A Revised FBA Enterprise Architecture (Flower Bouquet architecture)

Revised FBA (Flower Bouquet Architecture) based on TOGAF 10 and Generative AI

Caution: This is copyrighted and pending a patent application with Govt. of India. The use and application require permission from the copyright holder waghprak66@hotmailcom, co. This is independent research and not connected to the organization, the inventor is currently working.

1.    Preface

The TOGAF standard, tenth edition (10th edition) makes adoption of best practices easier. The standards have more than 16 sub-clauses to guide the business and technology architecture, It also guides and underscores the areas where to look for new ideas and technologies,

TOGAF 1O EA Cycle edition can be briefly summarized in the below cycle.

Fig.1 : TOAGF 10 Enterprise Architecture cycle.

(Source Open Group USA)

However, Open Group architecture (TOGAF 10) falls short in 3 major areas namely :

·      Environment technology scanning

·      Futuristic technology assessment,

·      Bringing competitive applications together

·      Embedding Open AI. AI tools in the overall enterprise architecture,

Though TOGAF 10 is an interactive methodology and there is an inbuilt scope for the above 3 points to be taken care of, we have found that recent technological advances and customers’ preferences for multiple applications on a common platform need a slight derivation from the TOGAF 1O methodology.

From 2018 to 2023, during our research study for digital transformation and customer experience, we had concluded to modify the current TOGAF 10 methodology to suit customer’s requirements,

 2.    EA Frameworks and New FBA™   architectural framework.

 Below is the comparison of 4 major EA architecture frameworks.

FBA ™ is a trademark of the EA methodology developed by Prakash wagh as a part of his Doctoral research from 2018 to 2023. The sole ownership is of P. D.Wagh.

3.    Flower Bouquet Architecture ™ (FBA)

Multiple waves of technologies and applications have made life miserable for the organization. The FBA framework is designed to address and adopt the new technologies without the need to change the core technology platform or any new greenfield implementation. The new architectural framework heavily draws from the number of APIs and microservices made available to the industry by software and hardware OEMs.

The specific need is to integrate the Open AI and AI tools in the overall Enterprise architect,

Flower Bouquet Architecture ™ (FBA)

Preface: Is it an old wine in a new bottle? As of  October 2024, the answer is “Yes” and “No”. This is an outcome of PhD research study carried out between 2018 and 2022, consisting of  21900 Data points between OEM, Dealers, service stations, and customers over 3 years and revised consistently each year up to 2023.

The main issue faced by the organization today is that they already have a technology platform selected during the Global 2000 boom as well as an application portfolio.

The companies have updated and upgraded the technical core over the last 20 years as well as some have made migrations to new Application software on the same platform.

Some of the fundamental questions our proposed FBA (Flower bouquet architecture asks these companies and wherein we have found a huge gap between the status of technical and application landscape and coming reality in the form wave of new technologies  We decided to have a framework for “Enterprise architecture” for Current architecture and how to successfully transform it to a new Architectural paradigm “ Flower Bouquet architect ().

The main question here is how to adopt Open AI and AI tools in the overall architecture. The research articles try to find a level background for innovation.

4.    Traditional Vs FBA™

TOGAF 9.0 & 10 ( Open group) architecture and various architecting methodologies of “On-Premises,” “On Cloud” or “Hybrid,” need urgent attention from Enterprise architects, Solutions architects, CIO, CXO, CEO, and Business to understand of two important facts :

1 Where do they stand for the technical and functional architecture of the current systems.?

2 What do they envisage in the coming 5-10 years for technology and application architecture?

3. To Participate or not in the current wave of AI, Generative AI, and business gains?

4. Restrict to the single current platform or bring in customer experience and centricity through new additions to architecture like Flower Bouquet Architecture ™ (FBA)

5.    How to include Open AI and AI tools in the overall enterprise architecture.

5.    Flower Bouquet Architecture ™ (FBA) TM

What is Flower Bouquet Architecture ™ (FBA)

·      It is a platform-agnostic framework for strategy, design, implementation, control, and monitoring of the overall enterprise architecture drawing most of the components and details from TOGAF 10.

·      It is derived from research that was carried out as a research project which spanned from 2018 to 2023.

·      Although the main aim of the research was in the automobile domain, our study's statistical analysis and hypothesis testing found it to be replicable for other industries, as well.

·      Open AI and AI tools were considered as a part of FBA (Flower bi=bouquet arrangement ) at least for LLM. Quantitative LLM models will further enrich this EA (Enterprise architecture).

