Embracing the ecosystem

Though many of the architects and architectural frameworks believe that an Enterprise Architecture must closely align with business goals, I tend to see things in its most fundamental derivative. It is important to have an Architecture vision to achieve a business strategy, but equally important it is to understand the importance of the chapter anyone would study in engineering, much before they may study business, that is “The Strength of Materials”. Evolving upon the same underpinning, one must believe in equally acknowledging “The Relevance and Application of Materials” as one of the drivers for Technology, and hence an Enterprise Architecture.

The realization of the concept came to me while watching a Discovery Channel documentary on building Dubai’s luxury hotel Burj Al Arab right off the coast of an artificial beach. Where conventional architects would have chosen the age old way, the project’s lead architect Tom Wright devised an ingenious idea for securing the hotel’s foundation, where the builders drove 230 40-meter long concrete piles into the sand. Thus the foundation is held in place not by bedrock, but by the friction of the sand and silt along the length of the piles, something that was so abundantly available and inexpensive.

Understanding the environment works way more advantageous than applying the stereotypical methodologies. It lets you harness the right potential of your IT infrastructure, and build upon it in a more efficient way to realize the business vision, not only by reducing costs, but also cutting the most important factor today – the Time to Market, letting your business gain that competitive lead over others.

Not every IT material, hardware or software is best designed for all conditions. While some may prove more beneficial to one organization, others have to comprehend the resemblance and dissimilarities in the way their business operate, their market distribution and most importantly, their actual return on investment. They say money saved is money earned, and following this approach can start making (by saving) money even before a project starts simply by investing in the right building blocks.

In my experience, I have often seen architects and decision makers having a holistic view on technology as a business driver while neglecting the environment and the materials that build it. And it all looks so perfect until they stumble upon the limitation of the product and/or the technology to achieve this goal. And so begins a classic battle between the business and the vendor, mightier of which causes either the product to transform or otherwise and in more often cases, change the scope of the project all together. Whichever may be the case, it always works against the business in terms of wastage time and resource.

Thus it becomes very crucial for an architect not to get rapt following a sales evangelist’s idea of latest and greatest, but consider the material’s actual application in context of his enterprise business and realize that:

It’s always better to think twice before than regretting it later

Lost in Translation

Probably it was born real, and perhaps it lived for the next twenty some years. But it was late when he realized that it was dying. It too has been the victim of the inevitable plague that has outspread to almost every grown adult on this living earth. It is developing the same symptoms, exhibiting the like behavior and transforming into something he once thought was fascinating; like a young boy eager to work that blade on his first facial hairs, not realizing that this would bring him to the point of no return.

When he was young, it was innocent. And it made him innocent. It made him curious and it kept him ignorant. It made him an artist. But as he grew, he made it numb; he disregarded its questions, reprimanded its creativity and defeated its ambitions. Eventually most of his kind choked it to death, while it tries to breathe in the rest. Some call “it” attitude, others originality, I see “it” as religion.

If only Darwin walked amongst us today, he may have considered replacing the word “Fittest” to something demeaning, as men never took the word a superlative for genetic evolution. As for “fittest” before him were barbaric, who showed no guilt while killing a fellow mortal. And the fittest now are callous, who are happy to kill themselves for the same financial transcendence.

Most of us have become the human batteries plugged in ‘The Matrix’; only important to this world as a dead energy source. Just the difference is that the matrix here is real, made by the big corporations which seem to have read the phrase right to left and thus believe in “Policy as their Honesty”. The moment you are plugged in, this matrix starts influencing your senses, and the longer you stay, more it desensitizes your abilities to think, question, challenge and act human. And eventually, there comes a time when you become one of the Agent Smiths, propagating it to the coming generations. And those inexperienced young minds, ignorant of alternative and imposed by the said rules of the matrix, never even realize the possibilities that could have been otherwise.

None of us were born to follow. It was us who chose to let rule body over mind. And in pursuit of earning our daily bread and all luxuries that follows, we ignored to question the written, challenge the convention, derive a justification and adopted the world and its system ‘as-is’ than thinking what it ‘could-be’

I guess Picasso shared the same sentiments when he quoted “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up”, but was soon overwhelmed by the world and phrased “Good artists copy, Great artist steal”.

They may call me young, they may mock my naivety and they may say I will grow with time, but I can still feel ‘it’ in my bones. I wish it could die in me, for I may turn into one of them and cross this great divide that has developed within. If only I could evade this turmoil, prove myself wrong and follow the sheep in front of me, will I be able to “rest in peace”. 

But then it must live, for it is he who is me, and it is who shall set me free..

-Sarthak