped out. If the system becomes too complex it will be prone to failure and upper management would be less inclined to touch the application and make changes to it at the risk of breaking existing functionality. Note: If you’re system is too complex, it is probably an indication that new design decisions need to be made to make it more robust and easily maintainable.

5. Enforces best practices – Developers and implementers have  a wide array of  options and strategies to develop one solution. There are industry standards that are well accepted and agreed upon by the general software community. Following best practices align with industry standards and objectives.  The number one reason why a system is poorly designed is because it doesn’t conform to best practices.

Conclusion

Software architecture has been here for a while. Many system solutions have different requirements and therefore implement different architectures. In the service based economy, many companies  today are converging towards a service oriented architecture approach  to easily align with the strategy of the business. The most important thing to understand is that requirements and architectures continually evolve. One thing that worked well this year may not be the best solution in 3-5 years from now. Your customer changes dramatically and the architecture and software must adapt to meet their needs.

And I’m bringing this up because it’s getting an upgrade, from IPv4 to IPv6.  If you’re wondering What Happened to IPv5,  to make a long story short, Internet Stream Protocol(ST) was considered to be IPv5 by industry researchers, was scrapped. So we’re moving from the IPv4 standard to the IPv6 standard.

Why move from IPv4?

The number of current IP addresses is becoming scarce and they are running out. There are around only 17 million actual assignable addresses. As a result, more address space is required to meet the growing demands of consumers and businesses in the new economy.

What is IPv6?

IPv6 is the next-generation Internet Protocol version designated as the successor to version 4.

Links

There are many websites that go into the technical detail of IPv6, however, I won’t go into it here as they could explain it 10x better than I ever could. The main purpose of this blog post was to bring awareness to the IPv6 standard since IP versioning is pretty much transparent to the normal user.

Here are some blog posts to find out more about IPv6:

1. What is IPv6? – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjV1Vo0_BRU&feature=fvst

2. The Difference between an IPv4 and IPv6 address.  – http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/Longhorn/ipv6.htmhttp://www.computerperformance.co.uk/Longhorn/ipv6.htm

3 What is my IP address? What is IPv6? – http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/what-is-IPv6

4. The move onto IPv6 - http://www.techworld.com/networking/features/index.cfm?featureid=1109

A fundamental business enabler for any business is their I.T. department. A business sponsor/stakeholder frequently approaches the I.T. decision makers and asks what value their I.T. team is providing to them. They have the obligation to do this because they need to maximize the return of the firm and make sure the services that are being provided to them are competitive and offer value to the business. In addition, they control the money and have the authority to spend it as they choose. If businesses are in business to create value and wealth for their customers, it’s only fair that we treat internal business units the same. You need to show them the value that your team provides, and they will pay the price that is required to capture that value.

Some questions business leaders ask are:

1. Why does everything take so long and cost so much?
2. Why are there so many changes to the environment?
3. Am I getting enough value for the services you provide to the business?
4. Are your services competitive enough or am I better served by consulting/out-sourced firms?
5. How are you measuring the value that your team creates?

These are valid questions that all I.T. executives better have the answers to. However, I want you to focus on the last question above as that is what things boil down to : demonstrating the value that your services provide to the business by measuring them quantitatively and then educating the business sponsors for their complete understanding. It will then be a business decision to determine if real value is being created based on their subjective theory of value derived by the numbers provided to them.

Strategic business people will want detailed metrics of how the I.T. team offers value to their business operations. Sometimes explicitly publishing a document in your organization to display your value can bode well for I.T. measurement. This removes the negative connotation that I.T. is about spending money and reducing costs. If people realize the value that I.T. creates, they will most likely look to involve I.T. earlier in initiatives for their expertise.

In this article, I outline the metrics that an I.T. shop should show to the business groups to demonstrate the value they bring to the organization:

Top 5 Measurements of I.T. value

1. Delivery. Are your projects delivered on time? How long does an average project span? In a time line driven world where pressure is very high to push quality products out the door, your team must be able to meet the delivery dates that you commit to.  Business cases can be invalidated if projects take too long to bring to market. Not delivering a project on time allows your counterparts to lose faith in your ability to execute.  In addition, projects that span larger than a year have a higher probability of being over budget. Try scoping out projects that are smaller in size with multiple releases. The benefits to this is accurately projecting costs, reducing risk of failure, and decreasing time to market(You don’t need all the bells and whistles on the first release).

• Value Indicator #1: Demonstrate that you can deliver on-time, within budget and establish a track record.