The research was on “Digital transformation” with “Customer experience” as the main goal. While we have deep-dived into TOGAF methodology (TOGAF 9 & 10), we found that.

TOGAF (Open Group ™ ) 10 has been a reference enterprise architectural model for the last few years. it follows the definitive steps of four main domains namely :

·      Business Architecture (BA): Deals with business strategy, objectives, governance, organization, and key business processes followed by the businesses, However, this aspect does not cover the technological disruptions ( AI/ML/Generative AI, Industry 4.0, Blockchain, and others. While there are arguments that, these new technologies and disruptions should be part of Business strategy but that is not the case always. Strategies are revisited from time to time while technology disruptions are getting exponential.

·      Another aspect with respect to disruptive technologies is that they are fast evolving and adopted and by the time a review of business strategies is done, companies might lose precious time and an edge over competitors in the marketplace.

·      The Business architecture cycle thus may lag behind the disruptive innovations.

·      Data architecture (DA) : this describes the structure of an organization's logical and physical data assets and the associated data management resources, while recent changes in TOGAF standards do take care of both, “On-Premises” and “On cloud” data including the big data and analytics, it is just enough. The Data types and sources have grown over the last decade and  lot of unstructured and multi-faced data ( social media, internet; consumer forums, consumer feedback) is now ruling the nest.

·      The current TOGAF architecture does include some of the pieces, but no single coherent strategy is in place to address these new data elements. TOGAF just acknowledge the existence but no clear methodology for handling this new type of data is addressed.

·      Applications architecture (AA)  TOGAF provides a blueprint for the individual systems to be deployed, the interactions between the application systems, and their relationships to the core business processes of the organization with the frameworks for services to be exposed as business functions for integration.

·      There is a fundamental shift in at least 50 % of organizations, studied by us with respect to application architecture. We have found that companies are no more interested in having all applications from the same technology stack. Organizations are bringing “Best of the breed” applications for certain functions like HR .CRM to name a few and integrating it with current technology stacks with APIs and  Microservices which are ready to use and abundantly available.

·      The Ease of use, user interface, multi-channel availability, and visualization is taking precedence over the same technology stalk. Few of examples are companies going for Salesforce over traditional CRM and workday over traditional HR modules.

·      TOGAF architecture has a lacuna here as it aims at aligning exactly over the technology and data stalk.

·      AI and AI tools though are specified there is no clear path or guidelines for the same in TOFGAF 10.

Organizations are looking for light, user-friendly, multichannel, and analytic-based applications that are “ Best of the Breed” and then integrating them with the core technology. Here business voice is louder than the enterprise architects. The front-end fuzzy logic and some of the back-end processes are migrated t0 “Best of Breed” applications. This is like constructing a flower bouquet.

The Vase in the below diagram is the core technology platform.

Fig 2 : FBA Architecture conceptual diagram

Each flower in the Bouquet represents a special Best of Breed application or some of them might be still on the current technology stalk. We call this architecture as an FBA (Flower Bouquet architecture).

The benefits of FBA (Flower Bouquet architecture) are summarized below,

·      It is platform neutral.

·      You can bring multiple technologies with Integration under FBA,

·      Open AI and AI tools can easily be integrated as part of FBA,

·      You can have your choice of “ Best of Breed” applications embedded.

·      APIs and microservices help you to integrate the “Best of Breed “ applications.

·      There is no case of data leak, Data integrations or data integrity.

·      Single sign-on (SSO) ensures access and security privileges.

·      A data mart may be necessary to collate, analyse and predictions.

·      There is no need to completely overhaul the application landscape.

 Technical architecture (TA)  technology architecture, describes the hardware, software, and network infrastructure needed to support the deployment of core, mission-critical applications.

·       It is very costly and change an existing platform.

·       It has a business impact so changing a platform is not an answer,

·       Our study recommends that it is better to upgrade the technology platform instead of changing it.

·       The upgrade to the latest version and patch should be made so that the upgraded platform can support new technologies and integrations.

·       The TOGAF suggestion of aligning the technology platform to the application platform is logical. However, one element that is missing here is that the technology platform should be able to support new disruptive technologies,

While the TOGAF(8 & 10) framework is logical and in sequence, we find out some pitfalls.

·      Current technology stalk review and upgradation.

