At this point, some people will ask: "The purpose of building IT informatization is to solve the current problems, just start directly. Why should I spend money and time planning enterprise architecture? " For this kind of question, my answer is: enterprise architecture must be done! Although building some simple information systems, or simply integrating several systems to solve the current business problems, there will be no big deviation. But please imagine that if IT is a complex information system construction or large-scale integration project, involving dozens of information systems, including general and special systems, and there are multi-level business management relationships and multi-process procedures at the same time, if you directly operate without planning and sorting out the business processes, resource reuse and IT technologies between them in advance, 90% of the results will be delayed or unfinished.
At this time, a clear enterprise structure must be planned to ensure the mutual operation of business processes, the reasonable support of information systems and the orderly construction steps. IT can be said that enterprise architecture is an important basis for IT decision-making and an important cornerstone to support the subsequent development of enterprises.
Enterprise architecture (EA). Refers to the overall solution of systematic and universal problems in enterprise information management system. More precisely, it is based on business-oriented and driver-oriented architecture to understand, analyze, design, build, integrate, expand, operate and manage information systems. The key of complex system integration is the integration based on architecture (or system), not on components (or components). Effective enterprise archITecture plays a decisive role in the survival and success of enterprises, and it is an indispensable means for enterprises to gain competitive advantage through IT.
Enterprise architecture can be divided into two parts: business architecture and IT architecture.
Business structure: it is the channel to transform the business strategy of an enterprise into daily operation. Business strategy determines business structure, which includes business operation mode, process system, organizational structure and geographical distribution.
IT architecture: The IT framework guiding IT investment and design decision-making is a comprehensive blueprint for establishing enterprise information systems, including data architecture, application architecture and technical architecture.
The business structure is equivalent to the operation mode of the enterprise. If a company wants to develop, it must have its own business objectives and operating models, and these are the business aspects of the enterprise. It can be said that the business structure of an enterprise is the key to distinguish it from other enterprises in the market, which usually includes operation mode, organization, business process and geographical distribution.
Business model: Simply put, business model is the way for enterprises to make profits. Even in the same industry, the operation mode of each enterprise is very different, because the operation mode is usually based on the strategy, objectives, advantages, development direction and other factors of the enterprise. The operation mode is generally divided into five levels: administrative management, fund management, technology, production and sales, and each enterprise will carry out special design for the following levels.
Organization: Organization is the operating system of an enterprise, including its departments, posts and responsibilities. When the enterprise's strategy changes, the organization will make corresponding adjustments.
Business process: The business process here is not a description of a key business of the enterprise, but a big process of the overall operation of the enterprise, which is reflected in the combing of overall resources, the configuration of organizational structure, the optimization of management system, etc., and has guiding significance for business operation.
Geographical distribution: geographical distribution mainly determines where business activities are carried out, and plays a key role in the planning of business mode, the division of organizational structure and the design of business processes.
The IT architecture in enterprise architecture is the foundation of building enterprise IT information system, which can effectively guide the development and implementation of IT information projects. IT architecture is divided into data architecture, application architecture and technical architecture.
& gt& gt& gt& gt data architecture
Data architecture is the core of enterprise IT architecture. As we all know, data is the true expression of objective things, with authority and value. Data reflects the operation of enterprise information system and is an important resource for enterprises. Therefore, before considering the construction of IT architecture, we need to consider the support of data architecture for current business, that is, what important data enterprises need, how to manage and plan enterprise data, and how to realize the application of important data. Then, according to the above points, data architecture planning mainly includes three aspects: data model, data distribution and data governance.
Data model: A good data model can embody the essence of business model, ensure to provide comprehensive, consistent and complete high-quality data for business requirements, and provide analytical data for dividing application system boundaries, defining data reference relationships and defining integration interfaces between application systems. However, the data model is not only associated with the application architecture, but also provides life cycle management and control for the business architecture. The data model analysis in business architecture focuses on the main data and core business objects, while the data model in application architecture is further transformed into logical model and physical model until the final data storage and distribution.
Data distribution: Data distribution includes business distribution and application distribution. On the one hand, data distribution mainly analyzes the reference relationship of data addition, deletion and modification in each business link, on the other hand, it analyzes the reference relationship between data structure and application system functional modules in single/multiple systems.