2. Competing I.T. Service Firms – Value is in the eye of the beholder. The value that the I.T. shop claims to be adding to the organization must be captured by the price that is being paid for the labour.  Can you prove that the work, experience  and deliverables that the in-house group provides adds better value in comparison to a competing  outsource group?

• Value Indicator #2: Demonstrate that your shop is the best damn shop in relation to the market and that the business can maximize their value by partnering with the internal I.T. team.

3. Strategy and Roadmap. There are two ways to look at roadmaps: one from a business perspective and the other from an I.T. perspective. The ideal situation is to have these two strategies aligned. Easy? Not in your wildest dreams. In I.T., you have to build systems to be extensible, manageable, and general enough to apply to multiple customer segments etc. Business leaders care about their own business not anyone elses. This is because they are measured on the performance of their business outcomes. However, the I.T. group has to partner with multiple business units to develop solutions that meet their needs. So imagine the I.T. group trying to attempt to please all these business units and not making one a priority over the other. It is definitely something that requires a lot of planning and understanding of each business to plan a long-term roadmap.

• Value Indicator #3: Demonstrate that your I.T. roadmap aligns with business objectives for the long run.

4.Disruption of Service & Business Continuity – If the business doesn’t have to worry about I.T. downtime,  service availability and degradation, it will allow them to focus on what they do best:  running their business. Business continuity is an important concept to the overall health of the company and success.  It has  direct impacts to client experience.

• Value Indicator #4: Demonstrate the system up-time, service availability and degradation and  how it impacts their business clients.

5. Innovation, Collaboration and Creative Thinking – How many new ideas/ concepts does the I.T. group bring forward? Your organization shouldn’t be a taker of projects and demands rather you should view yourself as a partner. You should never think that you are a silo of different groups, rather team members with certain expertise. Leveraging peoples expertise in specific domains and applying them to solve multiple business problems is more productive than having each group solve their own problems. It is the collaboration between I.T., Finance, and Business Units that make technology companies successful.

• Value Indicator #5: Use collaboration to drive innovation

Conclusion

In many companies, I.T. shops are viewed as cost units with the goal of maximizing operational efficiencies and driving costs down. However, there is a limit to which costs can be minimized. The business opportunity for businesses to leverage their I.T. groups is the areas where I.T. can create value for their counterparts. Creating value has infinite opportunity.

However, demonstrating value to business sponsors is no easy task. Even within the company, it is hard to  measure value as different business units measure success differently. However, the five measurements outlined above will give you a good starting point to demonstrate to your business partners that you are providing a valuable service. As a corollary, it also gives you a good measurement if you are not providing enough value so you can look for ways for your firm to correct the problem areas.

After scouring for hours in searches and links. Here are the top resources/blogs that I have found:

1. Geek Doctor – http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/ – This blog is written by John D. Halamka, MD, MS, is Chief Information Officer of the CareGroup Health System.

2. Candid CIO - http://candidcio.com/ – This is the Blog of Will Weider, CIO of Ministry Health Care and Affinity Health System. We have 14.5 hospitals and 400 employed physician across northern Wisconsin. This is the place where I share what I have learned through my mistakes and other crazy things in the life of a healthcare CIO

3. Harold’s Blog from University of Calgary – http://www.ucalgary.ca/blogs/harold – Harold Esche blogs about the accomplishments, challenges and his vision as chief information officer of UCIT.

4. CIO blog – http://www.cioblog.co.uk/ - Thoughts and Comments on the Management of Technology from a UK CIO (Chief Information Officer)

5. The accidental successful CIO – http://www.theaccidentalsuccessfulcio.com/ – In this blog,  Dr. Anderson offers his insights on how to get business and the IT groups to work together for the betterment of the firm.

6. The Nutty CIO – http://www.thenuttycio.com/blog/ – The nutty CIO blog is a tongue in cheek look at everything ICT and Technology related, with hopefully a smattering of good old common sense and possibly an idea or two of how to tackle the same old problems, smarter not necessarily harder.

7. CIO at Harvey Mudd -http://cioatharveymudd.blogspot.com/ – Joseph Vaughan is CIO and Vice President for Computing and Information Services at Harvey Mudd College

8. The Effective CIO - http://effectivecio.com/ – I want to talk about being a CIO, about solving problems, about helping people, about making a difference.  I also like to share lots of things that I think are worth noting, even if they don’t directly pertain to being a CIO or using computers.

9. Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms – http://mikeschaffner.typepad.com/michael_schaffner/ – Mike Schaffner on Managing Information Technology and Your IT Career

10. CIO Guy -  http://www.cioguy.com/ – General thoughts and postings about issues that I encounter in my role as a CIO. Topics may include healthcare administration, physician relationships, technology, and improving community health.

