BUSINESS ARCHITECTURE

1. Enterprise Architecture

1.1. What is enterprise architecture?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctls1-g1IzE

- "Enterprise Architecture is a
methodology that, based on a
comprehensive vision of
organizations – or in this case, of the
entire State –, allows the alignment of
processes, data, applications and
technological infrastructure with the
strategic objectives of the business or
with the reason for the existence of
the entities. Whose main objective is
to guarantee the correct alignment of
technology and business processes in
an organization, with the purpose of achieving the fulfillment of its strategic
objectives" (2)

- The business architecture in an organization corresponds to the way of

comprehensively representing the company, allowing each and every one of
the elements that make it up to be covered and considered. This leads to
establishing a clear vision of the company's objectives, goals and business
lines, starting from the strategic perspective (mission, vision, strategic
guidelines and indicators), to a current and future structure for the
organization's processes, which incorporates some of the components that
are considered critical for its operation:
 Processes: business models and processes.
 The organizational structure: people, administrative structures.
 Information technologies: applications, information, technological
infrastructure and computer security.

- As a final result, the necessary tools and mechanisms will be available for the
proper operation and functioning of the company, and therefore, support the
fulfillment of its strategic objectives.

1.2. Features of enterprise architecture:

-
SCABLITY: if the system load increases, it adapts
-
MAINTAINABILITY: allows modification of existing components without
modifying the behavior of the system
- AVAILABILITY: support for fault-tolerant architectures, redundancy
systems.
- EXTENSIBILITY: it must be possible to add new components
- Handling and Safety
1.3. Components of Enterprise Architecture:
 - The secret of EA lies in the alignment of the different IT components of an
organization, all based on a strategic vision that gives them meaning and, at
the same time, turns them into useful resources for decision-making, beyond
the set of resources to carry out tasks that they can become without
integration from Architecture.

- "In general, within the Enterprise Architecture six components are identified:
strategy, IT governance, information, information systems, technology
services, use and appropriation."(3)

Source: Enterprise Architecture (Article Colombia Digital) (4)

1.4. Enterprise Architecture Methodologies:(4)

a. Zachman Framework:

- The Zachman Framework is considered a taxonomy for organizing

design documents, specifications, and models; it takes into account both
who the product is intended for and the specific topic that will be
discussed in the document or model. This means, according to
Zachman, that it is a logical structure to classify and organize the
descriptive representations of an organization that are significant for its
management, as well as for the development of systems.
- It was the first model of business architecture (1987), it does not
propose a method to obtain each of its elements
b. Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework:
- It is one of the federal government's attempts to unite its agencies
and functions under a single enterprise architecture. FEA is
considered by many organizations to be one of the most
comprehensive methodologies, as it has a complete taxonomy, such
as Zachman's, and an architectural process, such as TOGAF. Today,
FEA can be viewed as a methodology for creating an Enterprise
Architecture or as the result of applying that process to a particular
organization, such as the United States Government.

Source: Systematic approach to the development of integrated IS

c. Gartner Method:

- Known as the “magic quadrant,” it seeks to integrate, analyze and

communicate structured and unstructured information.
- Gartner believes that Enterprise Architecture is about bringing
together three components: business owners, information specialists
and technology implementers. If an organization can bring these
three groups together and unite them behind a common vision that
drives business value, that translates into success. Enterprise
architecture, in Gartner's view, is about strategy, not engineering.
The two things that are most important to Gartner are where an
organization is going and how it will get there.