Data governance: Data governance includes metadata management, data quality management, data standards and specifications, data dictionary, data security, data collection, synchronization, distribution and other contents, that is, master data management content. Data governance plays a very important role in the whole data architecture. High-quality data is an important support for building data architecture, and it is also the premise for enterprises to sort out business process construction in the future.
& gt& gt& gt& gt application architecture
The application architecture undertakes the strategic development direction and business model of the enterprise upwards, and plans and guides the positioning and functions of various IT systems of the enterprise downwards. Application architecture is a comprehensive embodiment of business architecture, data architecture, technical architecture, information security and IT management, including enterprise application architecture blueprint, architecture standards/principles, system boundaries and definitions, and the relationship between systems.
When building the application architecture, we should make a long-term plan while meeting the immediate needs, that is, it is in line with the future development direction of the enterprise and can be expanded according to the business.
flexibility
Whether the connection between application systems is flexible, simple and loosely coupled, fierce competition and industrial changes require enterprises to constantly adjust their organizations, processes and business models in order to gain competitive advantages. At this time, the application architecture should be able to adapt to the changes of enterprise business, respond quickly, provide a stable and extensible application support platform, provide important support for enterprise business development and on-demand response, and ensure that the upgrade or replacement of some application functions will not affect other application systems, so as to achieve smooth upgrade.
consistent
Common integrations include data integration, application integration, process integration and portal integration.
1. data integration
Data integration mainly aims at the synchronization and timeliness of the underlying data of enterprise information system, and solves the uniqueness, authenticity and timeliness of data sources. Generally, through message queuing technology or Web service, the data scattered in various systems of enterprises are managed in a loosely coupled and centralized way, which promotes the interconnection of data within enterprises.
2. Application integration
Application integration mainly aims at the adaptability of enterprise business changes and the problem of information islands, and realizes rapid adjustment and flexible application through the service arrangement of system functions. Application integration provides the software infrastructure environment needed for service-oriented, provides the infrastructure of interaction, combination and governance for decentralized services, integrates various IT application systems within enterprises, and makes them work together to form a larger overall system. It needs not only the technical integration between systems, but also the organic integration between services.
3. Process integration
Process integration, usually called process integration, mainly aims at the problem that the business logic of an enterprise flows among multiple information systems, which is embodied in the process integration across heterogeneous systems. Taking the business process as the center, it helps enterprises to align all business links with customer needs, effectively integrate human resources, information and other resources, realize cross-system, cross-departmental and cross-organizational enterprise operations, support enterprises to achieve "vertical integration" and "horizontal integration" of business, and help enterprises to
4. Portal integration
Portal integration is mainly aimed at the integration of enterprise interactive access layer. Through unified authentication, page integration, menu integration, data portal and other technologies, the information, applications and services in the original distributed systems in the enterprise are integrated into a unified access platform, providing unified authorization and identity authentication within the enterprise, and providing a standard and extensible Web application infrastructure for enterprise IT architecture based on single sign-on and personalized configuration. The platform supports multi-port login, namely PC portal and mobile portal. The mobile portal also provides unified authentication, single sign-on, information/page/application integration and other functions. Most of the functions of the PC-side system can be accessed through the mobile portal, which is used to meet the approval of business trip and office without time and place restrictions.
Reusability
With the increasing number of enterprise information systems, some information systems will be reduced or added before building enterprise architecture, and some platforms or systems with similar functions will inevitably be replaced or even removed in the process. If you have to start all over again every time, it is uncontrollable in time and cost. Therefore, when building application architecture, reusing IT assets is also a part of key planning.
& gt& gt& gt& gt technical architecture
Technical architecture is the technical infrastructure supporting application architecture and data architecture, which is mainly composed of IT technology, components and corresponding technical standards, including: security management, application software, application platform, physical environment and system management.
Security management: Security management refers to the security management framework, security configuration model, security management tools and security management standards at all levels of application software, application platform and physical environment.
Application software: Application software refers to application systems or tools, including business applications and supporting applications. Business applications are generally divided into general management software, package management software and industry management software, such as CRM, ERP and MES. Supporting applications are basic software tools, such as Office.
Application platform: An application platform is an operating platform that supports the running of application software, including system services and operating system. System services are various service engines built on the operating system, such as Web server, APP server, DB server, etc. Operating system is a computer program that manages and controls computer software and hardware resources, and it is the most basic system software that runs directly on bare metal. Common operating systems include Unix(AIX, HP -UX, Solaris), Linux, Windows Server, etc.
