Blog: William McKnight

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Information Architectural Standards

Many systems have struggled to add maximum value to their organizations as an indirect result of lacking classical OSS architectural standards, such as:
• Reasonably-scaled and separate test, development, and QA platforms
• Change management
• Business Continuance and disaster recovery planning.
• Robust backup management
• Physical isolation or thoughtful co-location based on shared characteristics
• User care measures such as support, training and built-in descriptive information
• Proactive performance planning
• Business roles and responsibilities
• Ongoing business tuning of program direction

They therefore may not seem stable enough for business user dependence and continued development.

However, there are several aspects of technology that enable the progression of these standards:

• The continued reduction in hardware costs, especially in disk technology, make it economically possible to have separate development, QA, and recovery systems.
• Improvement in database technology so that we now have the ability to insert massive amounts of data while the system is being accessed, enabling occasional (near) real-time data feeds
• Sophisticated ETL tools and “hub and spoke” systems and standards facilitate the establishment and operation of systems that move data from source systems to targets, and vice versa.

The main inhibitor, however, will probably continue to be the perception of such systems as strictly technical in nature, when in reality the fit into the business situation is just as important as the technical aspects.

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