GBC-Group, Inc.

A properly designed architecture is an important lever in meeting customer and market place commitments.

The process of architecting a system allows a team to address its greatest technical risks early in the development process and provides the flexibility needed to manage release content, technical risks and time-to-market commitments. In addition, a flexible architecture can be used as a platform for a large family of products or services meeting a wide range of evolving customer requirements. Investments in a software architecture are important when requirements are for

• Flexible designs and migration plans providing options for staged investments in which work could be expanded, contracted, accelerated or deferred;
• Performance-sensitive designs in which response time, turn around time, capacity, and throughput were evaluated using measurement, models and simulations;
• Designs in which strong requirements for reliability, availability and serviceability were evaluated through measurement, modeling and testing based on operational profiles; and
• Designs addressing security requirements for electronic commerce.

The key to a platform architecture is analysis,  partitioning a family of systems into components  including functions, services, connectors, and communication and coordination mechanisms. An architect guides the choice of components, ensuring those selected are appropriate for the types of services being implemented and the business results to be achieved. In particular, the architect recommends patterns or combinations of components supporting important types of architectural qualities such as flexibility, usability, performance, capacity, reliability, security, maintainability, availability, and serviceability. Often, the architect’s recommendations must include middleware solutions capable of integrating architecturally incompatible components. .

GBC-Group's consulting work centers on aligning the architecture of and information or software system with clients’ business needs and capabilities. When appropriate, he will help clients define their overall product-line architecture or customer-value proposition.

enterprise architecture, software architecture

Last updated 47 days ago by Steve Ornburn