Physical environment: The physical environment is the physical facility architecture, models and standards that support the collection, input, processing and transmission of data and information, as well as the operation of application software and application platforms, including system hardware and network facilities.
System management: System management is a system management framework, system management model, system management tools and system management standards that run through all levels of application software, application platforms and physical environment.
Many enterprises generally ignore or deliberately fail to mention the planning of enterprise architecture when building IT informatization. As everyone knows, from that moment on, hidden dangers were buried. Once there are too many systems, hidden dangers appear immediately. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, which are embodied in two time nodes.
In the early stage of system construction, many enterprises often build corresponding information systems according to the existing business needs, and very few enterprises even consider the overall structure of enterprises as a whole at the early stage of construction. Subsequently, with the increase of business demand of enterprises, the demand for information systems also increases, and the unplanned construction of the system can only lead to information islands. This is an information system that optimizes business, but IT leads to the disconnection between IT and business.
System integration in general enterprises is mostly to eliminate information islands and optimize business processes. System integration period is the second best opportunity to build enterprise architecture, because in system integration, according to the specific enterprise architecture, not only can business processes, internal data and application functions be unified and integrated, but also it can build a platform and lay a foundation for subsequent information construction of enterprises and provide rapid response for subsequent business expansion and changes. Even so, many enterprises still ignore the construction of enterprise architecture and do not plan from the overall business and system state. The result is that the integration order is inconsistent with the previous conditions, which leads to the failure of integration or the effect is not obvious.
So why don't enterprises do enterprise architecture planning in the early stage of informatization construction? The analysis reasons are as follows:
1. At the initial stage of enterprise construction, the scale is relatively small and the financial capacity is insufficient. It is an extravagant hope to spend too much money to plan the enterprise structure.
2. The whole enterprise has a weak sense of informatization, thinking that informatization is only a tool to assist business, and there is no need to link it with business, culture and architecture.
3. Enterprise leaders are vague about the enterprise structure, do not understand the importance of the enterprise structure, or have no clear positioning and goals for the future development of the enterprise.
4. Ignore the preconditions of integration and integration projects, such as the order of integration, information status, business relationship, etc. , and think that there is no need to sort out the architecture and planning, just integrate directly.
After having a deep understanding of enterprise architecture and the problems caused by not building enterprise informatization in time, perhaps many people have not clearly realized what enterprise architecture can bring to enterprises and how important enterprise architecture is.
Let's talk specifically about the importance of enterprise architecture to enterprises.
1. Support business development and ensure the correctness of IT investment.
Effective enterprise architecture is very important for the survival and success of enterprises. IT provides strategic guidance and analysis for the evolution of enterprise IT systems, enabling enterprises to cope with the ever-changing business environment. At the same time, IT informatization construction according to the planning in enterprise architecture can effectively distinguish the priorities of IT projects, and then formulate IT investment strategies according to the priorities.
2. Save enterprise costs and reduce the reuse of IT resources.
When planning IT construction, enterprise architecture will consider the relationship between organizational role and business process, balance the dependence between IT resources and business, identify the repeated business requirements and data reuse rate among departments, and fundamentally effectively avoid repeated investment at the business level, functional level and data level.
3. Effectively promote innovation and make the business of the enterprise develop better.
Enterprise architecture can balance the relationship between IT efficiency and business innovation, support business innovation, and keep the business processes and information of each business unit highly consistent. At the same time, IT can ensure the overall IT strategic needs of the organization and realize the closest cooperation within the enterprise.
At present, the construction of enterprise architecture has not attracted enough attention from most enterprises. Maintaining the consistency between business and IT informatization is still the basic challenge faced by all organizations in today's era, and building enterprise architecture is the best way to meet this challenge. Whether it is public or private, whether it is enterprises or institutions, they will carry out information construction according to their own business characteristics. With the growth of business, it will definitely increase the investment in information construction. Whether the investment can be effectively exchanged for income depends largely on whether it has integrity. Enterprise architecture provides a corporate governance system from the perspective of whole business, ensures the consistency of business and strategy, promotes the construction of IT architecture such as data architecture, application architecture and technology architecture, ensures the reasonable and stable informatization construction of enterprises, helps enterprises to achieve lower IT cost and faster design and development, and reduces IT risks while obtaining higher benefits.