The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise

Transcription

1 The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 1

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS State of the Mobile Enterprise for Typical Problems Today 4 An Enterprise Architect s Dilemma 6 Doing it the Right Way 8 IT Focus and Activities 10 LOB Focus and Activities 11 7 Key Attributes of a Complete Platform 13 Future-Proofing Agile Enterprise Technology 16 The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 2

3 STATE OF THE MOBILE ENTERPRISE FOR 2014 By the end of 2014, a few enterprises had dabbled in mobility, built and deployed a couple of apps, and began scaling up. Enterprise mobility technology is maturing and the time has come to deploy, scale, and reap the benefits of mobility. As with all prior technologies, whenever the time comes to incorporate new technologies into the corporate fabric, the onus and responsibility falls on the enterprise architect. They are the ones tasked to lay down the policies, architectural framework, governance and the overall architecture for adopting the new technology. They have to consider the benefits of all the stakeholders, business units, and IT to ensure it is sustainable, manageable, and scalable. It is no different with mobility. Enterprise architects must take the reins and lead towards building an agile, mobile enterprise. The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 3

4 The ultimate goal of adopting a new technology boils down to business benefits like revenue, growth, optimizing business operations or reducing operational expenses. Rarely does a single technology impact all, or even most, business goals. Mobility, however, is one such technology. It not only improves business metrics, but it also has the capability to completely redefine the business model and make, break or create new industries. It becomes all the more crucial for someone to take charge, and lead the way. Enterprise architects must take the reins and lead towards building an agile, mobile enterprise. TYPICAL PROBLEMS TODAY In the quest for mobility, there is always a tug of war between Lines of Businesses (LOB) and I.T. The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 4

5 Line of Business The LOB folks desire agility. To be able to build mobile apps fast, deploy them faster, and gain a competitive edge. They want to solve real business problems. Some LOB units are earning a larger share of the budget and, as a result, shadow IT or LOB IT is starting to crop in order to keep up with business demands. The LOB is typically focused on customer facing, or stand alone apps for a line of business. However, they can only take it so far; and they require assistance when it comes to backend integrations or scaling up. Especially when they re building apps across different lines of business. IT Departments I.T. on the other hand, is concerned about stability, performance, and scalability. This includes: Integrations with Various Systems Applying the Right Business Rules Extracting and Posting the Right Data Frequency of Data Requests System and App Performance Security Form Factors and Devices Supported Management The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 5

6 Governance System and Operational Scalability I.T. is concerned with ensuring existing systems are not negatively impacted by the new mobile apps LOB s are launching. They have to make sure the new apps fit into existing policies and procedures while not compromising security whatsoever, not just for the apps themselves, but also for existing systems and applications. THE ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT S DILEMMA As a result from these different priorities from business units and IT, enterprise architects often face the dilemma of satisfying all parties. They have to set the tone for innovation and scalability without sacrificing security and stability. When trying to enable mobile, Enterprise Architects are faced with these typical questions: How can I provide LOB stakeholders with the apps they need, at the pace they require, to satisfy their business requirements? How can I enable LOB to innovate their business processes in order to gain a competitive edge? The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 6

7 How do I maintain stability and sanctity of our enterprise backend applications to keep them running while enabling mobility? How do I facilitate LOB and IT to work together without conflicts for the greater good of the organization? What is the best way to mobile-enable my enterprise to be nimble and agile? How do I leverage the knowledge across the organization, like IT knowledge of business systems and infrastructure, and combine it with the business knowledge to bring it all together in an innovative way? How do I unchain the LOB to innovate while keeping them in a framework I can track, monitor and engage in as needed? What are the mobile specific integration challenges I need to be aware of? How can I show proof points before scaling, and still be able to scale very fast? How can I do all this without exceeding budget? Everyone in the organization looks to the enterprise architect to be a guide in adopting mobility. The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 7

