By now you have worked on the business, data, and application architectures. Next comes the technology architecture that describes the computing infrastructure—the computer hardware, software, and networking platforms—that would support the applications, that, in turn, enable the business activities. Undoubtedly, the technology architecture would be influenced by the latest IT trends, but the goal is not to focus solely on the technology, but to select technical solutions that can support secure and robust applications in a timely and cost-effective manner. In today's internetworked world, the enterprise network is at the heart of the technical infrastructure. Other elements of the technology architecture include hardware (mainframe, servers, storage systems, desktop PCs) and associated system software such as operating systems and databases. The technology architecture serves as the blueprint for the infrastructure and it puts forth the standards and specifications for its components.
At the highest level, you can document the technology architecture with diagrams and narrative descriptions. The diagrams invariably look like network diagrams. For example, here is a typical example:
This sample diagram shows a generic mainframe reservation system and some internal servers on a LAN that connects to the Internet and a WAN through a firewall. Users access the reservation system over the Internet. The internal systems access other partners' systems over a wide area network (WAN). When you draw the technology architecture diagrams for your organization, you should annotate the diagram with specific geographical locations of various systems as well as indicate the hardware and software details of different platforms.
Tags: enterprise architecture EA technology network LAN WAN IT
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