OPERATION MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK IN IT ARCHITECTURAL PROCESS
Business Framework
The Business Framework encompasses the activities and requirements that drive the IT
architecture process, as shown in the following figure.
The Business Framework consists of:
■the various products and or services that are core to the organization’s business
■the relationships with the organization’s key external stakeholders (suppliers, partners,
customers)
■the people, processes, and technology required to support the production and distribution of the
organization's products and services.
The Business Framework provides the basis of the organization requirements for the Execution
Framework .
Execution Framework
The Execution Framework encompasses the various application components (application, system
hardware/software, network, etc.) and their supporting infrastructure.
Dimensions of the Execution Framework
This section describes the three dimensions of the Execution Framework—functional layers,
service tiers, and systemic qualities.
Functional Layers
The functional layers of the Execution Framework describe the various technology components
that make up an application, system, and the supporting environment, including:
■Business logic that captures the business process being implemented.
■Software container and services that this logic uses to execute its function.
■Supporting operating systems, hardware, and other components that provide computing and
data storage.
■Network that connects the various distributed systems and enables communication.
■Facilities (power, heat, light, etc.) that provide the appropriate environment for all of the
physical components of the architecture.
Service Tiers
The service tiers of the Execution Framework describe the logical partitioning of functions
within a distributed application. References to “n-tier” applications are, in effect, describing this
aspect of the Execution Framework.
Systemic Qualities
Systemic qualities capture the various non-functional (or operational) requirements that must be
considered during the architectural process. These considerations do not impact how an
application will work but rather how well it will work. Their position as the third aspect of the IT
Execution Framework means that these requirements are considerations at each intersection of a
service tier and functional layers.
Using the Execution Framework
The use of functional layers and service tiers helps to communicate and enforce common best
practices of architecture development, such as the separation of concerns and the use of well
defined interfaces. The result is a construct that allows the architect to decompose an application
and to evaluate any one aspect, while keeping the other two aspects constant.
Special attention should be paid to the visibility component (systemic quality) of the Execution
Framework. The degree to which this quality is considered and implemented will determine the
amount of control over the Execution Framework that is provided to external entities represented
by the management framework tools aspect.
There is an example of this is as follows -:
Sun IT Management Framework
The following figure shows the Sun IT Management Framework (Sun ITMF).
Aspects of the Sun ITMF
The Sun ITMF consists of three different axes, or aspects, each of which details an important
part of an organization’s IT management infrastructure. These three aspects are what we have
previously defined as the components of operational capability—people, processes, and tools.
The top-level description of each aspect is an abstraction of existing standards, such as the IT
Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) or People Capability Maturity Model® (P-CMM®). Each aspect
of the Sun ITMF is a generalized set of activities (people), processes (process), or functional
categories (tools), under which specific solution approaches may be used. As will be seen in
subsequent chapters, we have selected approaches that combine our interpretation of industry
recognized standards and Sun best practices.
People Aspect
The people aspect of the Sun ITMF represents the organizational component of the IT
environment. This includes IT operations staff, help desk organizations, operations and
administrative groups, IT management, and any other internal IT stakeholders. The framework
depicts a first level set of activities that are applied when managing IT staff. These activities are
designed to cover a range of organizational management functions, such as designing the
organization, obtaining resources, and managing resources on a day-to-day basis. This aspect
also includes the concept of creating, capturing, and reusing organizational knowledge.
Diagram of the Sun ITMF People Aspect
Process Aspect
The process aspect of the Sun ITMF represents the actual IT management processes that are
needed to support the IT service life cycle. It describes processes for creating, deploying, and
managing IT services.
Tools Aspect
The tools aspect of the Sun ITMF describes the technology used to facilitate and automate the
execution of the various IT management processes. This framework is a functional categorization
under which a variety of product approaches may be inserted.
Interaction Among the Aspects
"Components of Operational Capability," on page 5, shows the relationships among the three
aspects of the Sun ITMF. For example, people can implement processes with or without tools—
people might not need to use tools to implement a process. The nature of these relationships are
not explicitly defined. However, architects and implementers should strive for a loose coupling
of the aspects (no rigid rules on how these aspects interact) when the framework is being
implemented in an organization.
As operational capability is being identified and the plan for improvement is developed, no one
aspect (process, people, or tool) should invalidate or negate another. For example, a tool should
not be drive the process so that a change in the tool would require a major rewrite of the process.
In fact, the process should be defined first, the skills required next, and then the tool selected.