Top key things to be proficient in to become a successful CIO:

1. Technical knowledge. Understanding the tools, processes, applications, technologies that the enterprise requires to operationally obtain its goals is critical. To make technical decisions and also lead technical people in their decision making you need to have a clear view of the technology landscape that lies ahead.

2. Business acumen. One of the CIOs core focus’ is to align the long term I.T. strategy with business strategy and growth. That means you need to understand key business drivers, value propositions and core competencies of the business. You need to understand how you can use I.T. solutions to develop a competitive advantage for your company to execute on their strategy. You need to talk, walk and breathe at the same time. Communicating I.T. strategies and its benefits to business stakeholders is imperative to establish trust, buy-in  and likeability in your profession.

3. People leadership. Having technical skills and understanding the business will only get you so far. You need people to carry out the vision and strategy. Leading people is a soft  skill that few people can execute perfectly. It’s an ongoing mandate to develop relationships with people and have them want to follow you in realizing a vision.

4. Professional Network. Although not necessary, a good CIO as with any senior executive should have a professional network of CIOs/ senior I.T. executives that he/she can leverage. Things that can be learned from each other are best practices, challenges and pitfalls, and  a common strategy to succeed for your organization. It’s also noteworthy to add that as much information, thought leadership, guidance you receive, you should give back.

5. Passion for learning - In the ever evolving world of technology, things change at a rapid pace. As an executive you need to keep to update with current trends (not only in technology). You will notice that new ideas and concepts usually come from other disciplines and can also be applied to your organization.

6. Focus – There are many strategies/implementations/vendors that can be chosen to implement a certain architecture, strategy or system change. Maintaining a core focus of the long-term architecture roadmap is critical to reducing cost and successfully communicating technology benefits to key stakeholders. Standardization of technologies is one example of aligning  the company and obtaining focus.

7. Delivery – The last thing and one of the most important things is that you have to deliver. You have to deliver on scope, timelines, budgets, quality and business benefits. A constant track record of delivery will enable you to get business stakeholders be confident that the I.T. shop is providing a tangible benefit to their business.

Conclusion

In an age where I.T. departments are asked to deliver more with less, the top skills outlined above are necessary for senior I.T. executives and CIOs to possess to successfully lead their I.T. strategies to align with business objectives.

In the age of the knowledge and information economy, knowledge workers and customers have the capacity to create large  amounts of data. Using the large amount of data that is privy to senior management can prove to be successful to top line growth if the right things are done. However, the old saying remains true:  garbage in, garbage out. With the current state of the economy and I.T. budgets being downsized to adapt to the  treacherous climate, every organization needs to have a good grasp of the data coming into the company,  the data that is created within the company, and the data that flows  out of the  company to form decisions and service clients.

Importance of good data management

1. Single unified view of the organization - Having a single, unified view of your organization and customers  is a tool that every executive should have at their fingertips. CIO magazine has a good article entitled, Demistifying Master Data Management. In it, the author cites a common pitfall that any large technology organization suffers: the inability and complexity of managing data over several systems and different customer segments.

2. Strategy and decision making – Dashboard Insight, in it’s article : Understanding the Importance of Data Management the author explains:  “By identifying how business processes and operations link to data, organizations can turn that data into information that can be used for decision making purposes.” The absence of good clean data which represents an accurate landscape of current events has the ability to hinder senior executives decisions on aligning I.T. initiatives with business strategy causing a negative impact to the bottom line.

3. Cost Management – The cost of poor data quality flowing through a process can be huge and devastating to any project or initiative undertaken.  The further along in the process the poor data  is discovered, the higher the cost to correct it. Although many people and organizations have different ways to measure poor quality data,  2 things  ring true:

1. The bigger the organization, the bigger consequences of having bad data.
2. There is a lost opportunity cost that firms endure as a result of inappropriately using company assets.

4. Business Services - These are reusable and core business processes that are used in many ways to interact and service customers. Having a set of good data that can be retrieved by these services can enable an organization to provide a smooth and consistent customer experience. For example, if  I have different ways of interacting with a company(online, phone, in-store, mobile phone), I would like the system to know everything about my previous purchases to better serve my current needs.  This isn’t possible if the data within the organization is not consolidated, cleansed, integrated and properly dispersed to the appropriate points of distribution.

As you can see, the importance of having clean data has significant impacts to the internal costs of the organization, plays a huge role in the decision making process, and inevitably drives its way to the customer experience. It is an end-to-end cycle that needs to be managed successfully for any enterprise to remain competitive and be successful.

Are you and your company taking data seriously? I sure  hope so.