Source: AEA(5)

d. TOGAF (The Open Architecture Framework):

- Created by “The Open Group”, it develops AE processes in 8

systematic phases and delivers implementation manuals that make
the organization follow them.
- It is the standard methodology used by the world's leading
organizations (public and private) to effectively address critical
business needs or mission objectives. It also divides the AE into four
categories:
 Business Architecture
 Data Architecture
 Application Architecture
 Technological Architecture
 TOGAF success story: https://colombiadigital.net/actualidad/articulos-
informativos/item/8202-sena-mejores-servicios-al-ciudadano-gracias-a-una-
mejor-administracion-de-la-tecnologia.html
2. Information systems architecture:
https://argus-acia.com/white_papers/evaluating_ia.pdf

- Information architecture is really about what is not obvious. Users don't notice a
site's information architecture unless it's not working. When they notice the
characteristics of good architecture somewhere, they attribute them to something
else... However, no term adequately describes the relationships between the
intangible elements that constitute the architecture of the site. These elements –
navigation systems, labeling, organization, indexing, search, and metaphors – are
the glue that holds the entire site together and allows it to evolve naturally.(6)
- An information system is an organized set that integrates data, activities and
resources to record data and generate new information.
- Architecture is a level of design that focuses on aspects "beyond the algorithms and
data structures of computing; the design and specification of the overall structure
of the system is a new kind of problem.
 Source: information systems architecture (7)
A. Benefits of Information Architecture:
- Information Architecture provides certain benefits that the institution must
take into account, since in some cases they represent million-dollar losses
and profits.
- An interesting example is the Boo.com case. The sports store Boo tried to
launch a website, using cutting-edge technology, with three-dimensional
images and an electronic store, which was visually spectacular. No one could
compete with the impressive graphic design that required many hours of
work. But despite the huge amounts of money invested in its implementation
and the growing advertising campaigns that created expectations, the
website failed miserably.
- What was wrong if no expense had been spared? The reasons were very
simple. “Most of today's commercial websites are designed to impress the
surfer, show off the designer's skills or provide poor advertising for the
promoting companies. The usual results are slow image downloads,
disorganized information, flashy and colorful distractions, gimmicky designs,
illegible text, and random navigation without direction to what the user is
looking for.(8)

B.Components of information architecture:

- Information Architecture can be separated into four components:

I. Organization: There are different organizational schemes, which can be

divided into exact or subjective and ambiguous. Exact organization refers
to those that have a single interpretation, such as those organized
alphabetically (dictionaries, directories and ordered lists), chronologically
(magazines, newspapers, publications), geographically (agencies and
branches, geographically organized portals).
While the subjective organization is based on various criteria, such as
themes (horizontal portals, stores organized by categories), functional
(corporate intranets), specific audience and metaphorical.
 II. Navigation: The navigation system is one of the most important issues in
website accessibility and usability. Providing options to go from one place
to another, to return to the previous page or to go to other sections with
the least effort, can provide the user with a certain pleasant comfort. There
are horizontal, vertical, drop-down, and permanent navigation bars.

Navigation can be classified as global (access to main sections), local

(access to internal sections) and ad hoc (access to related sections). It is
recommended to present information that allows the user's exact location
to be known, such as options to move up or down when there are large
texts. In external navigation, navigation can be supported using tables of
contents, indexes, site maps, or guided tours.

III. Labeling: Labeling is a form of information representation that

describes the content of a Web page. Labeling systems can be used as
links, headers, or icons, and they also play a fundamental role in indexing
documents.

IV. Search Engine: On some websites, browsing content can be a

pleasant pastime, but when a website has more than 50,000 pages, it can
become a nightmare. Search systems allow you to quickly find
information, and some interfaces allow filtering options by section or by
type of document.

In the case of dynamic content, it is necessary to implement an internal

search engine, even more so when indexing robots and arachnids cannot
classify the information in the major search engines.

3. Information technology architecture;

 - "Information Technology Architecture is the discipline that deals with creating
websites on the World Wide Web and determining the technological
infrastructure, delimiting the set of knowledge, maxims, principles and techniques
that govern or should govern the practice of those who develop and manage their
content."i

4. Service-oriented architecture and software:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Br2vZ4uQY

4.1. What is SOA?(9)

- SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is a conceptual framework that establishes a

design structure for application integration, allowing organizations to unite
business objectives, in terms of integration flexibility with legacy systems and
direct alignment to business processes, with the IT infrastructure.
- This allows for reduced implementation costs, innovation in customer services,
agile adaptation to changes and early reaction to competitiveness, since they
easily combine new technologies with independent applications, allowing the
components of the process to be integrated and coordinated effectively and
quickly.

