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Technical
architecture
is designed and managed at three levels:
- Applications:
The programs that help run the business. To the extent IT creates value
for a company, it's by providing applications.
- Information:
Information falls into two broad categories - structured, such as what's
stored in a relational database, and unstructured - primarily documents
but also digitized images and other multimedia files.
- Platforms:
Computing hardware, operating systems, database management systems, networks,
and the rest of the physical and software infrastructure on which computing
takes place.
Technical architecture
used to be defined by the major industry vendors for their customers. As open
systems replaced IBM's SNA, though, responsibility for defining and managing
technical architecture has shifted to IT ... and many IT organizations haven't
yet incorporated the disciplines needed to handle this responsibility effectively.
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