Has private cloud already been ‘done’?

I have learned that things mean different things to different people. I don’t think many organisations have fully adopted private cloud capabilities (in fact some are nowhere close). (and there is probably no correct answer here – highly subjective).

So what should a private cloud offer – my 2 pennies:

1. To virtualise the existing estate and [...]

What are some of the technical challenges for cloud adoption?

Challenge
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)

Provisioning
Need to adapt in-house processes to 3rdparty providers tools.Once provisioned resources can/should be managed by internal tools.
Need to adapt in-house applications/packages to deploy on a 3rd party managed platform
Need to manage entitlement of users within the 3rd party application

Monitoring
Need performance / SLA monitoring [...]

What are the CxO challenges before cloud adoption?

Role
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)

CEO
Why did we invest in our own datacentre capacity? What’s the roadmap?
Why do we not go direct to SaaS?
Does this improve our business agility? Can we change business processes more quickly?

CFO
How do we forecast the costs if they are variable?
Does this impact our [...]

Windows 7 upgrade and replacement from XP and Vista

It looks like 2010 could be the year most organisations kick start a desktop refresh. I suspect many held off on upgrading to Vista so for many it’s a Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade path. I wanted to revisit some of the old challenges in these projects and look at some of the new [...]

DataCenter Buzzword Bingo

I recently finished an exercise defining the technical standards for one of Europe’s largest managed service providers. As part of the exercise I gathered the key capabilities across the various infrastructure silos across the Data-centre.

I found that it was a trawl to separate the facts from the fiction in the vendor marketing. I have gathered [...]

How to establish a TOGAF9 EA Practice Phase A

TOGAF has a method called the ADM (Architectural Development Method), the good news is that the same method applies to defining any Architecture (including setting up the Architecture Practice itself).

The ADM breaks down into phases that are run iteratively (not always in a set sequence). So lets get started with Phase A:

Phase A – Setting [...]

How to establish a TOGAF9 EA Practice - Phase B

TOGAF breaks down Architecture into the following pillars:

Business Architecture
Application and Data Architecture
Technology Architecture

Phase B on our quest to establish an EA practice focuses on Business Architecture:

Terminology: Define a set of standards so that everyone is talking consistent language (formal term here is Ontology)
Process: The ADM (architectural development method) is open to be tuned to suit [...]

How to establish a TOGAF9 EA Practice - Phase C

TOGAF uses a term “Enterprise Continuum” and I wish they would think of a different phrase as it throws me each time. It’s important we know exactly what it is as it’s the key deliverable for Phase C.

It relates to three elements:

Architecture Continuum
Solutions Continuum
Architecture Repository

Consider the repository as a folder full of documents, the usual [...]

How to establish a TOGAF9 EA Practice - Phase D to H

The good news is that most of the legwork to get the ball rolling is done in phases A to C. Here is what is left:

Phase D: Define the technology that is used within the EA practice, ideally a TOGAF aware repository. If nothing else set standards for people to follow; for example always create [...]

How to establish a TOGAF9 EA Practice

Let’s start by establishing what does an EA practice do for your organisation. The EA practice should identify

Where are you?
Where do you want to be?
How do you get there?

The reason the methodology is so important is that all three of these answers are always changing. The wind of change blows in for a huge array [...]

Web 2.0: A Mashup example

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I would dig deeper into some of the Web 2:0 Architectural patterns. Well I came across a very good web site whichI think shows very simply a web 2:0 mashup.

They are essentially mashing together a database of information (prices of houses sold from the UK Land Registry) with a map, not [...]

Mixing project and operational teams

I have been off to the States and Canada for the past month hence no blog entries, that’s not to say I have not been doing my usual when I am on a long flight, thinking about past projects or companies that I can extract some lessons learned from.

One such company under financial pressure had blended [...]

What is architecture, and who are these architect people anyway?

A lot of people ask what architecture actually is. This is an interesting question as there is I believe no single definition of architecture. Additionally, architecture is often slightly different things to different people, and varys to some degree across technical competencies (application, infrastructure, security, etc).

Throughout my career, I have performed various roles in [...]

Which Security Standard?

One of the largest challenges I have faced over the years is implementing distributed solutions in a secure way while keeping the companies IT operations centralised. I have often found that more than a little politics gets in the way. I recently worked in a PCIDSS environment and the overhead to operations was significant, passing [...]

Which Architectural Framework?

I have worked in some large corporates and while people talk of methodologies I don’t often see them followed. Classic example is PRINCE2 on the project management side.

In the life of an Architect I see a lot of Frameworks but again not a lot of companies diligently following them. If anyone has any experiences of [...]

What server operating system?

It would be nice if a single operating system would fit the needs of most data centres but it never does. Often politics and cost will influence selection but in some cases you get caught with little choice due to application dependencies.

 

IT Architecture Template

I bet I could inspire debate just trying to define the breakdown of components in an IT Infrastructure Architecture so here we go:

 

Platforms

Database

Security

Storage and Backup