I recently read an article entitled “When Cheap and Simple is Just Fine” and had a discussion on whether the actual technology products used to satisfy a technology service in our Enterprise Architecture really mattered? It made me wonder if the two are actually complementary. Do actual technology products really matter or is a good enough technology service just fine?
There was a time when you analysed the market place, looked at reference papers, such as Gartner Magic Quadrants, brought in the technology suppliers, did an evaluation against your requirements, maybe did some pilots and then selected a technology product.
However in today's technology market many technology products are basically the same at their core. They have some “bells and whistles” around the edges to distinguish them from their rivals but are at their core the same.
So do we need to worry about technology products? Are the way these technology products interact with other technology products of greater importance?
In our Enterprise Architecture the Enterprise Business Architecture has business objectives linking to business services which contains business processes. These link to our application service domains and application services contained in our Enterprise Application Architecture. These in turn to our technology services and ultimately to technology products and how to interface with them in our Enterprise Technical Architecture. As long as the technology product satisfies the requirements of the technology service and the business services and business objectives they enable and you can interface with it in the prescribed way does it matter if it is widget x, y or z?
When you use electricity at home you interface with the standard plug of your country. The technology product that supplies the electricity could be a nuclear power station, coal fired power station or 1,000 guinea pigs running around in wheels. The product is of no importance as long as it meets your requirements of providing electricity 24x7x365 and you can interface with it via your standard plug.
So do technology products really matter today? Is how it interfaces most important? Is good enough just fine? Do technology products actually matter?
Absolutely agree with the sentiments of this article. It is nigh on time we moved away from the fancy-gadget mentality of the 90's and into the age of Business focussed innovation. Technology is simply an enabler, and sometimes it is what we do with the technology that makes it exciting, not the technology itself.
ReplyDeleteA PC or a Mac? An iPhone or an HTC? A Skoda or a BMW?
ReplyDeleteAll technologies competing in the same space.
It's not a question of is good enough just fine? The real question is what is good enough and how do we define it.
The real issue it that the business are often beholden to IT, Lack of technical knowledge empowers IT to tell the business what matters - and this is a conflict of interests. In the past, the IT 'wizards' have baffled the business with tehchnologies such as LAN (Ethernet vs, Token Ring), Modems (real pointy-hat stuff) and SAN. Technologies that eventually become irrelevent. Today its digital security, without which the business could fully embrace SaaS to create their own workflow-based systems at a departmental level.
ReplyDelete