·      Current applications and new best-of-breed applications

·      Integration of data and information for” Best of Beed applications”\

·      Changing the technology platform  and application (Greenfield project)

·      Retiring old applications and introducing new ones,

·      Data flow, workflow integration between existing and new applications,

·      Minimum disruptions to business while introducing “ New best of breed applications.

·      Addition of Blockchain, Open AI, AI tools, and new AI tools natively  in current AI enterprise architecture,

The TOGAF (8 & 10 )framework is more useful when one is designing entire enterprise architecture for a new or greenfield project. The organizations that have legacy systems and need to rework for better technology and application systems, this framework calls for an entire cycle from Business architecture to technical architecture.

The new proposed FBA™ (Flower bouquet architecture) is a dynamic framework that helps organizations to adopt to new changes in application or technological changes. It starts from :

·      Upgrading Current technology stalk to the latest version and patch.

·      Selecting “ Best of Breed” applications for front end and in some cases for back end also\

·      It uses APIs and microservices available for integration.

·      It creates a data mart for analysis and identifying patterns and trends,

·      It may be “On-Premises.” “On Cloud” or a mix of these two.

·      It helps to adopt AI , Blockchain and new technology with Api and microservices without harming the core EA,

The “TOGAF” and new “FBA” framework methodology difference is depicted below in Figure 3

figure: TOGAF and new FBA framework

Flower Bouquet Architecture ™ (FBA)

This methodology is based on 6 main fundamental building blocks.

1.    Environmental scanning/Business Environment Scanning: The First step is to deep dive and collect all the technological and application-related information from the company or industry for which you have to benchmark your technical and application landscape. This phase is important as :

It will inform you where you stand concerning technology and applications with respect to competitors and the industry as a whole. This information can be gathered using various analysts' ratings for systems. Applications and trends. If this is not possible company can have an internal team of 2 members ( IT/Business ) who can do a 3-month study on the top 3 competitors as well as the industry. Given that Internet and Generative AI is available now, this phase should not be a problem. The output of this first phase is the comparison between the Top 3 competitors, the industry, and your own company. This should be a brief report that can detail the following:

·      Technology platform

·      Applications used.

·      New initiatives planned by top 3 and Industry.

                This exercise should be able to put a canvas on the drawing board for technology, applications, and future initiatives of the competitors.

Knowing the canvas of the top 3 competitors and the industry as a whole is the best weapon to devise your enterprise strategy for the current and coming years.

 2.    Internal study of technology and applications stalk.

The second step in the methodology is to do a thorough study of the current technology platform and application portfolio within the company. The study should include :

·      Whether current technology platform is versatile and robust for next 5 years?

·      Check if he application portfolio is strong enough to stand up to the ever-changing market dynamics.

·      Check integration (Technical and functional) within the current systems.

·      Check whether Data is of quality and is maintained in a disciplined manner.

·      Check whether System and application security is at least at par with ISO 27000.?

·      Find out the areas that are still managed in manual mode.

·      If current technology platform supports new dimension technologies? ( AI/ML/BC/Generative AI)?

·      Check from Businesses, where they are facing difficulties in day-to-day operations.

·      Check “On Premise” & “On Cloud” Presence?

·      Check the business plan  for 3 years and ascertain whether IT systems (Hardware and applications) will be able to support the plan.

The answers to these questions will reveal, where you stand, you’re standing writ competitors and the industry and your ability to support the business in the next 3-5 years horizons with or without investment in technical and functional architecture.

Fig.4. Internal study and probable options

3.    Prepare a matrix of technology and application stalk (Current)

Attribute

Example

Remark

Technology Platform

MS

SAP-HANA

Oracle-SQL

Check the Version, end support date, capability, and Integration  capability of the technology platform

Functional Application stalk

Sales

Distribution

Planning

Manufacturing

Purchasing

Store and warehouse.

MRP

ATP

EAM

AI/ML

Generative AI

Check if functional applications have features, functions, and capability of integration with third party software for next 3 years. It is a must to check if new technologies can be deployed with some developments or through APIs and Microservices.

Data management

Having a separate Master data maintenance (MDM) or Master data governance (MDG) is a must,

If MDM/MDG capability is missing, it is a big red and it should be part of new incremental EA,

Security

System and application security needs to be checked. Single sign-on with malware detection and document classification suggested

Robust 2-way authentication is necessary for both system users and administrators. If not, available it should form part of incremental EA immediately.