4.2. SOA(11) Features

 Services must be defined through standard protocols and languages so
that their use is platform independent.
 Services must be accessible and published in a service repository in
order to monitor their status.
 The defined services must meet the reuse requirement. The use of
standards to reuse existing services should be encouraged in order to
increase the possibilities of integration with legacy systems.
 Services encapsulate implementation details and expose their
functionality through a standards-based interface.
 A service must be independent and must not depend on the state of
another service and therefore its relationship with the rest of the
services is loosely coupled.

4.3. History of SOA:

-The term SOA was first used by Gartner in 1996. Focus on the interaction between
modules (consumer and provider) using request/response communication.
-In 2003, it managed to enter the market through web services:
 Standardization
 Flexibility
 Firewall friendly

4.4. Benefits of SOA:(10)

 SOA facilitates the integration of the different environments found in

many organizations. SOA facilitates collaboration, and information
 sharing, across the organization and with external partners. By exposing
business processes, SOA helps businesses focus on the best ways to
improve operations. SOA provides the ability to support a business
model that crosses organizational lines. SOA enhances collaboration,
facilitates end-to-end business processes and improves operational
effectiveness.

 SOA allows you to customize your business processes without modifying

your source code. With SOA, making the processes in your systems fit
your business is just a matter of configuration, not customization. This
means that when it's time to upgrade to the next version, you can do so
much more easily than if you have customizations spread throughout
your implementation.

 An additional benefit of SOA is that it provides the ability to modernize

business processes, which in turn promotes agile business process
management. SOA provides a way to make business processes more
visible so that they can be customized and optimized to better meet
increasing customer demands for reduced response times while
maintaining high quality and cost effectiveness. Possibly more
importantly, SOA keeps the complexity of application-to-application and
business-to-business integration at bay, significantly reducing costs and
elevating technology to a business level.

4.5. SOA Application Design:

A. SOA IMPLEMENTATION IN ESSALUD: 13

B. SOA APPLICATION DESIGN USING VISUAL STUDIO TEAM SYSTEM(14)

4.6. What are SaaS applications?(12)
-The concept of SaaS is often associated with the application service providers
(ASPs) of the 1990s, which offered “packaged” applications to corporate users
over the Internet. These early attempts to deploy software solutions over the
Internet had more in common with traditional corporate applications (those
installed and used within a company's internal network) than with today's SaaS
applications in many ways, such as licensing model and architecture. Because
these applications were originally built as single-server applications, their
ability to share data and processes with other applications was very limited, and
they tended to be unattractive compared to their locally installed counterparts.

4.7. History of SaaS Applications(15)

-It began in the 1960s with IBM and its model 67 IBM 360. Since it was incredibly
expensive to have a professional computer, the power and space could be
rented to an external party; this service was known as time sharing.
-By the 1970s in the United States, owning a personal computer increased in
popularity and it became economically viable to have computers in common
work offices, here SaaS took a break from the market.
-But in the 1980s, the first CRM (Customer relationship management) was created,
which allowed customer information to be stored in a common area available to
everyone in the company and thus have better sales.

