A major UK Bank is using Adaptive’s products and
services to provide an Enterprise Architecture repository solution
to meet the needs of various information users throughout the organization.
Adaptive’s Adaptive Repository™ technology was originally
selected by the IT Division following an evaluation against other
competitors in the mid 1990’s, to provide support for the management
and reuse of metadata across a variety of modeling and development
tools in use throughout the organization. More recently, the potential
of Adaptive’s products to provide support throughout the organization
has been recognized, and efforts have concentrated on leveraging this
technology to provide an enabler for many of the internal processes
involved in managing the business.
Technology Guide
The Technology Guide provides a web-enabled view of
the technology and infrastructure that has already been adopted, or
for which the organization have a strategic view on future use. Using
Adaptive Repository, it has been possible to categorize each item
of software or hardware, capture knowledge of the use and deployment
of software on hardware platforms, and maintain a strategic status
against each item or combinations of items of technology. Adaptive’s
web browser enables use of this information during the design and
architecture of applications, management of IT Services, and other
activities requiring a knowledge of available technology or the impact
or risks involved in decisions made during maintenance and support
of the IT environment. Plans are underway to extend the use of this
solution to maintain architectural principles for use during the planning,
design and implementation of it solutions.
Infrastructure Planning
Through the integration of a Microsoft® Visio® template,
it has been possible to provide support for the modeling of the current
state and planning of technology and infrastructure used by various
parts of the organization. Intelligence behind each of the stencils
on the Visio template enables communication with Adaptive Repository
to allow reuse of technology and infrastructure when developing logical
and physical technology architectures and topology diagrams. Additional
operations enable the capture of information pertaining to the use
of technology or the introduction of technology previously missing
from the technology guide. Adaptive’s web browser provides a
view of the use of Technology and Infrastructure by each part of the
Organization.
Component Catalogue
Rational® Rose is used to design and build reusable
infrastructure components that are subsequently consumed during the
development of IT applications. The integration between Rational Rose
and Adaptive Repository enables publication of the information modeled
in Rose, into a Component Catalogue. The integration with Adaptive
Repository also enables implementation of security, to control and
restrict modeling and publication of components within Rose. Adaptive’s
web browser provides knowledge of the existence of each infrastructure
component and details of the services provided, for use by Application
Developers and Problem Management. The solution also reuses and contributes
to the maintenance and publication of the Data Architecture when defining
parameters used by each component.
License Management
Adaptive Repository is used to maintain and publish
information pertaining to the availability and use of Licenses for
each of the IT Assets in use throughout the organization. The License
Management adaptation reuses the knowledge maintained as part of the
Technology Guide, appending details of the type of license and number
available, and details of the person using each license. Adaptive’s
web browser provides a view of the license details for each IT Asset,
and also allows an individual to see a summary of all the licenses
they own. Plans are in place to extend the use of this facility to
hold details of contracts in place with the vendor of each IT Asset.
Next Steps
Opportunities have been identified to provide support
for other areas of concern such as Process & Data Architectures,
Application Architectures, Project Portfolios, Information Model Management,
Business and Operational Planning, Capacity Planning, etc. Prototypes
have already been developed for many of these opportunities, and efforts
are now underway to plan for the full development and roll out in
the near future. |
