Jeff Bills

Archive for October, 2009

Fig. 1 Why SaaS - Saugatuck Technology

This conclusion would be quite incorrect.  There are many mission critical functions the Enterprise Architect would still support with regard to helping the business accurately evaluate and successfully deploy a SaaS solution.  A short list includes:

• Business Architecture – you still want to capture the business drivers, shareholders views, business process maps, value chains, etc.  Gaps in the existing enterprise solutions need to be mapped to the SaaS solution and analyzed for completeness.
• Information Architecture – how does the SaaS impact data flow? Reporting and Analysis?   Data as an asset?
• Integration Architecture – how will this new “cloud based” system interoperate with on-site systems?  Partners? Customers?  What is the impact on your integration principles and strategy / road map?
• Operational Management – everything from security and risk to quality of service, communications architecture and SLAs.

Tip: You will want your EA practice to be an integral part of your procurement process (see this earlier post) as well as monitoring the solution as it changes.  The SaaS vendors / solutions are not standing still. Their architecture and capabilities change constantly.

In some cases the SaaS solution providers have Enterprise Architects on their staff to assist with providing the details your staff needs.  One company doing this today is Workday. Not only does this help, it can be a point of differentiation.

I look forward to comments and feedback.  Post here or e-mail me at jeff@jpbills.com