The Different Enterprise Architectures That Are Crucial For A Successful Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation has unlocked unique opportunities for organizations to disrupt and innovate with new products and services. With the recent pandemic and remote work situation, more companies have leveraged novel emerging technologies such as mobile computing, big data analytics, cloud computing, and the internet of things. Even countries and organizations are starting to develop specific capabilities to be able to deliver such transformational digital services to cope up with the current circumstances. The variety of opportunities presented by Digital Transformations occurs at the expense of continuous development across various levels of the enterprise including organizational structures, operational processes, business strategies, and even corporate culture. In addition, the current crises have forced organizations to react quicker than ever before, pressuring organizations to operate faster learning cycles that transpose into more precise time-to-market strategies. The implementation of enterprise architectures has helped companies revolutionize how IT and business units collaborate, it has continuously innovated and addressed solutions that improve customer journeys as well as their experiences.

How Enterprise Architectures Are the Cornerstone For Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is the modern imperative nature of the business revolution having IT both as a technology enabler and as a necessary driver for digitization. Digital services and associated products are software-intensive and therefore malleable and usually service-oriented. Digital solutions can improve their capacities via accessing cloud services, big data, etc, and can seamlessly enhance their current behavior. There are several enterprises that leverage such services for digitization enabling innovative paths to trigger and interact with business processes. The internet connection of the digitized product allows collecting enduring data on the usage of the product by the customer. Second, the data provided by a large number of digitized outputs can contribute unique insights, which are not possible with data from a single device. Contemporary research shows that digital products and services are offering disruptive opportunities for new business solutions, having new smart connected functionalities.

The Different Enterprise Architectures For a Successful Digital Transformation

Digitalization supports massively distributed systems, which are based on the evolution of IT systems with multiple rather small and distributed enterprise architectures, like the Internet of Things, data and information systems, cyber-physical security, etc. Additionally, we should encourage digitization by a dense and diverse quantity of distinctive service types, like microservices, IoT services, etc., and put them in a close relationship with the IT support teams of enterprises. The transition from a closed-world modeling view to a scalable open-world structure and evolution of enterprise architectures defines the moving context for adaptable systems, thus beginning the digital transformation. The implication of architecting enterprise systems and services considering an open-world approach fundamentally changes modeling contexts, which are imperative and well defined by service providers. Some of the architectures are as mentioned below:

Internet of Things Architecture 

The Internet of Things (IoT) interconnects an enormous collection of physical devices using wireless data communication and interaction, with the Internet as a global communication hub. With this methodology, real-world objects are mapped into the virtual world. This makes the interaction with devices and collaboration support systems seem more seamless to handle. Furthermore, the Internet of Things is an important foundation of Industry 4.0 and adaptable digital enterprise architectures. The Internet of Things (IoT) supports smart manufacturing as well as when implemented with applications will enable enterprises to create customer-oriented services in a flexible manner. This transforms enterprises so that services, as well as humans or software, can interact to perform tasks as parts of the sophisticated business or technical processes. 

Microservices Architecture 

The Microservices approach is spreading quickly. Multiple sets of services are used to create a single application, with each of them running in its own process. Microservices communicate using lightweight mechanisms. Usually, Microservices are connected with NoSQL databases from on-premise and optional Cloud environments, such as the three cloud service models. The Microservices focuses on business capabilities and is individually deployable, by utilizing an automated deployment pipeline. This makes the centralized administration of elements and services more manageable and risks are reduced to a minimum for enterprises. As opposed to large monolithic applications, an individual Microservice architecture represents a unit of functionality that is as small and coherent as possible. Cloud technology, Kubernetes, and Microservices Architectures (MSA) are regarded as the most important enablers for enterprise digital transformation.

Architecture for Data Analytics Design and Implementation 

The actual implementation of advanced analytics solutions takes place to provide enhanced descriptive and predictive reports for business units. According to the individual requirements for each department, predictive techniques are implemented such as data mining algorithms or statistical models with the support of programming languages. Separated access to high-quality refined datasets from the descriptive data analytics repository (data warehouse) is utilized for the implementations. This particular project will require further analysis and design from a Data Architecture perspective with defined business requirements and expectations for delivering enhanced digital outcomes to enterprises.

Information Security Architecture

In line with the business and architecture principles and overall D&A strategy, the information security project includes all the activities related to implementing the required mechanisms to provide security at all levels of the architecture. Considering that Information Security Architecture requires a strong foundation on the utilization of data, the enterprises must ensure data of users or customers are always secure and do not fall into the wrong hands. Ultimately, these architectures help review and ensure that all implemented solutions are acquiescent with corporate and external regulations. This makes enterprises that handle huge data and applications more secure when dealing with clients from all parts of the world.

Conclusion

Digital transformations and the various architectures that are involved with them are complex to implement and must be done precisely. There are various moving components, integrated solutions, and technologies, that are to be digitally implemented so that companies can ensure seamless transformation. CEOs and entrepreneurs should acknowledge the advantages of pulling enterprise architects closer to the center. They have to make decisions to leverage the various enterprise architectures that will help reveal the value of digital transformation. Such a proposal is crucial not just for limiting risk and enabling business efficiency during pandemics' but it also has great future potential in building close and lasting partnerships between the business and IT.