Evolutionary Systems Architectures in The Enterprise
Mark Cioni, M. Joe Zhou,
Massimo Rolle
SchlumbergerSema
6399 South Fiddler’s Green Circle,
Suite 600, Englewood CO 80111
Abstract
Twenty-first century organizations face myriad factors influencing their business and technical
environments. Mergers, divestitures, new opportunities and globalization, as well as emerging
technologies and solutions, contribute to unprecedented levels of change. Organizations must be
ready to quickly capitalize on change. The key to adaptability is an evolutionary systems
architecture that can enable the organization to rapidly respond to business and technical
influences in a manner that parallels strategic goals.
This presentation focuses on several important evolutionary systems architecture areas. Initially,
we explore the most important holistic factors to balance when making architectural decisions.
Next, we examine in detail several evolutionary models and their implementation. Finally, we
delve into the future state of an evolutionary architecture within the implementing organization.
Introduction
Electrical utilities today are experiencing a very interesting time of change. Deregulation of the
industry in the United States, although varying from state to state, has forced utilities to become
much more competitive and adaptable to change. Some of the more aggressive organizations are
taking advantage of deregulation and are thriving through innovative business process
reengineering and enabling technologies. Others are treading water with caution and skepticism.
Regardless of the stage of deregulation for a given utility, a great many are looking to their IT
infrastructure as one of their main competitive tools in this new landscape. However, not all
utilities are approaching their IT initiatives with a holistic mindset and implementing them with
consistent and systematic methods. Some initiatives are driven by business and technical values
and constraints, some are required under their deregulation environment, and still others may be
implemented to leverage cutting-edge technology. Consequently, utilities have seen their
business process models, IT infrastructure, systems and applications become increasingly more
heterogeneous. This, in turn, has tended to make the integration of systems and applications in
such an environment much more complex, expensive and difficult to maintain. Standards such
as XML, Common Information Model (CIM) and the work done by the IEC TC57 Working
Group 14 have made progress toward enabling a more systematic integration approach based on
a common information exchange model.
An enterprise integration framework must also embrace a hybrid approach relative to
technology, where solution components such as application servers Message Oriented
Middleware (MOM), integration brokers and other building blocks are utilized to support a
multitude of integration scenarios. In this model, the organization’s business processes,
integration scenarios, message definitions and integration components are not only reusable but
also extensible, with the goal of enabling a more agile and responsive enterprise that can
capitalize on business opportunities while optimizing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and time
to market. Such a framework requires a rigorous architectural and engineering effort, a strongly
focused integration team, and as always, support from executive management and key
stakeholders throughout the organization.
Deregulation Requires Integration
The recent problems that have surfaced from the California deregulation environment have
dampened the pace and extent of deregulation across the United States. However, the
fundamental business strategies of preparing and positioning for deregulation, however and
whenever it arrives, have remained and even grown in importance. Strategies such as mergers
and acquisitions, disaggregation of vertically integrated utilities, preparing for customer choice,
outsourcing and e-Business all require some level of IT investment to realize their business
benefits. In most cases, these strategies require a large degree of systems integration or even
disintegration. Deregulation represents a major change to operations and leads to changes in the
existing IT infrastructure. Therefore, it is likely that utilities preparing for deregulation will face
more integration requirements and challenges. How can utilities better position themselves using
their IT infrastructures to face the challenges of systems integration needs driven by
deregulation?
