Enterprise Architecture, IT Strategy & Others

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  • Open Source License Trap

    In this web application development epoch, it is almost impossible to effectively develop a web application without using open source library, software or tool. Open source concept is a great thing that accelerates not only the commercial web application/system development but provides opportunity to the developers to think about the hard problem rather than to spend time on a problem which was already solved by someone. It enforces and implements reusability by design. Since the source of the solution are open, the quality of the open sources improves rapidly since multiple developers across the world wide looking into the same source. I do not think I need to sell to any one the advantages of using the open source tools/software in the commercial application development.

    The gotchas in the open source is that there are two set of open source licensing models/types. One is enterprise/corporation friendly licensing type and other is unfriendly enterprise licensing type. Unless you are developing a system which is also going to be open source, unfriendly enterprise licensing type is unsuitable for a commercial enterprise application development. The enterprise architects or whom ever does the governance to the enterprise on the open source should be aware of the friendly and unfriendly open source licensing type.

    The other gotchas in the open source software is, an open source software/tools may be under the friendly open source licensing type and over the time it could change to the unfriendly open source licensing type.
    Unless the governance team monitors the approved open source software licenses over the time, there could be litigation issues.

    Way to avoid the traps of open source in a corporate environment:

    • Ensure the corporate uses open source software,tools which uses friendly open source licensing type.
    • Ensure there is an open source licensing monitoring program to ensure the open source being used are continue to stay in the friendly open source licensing mode

  • Inter company cricket match (#3)

    Due to the recent sale of a portion of the company, the company cricket members were split between new company and old company. Instead of playing in the external cricket league, we decided to play between the new company and old company. There are two teams from the new company and one team from the old company. I play for the old company. We played one against each team in the new company before, and lost one and won one. I did not play the game which we lost. We won the game against new company team B conveniently. This is the third match we were playing in the league we created this year.

    Our captain mobilized the best team he could from the roaster for this game. All of our team members have lots of talent. (Great players not necessarily form a great team!!) Statistically we were stronger than our new company team A.

    Toss won by new company team A and decided to field first. It was 15 over match and the target was planned to be 90 runs. It would be a good target for a 15 over match. We had okay start but the wicket was falling in the regular internals. There were some good long on catches taken by our friendly opponents.

    I went as the 4th order batsman. The bowler who was regularly bowling wides and short pitch started bowling good length balls. I was beaten by the first ball. (Missed the timing.. and ball was coming slow and judged the ball would come fast). Defended the next 3 balls with clean defense shots. The last ball of the over was a full toss and driven towards the long on to get a single.

    Faced a new bowler next over and asked my non striker to find out if he knew about this bowler. He said, he did not know about this bowler. I was facing his first ball. It was short pitch ball. I got out in my first league match hitting the short pitch ball in the air with out enough power. So I instantly decide to hit this short pitch ball in the ground with enough power. It went to deep fine leg and there was no fielder at that location. The fielder from square leg was running to get the ball. Even though I know this fielder has a good arm, I accepted the non striker call to go for the second run. I got run out again in this match. Second run out in the serious match in this 2008 season.

    We went to field with a very low score to defend. We had some luck to start with and got two quick run outs. Then the score board ticked and the opponent reached 50% of the target. We never gave up and fought really hard. I had a opportunity to make a spectacular catch. It was a left hand batsman. He was trying to cut the ball and had a thick edge going towards the second slip. I dived and got the ball but did not hold the ball tight enough and it slipped. I immediately decided I should not use that wicket keeping gloves anymore. I have been using it for a while and never got the difficult catches using that gloves. It is made of leather which is little tough to fold the figures quickly. It is not an excuse and I should have got that catch.

    We came back real hard. The target was around 15 runs in 6 overs with 5 wickets in hand. Looked an easy target to achieve. But it was not the case. It was 6 runs in 2 overs with 1 wicket in hand. It became 3 runs in one over with 1 wicket. This the best it could become from the position we were few overs ago. We had a equal chance to win this game. I really believed that we had an equal chance to win this game.

    Captain decided to give the last over to a senior player who he thought would handle this situation. This is real test for any captain to judge their judgment. Surprise !! Surprise the senior most player started the last over with a wide. At this stage the opponents require 2 runs and we need 1 wicket. Still we were in the game.. Big surprise, Big surprise.. he started with two more wides and the opponents won the game by 1 wickets with 6 balls to spare.

    It was a very big disappointment at the end after we came so close. The great team wins more matches because they do not just have enough talents. They win more matches because they have killer instinct, never give up , never satisfy with their performance (always want to improve) and use their emotional intelligence effectively. It was really fun and great opportunity to play this game, enhanced the relationship with our new company members & finally I learn t quite a few lessons.

  • Future IT landscape

    With the struggling global economy and soaring oil price, the corporations are challenged to improve the revenue and left with optimizing the current cost structure to sustain this financial environment. The corporations (in Financial services, Gas & Oil, Insurance & etc sectors) are looking for cost optimization, process efficiency, waste elimination and etc to minimize the current expenditure. Based on the industry, information technology (IT) budget plays a major role in the general & administration budget of the company. The IT executives have challenging job to minimize the IT G&A budget.

    Enterprise Architects will play a pivotal role in assisting the CIO office to minimize the IT G&A budget. Assessing the current application portfolio and managing it efficiently to meet the IT G&A cost reduction targets are logical steps an enterprise architects would take. However, this logical steps are baby steps towards the G&A target. There are few transformational steps available, which will lead to achieve G&A targets immediately and going to make stepping stone towards the formation of business technology functional area and elimination of information technology (IT) in the corporate environment.

    SaaS (software as a service) model is gaining momentum and it is being considered by lots of the corporation for the cost saving reasons. It is a transformational cost saving model proposed by the enterprise architect and IT strategist to the CIO . By implementing this model for enterprise systems like HRIS (PeopleSoft as a service) and etc will fetch immediate cost savings. By expanding the SaaS model within an organization will minimize the hard core IT function. The focus will turn more into the business enablement, business innovation enablement and contract/vendor/SLA management. The hard core IT function like managing a web environment, disk array configuration, infrastructure, network circuits management, SAP installation etc will ONLY be performed by the service providers. These functions will be done only by the core IT organization (like hosting provider, SAP provider, PeopleSoft provider etc).

    In next 4-5 years, the majority of the organization will have a functional area called business technology (BT) and it will focus only in the following area.

    • SLA/Contract Management
    • Vendor Management
    • Business innovation
    • Business enablement

    The IT and Business will merge and become one organization called business technology and there will not be a separate organization called Information Technology organization.