8 As you can see, an Enterprise Architect s role, when weaving a new technology into the corporate fabric, is very crucial. Not only in setting the right strategy, but also laying down the rules and framework for execution. They must articulate, negotiate, and bring all stakeholders to the table to agree on a common execution strategy. This is nothing new for experienced enterprise architects. But mobility by itself brings new challenges they are expected to solve. Everyone in the organization looks to the enterprise architect to be a guide in adopting mobility. DOING IT THE RIGHT WAY To solve the mobility dilemma, you need an approach that leverages the strengths of each team for the purpose of a common goal. For instance: LOB units are typically strong in: Understanding business processes. - They are usually able to innovate and reinvent them, leveraging all the capabilities of mobile devices. User Experience for their own business users. - It s not about how flashy it looks, but how functional and productive the app is for business users. The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 8

9 Enabling and encouraging user adoption. - They are the best people to know what they need. They will adopt the app if they have a say in building it to solve real business problems. Managing the changes and life expectancy of the app. - Sometimes an app may have a very short life. Conversely, it may be very long depending on the changing business needs. The LOB are the best people to estimate and manage it. IT is typically strong in: Managing backend applications for stability, security and scalability. Enabling specific data from the backend applications for mobile consumption. Managing the integrations, complex business rules, and authorizations for mobile apps. Mashing up data and business rules across business applications. Maintaining the sanctity of enterprise data and all enterprise applications. If you examine the strengths of each unit, it is pretty obvious that they are mutually exclusive in their strengths, even though there may be minor overlaps. Companies need an approach that can leverage the strength from each organization within the enterprise. The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 9

10 A High Level Strategy This is a strategy that can be implemented by Enterprise Architects to leverage the strengths of each organization while tackling all the needs and requirements discussed above. IT FOCUS AND ACTIVITIES Expose the right business objects and data, for mobile enablement. Do so in a way that can be easily interpreted and understood by business stakeholders. Manage backend applications, integrations, and frequency rates at which backend source applications can be pinged for data. Manage security, authorizations, and scalability for backend applications. Consider wireless coverage, network latency, devices, form factors, wireless plans, and online & offline requirements for mobile app integrations. Monitor and track all data, app usage and user behavior to learn how to improve apps consistently and quickly. This is very much along the lines of deploying an ESOA (Enterprise Services Oriented Architecture) for an organization. It s enabling and exposing certain pieces of application and data for mobile consumption, while at the same time, retaining control over everything that matters. The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 10

11 The difference between implementing ESOA and Enterprise mobility is that, in the ESOA days, technical personnel completed the consumption of services. In the mobile world, the consumption could be done by LOB personnel, who may not be familiar with system API s and other technical parameters. Mobile integrations also come with different needs and complexities than traditional application integrations. This needs to be evaluated and solved. Exposed objects need to be simplified for consumption, in business terms for LOB (e.g. Business Object Model) but also for the fact that Mobile consumption of data is different than traditional consumption of data via services. In the ESOA world, consumption was less frequent. Yet, each consumption received larger amounts of data. In a mobile world, the amount of data required in each consumption is smaller, but a higher frequency of consumptions per a given time period. This means I.T. should be controlling throttling, among other things, so that a sudden spike of mobile requests does not impact the backend applications. LOB FOCUS AND ACTIVITIES Assuming IT can enable the right business objects and data for mobile consumption, and care for all backend activities, the LOB can focus on leveraging these business objects and mobilizing them as appropriate. The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 11

12 The LOB can: Innovate and build mobile apps based on the exposed business objects. Modify and change it at the pace of business. Deploy and manage the apps for its business users. Reinvent business processes and build composite mobile apps, leveraging the capabilities of mobile devices. Focus on user experience and business functionality of the app. Take responsibility of user adoption and measuring productivity gains. The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 12

