IT Architecture For Dummies

IT Architecture For Dummies

This book is not a checklist for efficiency, although it does present some strategies that may improve cost and operational efficiencies. It is not a step- by-step guide that will lead to a secure and risk-free network, although it pro- vides some examples of projects that may help to reduce risk. Instead, this book introduces you to enterprise architectural planning from the theoretical viewpoint and then drills down to the meat and bones of enterprise technolo- gies and functions.

The enterprise begins when you carefully put the first two computers together, and complexity grows with every step thereafter. Haphazard IT building practices can easily lead to an enterprise network that is poorly planned or composed of random, one-off projects undertaken as standalone goals. An e-mail consolidation project can unexpectedly derail concurrent licensing projects intended to vastly reduce expensive software licensing costs by carving the authentication domain into separate silos unable to share resources. A server virtualization project may run into difficulties if not coordinated properly with server consolidation projects to make sure that sufficient bandwidth and host resources are available when systems are transferred from physical to virtual states.
Obviously, these scenarios are simply examples of potential conflicts that may occur when enterprise realignment and cost-saving strategies drive inde- pendent projects without coordination and guidance at the strategic level. Many other conflicts are much more subtle and not apparent until well along a new path, such as an incompatibility between communications protocols that support new equipment or a lack of executive support that leaves adop- tion of enterprise practices in a loose “opt in by choice” state.
After reading this book, you’ll have a better grasp of the interconnected nature of enterprise architecture realignment. We hope the information we provide encourages you to look around your own enterprise and find some low-hanging fruit opportunities for quick savings or other proof of value to help develop executive support for additional changes. Few enterprises lack such opportunities because technology and its uses tend to fall into stable practices users describe as “the way we’ve always done it” rather than changing to adopt the best or most efficient ways.

Kalani Kirk Hausman and Susan L. Cook