DMZ (Demilitarized Zone)

Check that any of the stakeholders do not intrude in the main system/

Separate portal for customers and vendors outside the DMZ area,

Integration technology

Check-in detail the current integration strategy and technology. Connect with OEM and check if it can support the new wave AI/ML/GENAI

Based on the outcome, decide on continuing or introducing new integration technology as an incremental EA change.

Data sizing

Check current system data size, data that can be   and  data which can be deleted ( Lapse of time principle but our methodology does not support this. This can very well be preserved on disks)

The system and application performance are dependent on the data size and as such this exercise is necessary to archive the old data and preserve very old data) so that the system can work efficiently.

Fig.6 Technology and application stalks

4.    Update and continue to upgrade.

Many consultants suggest changing the core platform for technology “A” to technology “b.” This is understandable if the technology stalk is same. ( For example suggestion from upgrade to SAP S/4 HANA from SAP ECC6.0 is desirable and well understood and same lies with MS or Oracle.).However shifting from on old technology platform to a new technology  platform does not make a sense as it involves high cost, Organizational change management and lot of process adjustments and reintegration. In this process, there is risk that technology rides over business and results may be disastrous.

·      First principle: Get to the latest functional & Technological stalk.

·      Second Principle: Gradually move to the next version in a specified time frame.

·      Third principle: If Business is in a downward slope. Wait and watch Manage operations with what you have currently. Update and continue to upgrade.

·      Fourth principle: Absorb new technology like Open AI , Chatpat,AI tools, blockchain and others using API and Microservices without affecting the core EA,

5.    Incremental Enterprise architect ( IEA)

While TOGAF and other frameworks describe the methods. Tools and accessories for Enterprise architecture, but in reality, except for the new and greenfield projects , all the above framework fails to address the need of a “ Going concern” or company. The earlier frameworks including TOGAF, tries to suggest a systematic way for optimized or correct enterprise architect. The min lacuna is this framework id their inability to address incremental changes required in the current EA architecture of “Going concern” or “company which has already invested a huge amount in technology or application. The same concern is taken care off in the new framework of incremental “Flower Bouquet Architecture ™ (FBA).”

6.    Flower Bouquet Architecture ™ (FBA).”TM

This enterprise architecture framework is based on the research carried from 2018 to 2023 for a doctoral thesis. ( The trademark and patent are under registration as of now)/

Forget the technology and applications and just imagine a flower bouquet.

Fig. 7  Pictorial representation of “ FBA” Architecture

7.    Flower Bouquet Architecture ™ (FBA).”TM Value and Benefits

·      It is platform neutral. No bias.

·      It scans the current environment and gives incremental guidelines.

·      It does not ask you to change a platform unless it is too old and outdated and cannot cope with new technologies.

·      Applications on-premises, hybrid and multiple are supported.

·      It looks at horizon of 5 to 10 years for existing investments.

·      It also suggests having a look at the current Integration technology and the need for a new one, if required

·      It helps to look at master data management and governance. If not present, it advises to go for It.

·      It also deep dive into data into the data can help in archiving of old data.

·      This EA architecture allows to add new technologies like Open AI,AI Tools, Blockchain and others into Core EA structure using API and Microservices,

8.    The onslaught of technology developments in the last 10 years is very high. Today there is no concept of a standardized or freeze Enterprise architect.

The Author has taken 25 best-in-class companies and studied their evaluation of EA from 2018 to 2023.

·      The author has noted the changes these organizations have made to adopt new technologies.

·      While it has been observed that Core EA remained the same organizations were able to absorb the new technologies and changes ( API/Microservices/BTP/Integrations ).

·      The major challenge the organizations studied faced with respect to the adoption of new technologies and their integration.

·      This has led to a new concept of FBA (Flower-based architecture). Which is  a modification of the current TOGAF 10 Methodology,

·      The proposed FBA (Flower architecture ) is based on the philosophy that the evolving EA is a bunch of flowers, which assimilates any new technology as a separate flower with integration to current EA using MS and API and results in an effective and updated EA technology stalk,

Summary :

TOGAF 10  provides the basic EA framework,

It also provides for an addition to the current EA.

New technologies like Open AI, AI tools, and blockchain are not part of the original TOGAF EA framework.

It is necessary to adopt a new framework like – FBA (Flower bouquet arrangements), wherein the EA core is safeguarded but we can pick and add new flowers (New techniques) to the underlying EA framework,

The author has all the steps to require this FBA (Flower-based bouquet) EA framework spot this new modified architecture. As of now, it is under patent and entire methodology will be shared with you all in next 3 months.

Regards

Prakash wagh

+918814556703

India,