-In the 1990s, software began to develop faster than hardware could support it, so
some companies had to return to the original method: having everything stored
together on someone's external computer. During this period, companies were
established that are currently successful and known for having sold software
with diskettes and user licenses, but the costs were accumulating when adding
maintenance and technical support.
-At the beginning of the millennium, several SaaS sales companies were established,
enough to create a boom that carried SaaS through to 2010 onwards. Once the
possibility of having a system independent of the place of use and without the
need to have 10 diskettes to use it was established, the way was given to the
cloud system.
-In 2014, IDC (International Data Corporation) estimated that the SaaS industry
would be worth $50.8 billion by 2018. In 2017, the SaaS market closed at
around $105 billion.
 -Today, there are 12,000 officially registered SaaS startups, but the actual number is
unknown. In the future, it is very possible that SaaS will be divided into
subcategories for better use, but today the market will only continue to grow.
Source: The History of Software as a Service (15)

4.8. Impact on software development:

- Currently, SaaS providers have not established best practices for developing
these types of applications, nor have they established industry standards.
Traditional methodologies are sufficient to develop very simple SaaS models,
but when it comes to specializing and scaling towards a more advanced
business, well-established techniques are still lacking.
- On the software engineering side, SaaS applications have differences in their
requirements engineering compared to packaged applications (for example,
from the customer's perspective, installation and maintenance are different).
- Pioneers of the SaaS model argue that an altered approach to software
engineering is required for such applications. An important question is how
the SaaS approach affects software vendors and their incentive to invest in
product development.
 - Transforming a packaged product to a SaaS model is not a simple matter of
rewriting code. These companies need to examine their engineering and
marketing models to adapt to this new business and development approach.
Source: LIFE CYCLES IN SaaS APPLICATIONS

4.9. SaaS Application Design:

Source: development of applications on Software as Service platforms (16)

a. Requirements:
 - In the traditional approach, requirements consist of defining a set of
functions that satisfy a customer's needs. In the case of SaaS applications,
developments are merely based on a business model. That is, a SaaS
application must meet the requirements of a target market. Because the
applications will be consumed by a large number of subscribers (client
companies) and each can potentially have a large number of users, then
more non-functional requirements are introduced to the process, such as:
support for high concurrency, scalable storage, virtualization/clustering
among others. The proposed activities are:

 Defining a business requirements plan. The characteristics of the

business plan (of the supplier) must be identified to be transformed
into functional requirements.
 Target market analysis. Catalog and specify the main needs of the
target market. Market needs must be assessed and high-value features
defined for potential customers. In this activity, the non-functional
requirements mentioned above are identified.
 Definition of functionalities. Specify the main features and functions of
each application that will be delivered as a service. These
functionalities must be fully aligned to the market and not to the
requirements of a single supplier.

b. Analysis:

- The analysis stage must also be carried out from a business

perspective. This is because each application will try to satisfy the
needs of a large number of customers. Defining the business processes
that each application will support is an important step in this type of
application, as it must allow for the customization and definition of
similar processes for each client.
- Business process analysis, In this activity the business processes that
will be automated with the application must be analyzed. For example,
if a CRM is developed, the sales processes and their integration with
other processes such as supply chains, for example, must be analyzed.
Each process with its activities, roles and execution rules should be
documented.
- Develop use cases. Formal task in existing methodologies, which
should be done to document and model the application functionalities.
Traditional artifacts are descriptive use cases and their diagrams.

c. Design:

- The design phase consists of developing documentation to support the

construction stage.

- Technology research. It is important at this stage to do research on

technologies that support the identified needs. A deliverable artifact can be
a research paper about SaaS platforms, existing vendors, frameworks, Web
2.0 components, etc.
 - Technology assessment. It is important to define which platform and
technologies will be used in the development process. Proof of concepts at
this stage are necessary to truly determine whether the platform and
technologies meet both business and technical requirements.
- Service architecture. In this case, architectural decisions are based on SaaS
premises and the platform that supports them. Because SaaS platforms are
designed to deliver a service infrastructure, application components should
be designed with this approach in mind.
- Business process engineering. Even though the application must provide a
predetermined definition of the business process it will execute, its value
increases when it is possible to redefine each process according to the
client.
- Traditional documentation. This activity involves various common tasks
such as UML diagrams. This is the formal documentation of the application
and depends on the application specifications.
- Design test cases. This task is obviously important for any serious
development. Unit testing, integration testing, performance testing, etc.,
should be included.
- Prototypes. The resources and agility of generating and deploying
applications on SaaS platforms can be exploited through the construction of
prototypes.