13 7 KEY ATTRIBUTES OF A COMPLETE PLATFORM To expose and manage the right business objects, and enable LOB units, IT needs to identify and evaluate a complete end-to-end platform for it's current, and anticipated future mobile needs, along with the flexibility required to empower LOB units to innovate. And enterprise architects should look for the following capabilities in an end-to-end platform: App UI Design App design can be subjective and take time based on the requirements. The platform needs to provide visual drag-n-drop tools that quickly build an app UI that can work seamlessly across multiple devices. Backend Integration Mobile app integration can consume up to 70% of the time and effort required to build an app. The chosen platform should provide robust, mobile-specific and native integrations out-of-the-box; for systems and applications in your environment. At a bare minimum, it needs to address mobile-specific integration challenges, like network latency; wireless coverage and plans; end-to-end security; device considerations; and provide database, services (SOAP/REST) and native application integrations, very easily. App Analytics Being able to analyze the app usage across the user base is an important requirement. Not only to measure the adoption and ROI of the app, but also to learn from user behavior in order to continue improving the apps. The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 13

14 App Management Deploying and managing hundreds of apps across various devices is a significant effort in terms of maintenance. The platform needs to provide app and user management capabilities in order to scale your mobile app deployment. Leverage Device Sensors Mobile devices are becoming more powerful everyday. The platform should be able to leverage all the sensors of a modern mobile device (e.g. GPS, Camera, Phone, etc) to provide a truly optimized mobile experience. Offline capabilities Today, connectivity is ubiquitous. However, for enterprise apps, even a moment of lost connectivity could have a major impact on productivity. The platform should provide offline app capability with guaranteed delivery, conflict resolution, and such, if you are to build a robust offline mobile app Governance and Control IT needs complete governance and control in the platform to enable LOB experts to unleash their creativity and to build apps. IT needs the ability to monitor, manage, and control all of the apps created, in order to prevent any unintended consequences in the process. Making This Possible Today This strategy sounds rosy and great but the most common question is, given the state of enterprise mobile technologies, is this even possible today? The answer to that question is a resounding, yes! The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 14

15 Given the maturity of enterprise mobility, and the number of vendors in the marketplace, this can be done in a couple ways: 1. Using a combination of tools from different vendors. A BaaS platform for IT focus areas, and a simple, cross-platform app development tool for the LOB focus areas. However, the primary challenge is I.T. maintaining the compatibility of these tools and also managing two tools to build and deploy apps. Most BaaS are designed and built for core developers who can understand and speak APIs. It s very tough for non-professional programmers to understand that terminology. 2. Using a complete end-to-end platform for both the IT and LOB stakeholders. This platform must take into account all the necessities and needs of all the various groups in the industry. There are a small handful of platforms this complete and mature. Having a platform that replaces multiple other tools, while improving productivity, price, and efficiency is a win across the board. The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 15

16 Most enterprise architects will choose the end-to-end platform as it both saves time and effort in creating a solution for both IT and LOB. Using a combination of tools requires a majority of time invested on the tools, rather than on the solutions they provide. Having a platform that replaces multiple other tools, while improving productivity, price, and efficiency is a win across the board. Careful evaluation is required to determine which platform will work out best for your needs. Such a complete platform definitely makes it much easier to deploy and manage policies and governance across an organization. FUTURE-PROOFING AGILE ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY Regardless of what kind of technology is being implemented by the enterprise architect today, their success depends on the ROI of their strategies. As technology is changing quickly, and new improved processes and tools are being innovated every day, enterprise architects are tasked with solving for both the immediate need, and tomorrow's innovations. This is especially true in implementing mobility into the enterprise. The speed at which new devices are being innovated challenges the IT Architect to deploy technology solutions that The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 16

17 can solve the issues business users are facing right now, while not locking them out of adopting new device capabilities in the near future. Don t just solve today s problems. Instead, solve todays problems with a sound strategy to prepare for tomorrow s innovations. iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii SHARE THIS: iiiiiiii iiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiii The Enterprise Architect's Guide to Designing an Agile Mobile Enterprise 17