The New Management Architecture (Continued)

Use Cross-Tier Topology Maps
Enterprise architecture has traditionally focused on software, process, and systems architecture, leaving management architecture to the operations groups. Today's management architecture must be designed into the enterprise architecture from the start and provide operational staffs with the capabilities they need to manage these new applications.

Such an application-centric configuration management approach results in a cross-tier view of how the infrastructure delivers business applications and services. It should provide operational personnel with cross-tier topology maps that speed troubleshooting, allow proactive change planning that minimizes change-related problems, and provide a framework on which to measure and deliver true application service levels to customers.

This topological approach is familiar in the context of managing telecom services. Network operations center (NOC) personnel managing mission-critical telecom services don't manage the network by technology type or by looking at nodes individually. They use a network topology map as the basis for monitoring, deployment planning, troubleshooting, or any such operations function.

Likewise, applications using component-based architectures form complex and large logical topologies, change frequently, and are much more heterogeneous and less standardized than telecom and IP physical networks. It is truly amazing that IT personnel keep business services and applications running on such complex logical topologies by managing individual technologies and components. This is undeniably nonscalable, inefficient, and error-prone.

An automated configuration management capability should discover all application components used in the enterprise, including Web servers, application servers, databases, process engines, and legacy applications; the hosts they run on, including Unix, Linux, and Windows platforms; and the entire supporting network infrastructure. In addition, the software must capture all the significant configuration attributes of these components; all their cross-tier, runtime dependencies; and a complete change history of these values.

An easy-to-use and sharable view, such as an application topology map (see Figure 3), should display this information. The maps become critical to time- and cost-effective change planning and troubleshooting. The topology maps provide the application context to understand, prioritize, and solve problems rapidly, as well as help you avoid the majority of them in the first place. In addition, other management applications such as IT governance and service-level management can reuse this information.

Because this approach necessitates a fundamental shift in orientation—from bottom-up, component-level management to a top-down, application-centric approach—it requires people, process, and products. This approach must be integrated with the software, process, and system architectures the enterprise uses; it cannot be left as an afterthought by multiple groups multiple times. Therefore, enterprise architects must take a leadership role in driving business excellence by planning and implementing an effective application management architecture integrated with their software, process, and systems.

Once management architecture takes its place in the forefront of enterprise architecture, IT groups—with enterprise architects leading the way—will provide the reliable delivery of business applications critical to business success.

About the Author
Vinu Sundaresan is cofounder and chief technology officer of Collation, a provider of application configuration management software, where he leads the company's technical staff and product strategy. Vinu is a member of the Enterprise Architect Advisory Board. Vinu has a long history of both operations and software development experience in enterprise and telecommunications systems. He welcomes your comments and questions; reach him at vinu@collation.com.