d. Implementation:

- In addition to the common tasks involved in implementation, within SaaS

development it is necessary to consider the platform that supports the
applications.
- Business services development. It involves coding the main interfaces of
the application, as well as their implementations.
Integration with platform services. Develop the code to consume the
services that the application needs to operate. These consumed services can
be security, logging, metrics, etc.
- Develop business logic. Implementation of business rules for the
application modules.
- Integration development. If necessary, develop code to integrate with
other systems.
- Technology implementation. Ensure that the entire implementation
works correctly. This activity covers code review, best practices, cyclomatic
complexity review, functional testing, among others.

e. Evidence:

- The main difference between traditional methodologies and the one

proposed for SaaS is that integration tests need to validate the correct
integration between applications and the platform.
- Another important difference is in terms of performance testing and usage
metrics.
- Unit testing. These tests are developed and executed by each developer.
 - Integration testing. Important tests regarding integration with the platform,
with other application modules and with other applications.
- Performance tests. Each application has its own performance requirements,
in this case, SaaS applications have a strong dependence on the number of
users and their specifications.
- Tenant measurement tests. The application should not implement code for
logging or usage measurement. These components are the responsibility of
the platform itself. The objective of these tests is to ensure that the use and
debugging of each application is correctly recorded and for each tenant
(client and/or provider).
- Technical Approval. It consists of running all the tests systematically and
ensuring that the application is correctly deployed to production. In the
case of updates and bugfixes, the platform must provide rollback
mechanisms when failures exist and it is possible to return to previous
versions.

5. REFERENCES:

Works Cited
1. Ricardo Haro Carrere, P. (2012). Obtenido de
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/la/documents/imc/la/pe/news/post_events/
software_solutions/presentaciones/
Desafios_Beneficios_de_la_Practica_Arquitectura_Empresarial_1.pdf
2. http://www.mintic.gov.co/gestionti/615/articles-5322_Revista_pdf.pdf
3. https://colombiadigital.net/actualidad/articulos-informativos/item/8123-
que-es-arquitectura-empresarial.html
4. https://colombiadigital.net/actualidad/soluciones-tic/item/9733-
metodologias-para-abordar-la-arquitectura-empresarial.html
5. Association of Business Architects of Spain. (2013). Obtained from
https://es.slideshare.net/Spain-AEA/1200-presentacion-mega-luca-de-risi-
evento-aea-14102013-28494529/4
6. Information Architecture in the WWW. Luis Rosenfeld and Peter Morvillle.
O'Really. 2000.
7. https://www.mindmeister.com/es/746065050/arquitectura-de-systems-
de-informaci-n?fullscreen=1#
8. Usability: the great unknown. Emerging. Article published in the journal
E.Comm (No. Sept. 2000)
9. https://blog.powerdata.es/el-valor-de-la-gestion-de-datos/bid/394442/
qu-es-la-arquitectura-orientada-a-servicios-soa
10. https://www.epicor.com/lac/solutions/soa.aspx
11. Diaz Rosales Marianela, Service Oriented Architecture (2008)
12. Microsoft's Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) applied to the real world
13. Implementation of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in an E-Health
project
14. https://slideplayer.es/slide/122894/
15. http://go.getcirrus.com/blog/la-historia-del-saas
16. https://sg.com.mx/content/view/674
6. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL:
1. http://scielo.sld.cu/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2227-
18992015000300001
2. http://www.nosolousibilidad.com/articulos/
historia_arquitectura_informacion.htm?utm_source=fee
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGy2uZFpdBM
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS_LCKYnR5k
i
FRANCISCO TOSETE HERRAZ, “concept of information technology architecture”