Is remediation part of a Solution Architecture?

What the heck is remediation anyway, you might wonder? That at least was the reaction I got a few times during earlier projects. But when I explained to the CIO of a brewing giant why and how remediation should be part of a Solution Architecture, he said ‘that would be the first time I see it done right’. So, what does it cover?

Let’s start with what remediation is anyway. Simply put: if you develop a new IT solution to replace an existing one, you need to ensure it functions properly within the remaining existing IT environment and IT governance structures. Sounds easy but there is much more to it than switching off a box and/or rerouting interfaces!

Obviously, the way as to how remediation is approached can vary from project to project. But to my opinion, remediation accountability stretches across:

  • Due Diligence, to understand as-is (also used for other purposes);
  • Solution Architecting the retained environment, in relation to the new solution;
  • Designing, building, and testing the retained environment.

In other words it identifies the adjustments that need to be made to retained IT applications including custom developments, data structures, and application security. Next, it covers the underlying technical infrastructure: the systems landscape, the technical platform, UI’s, the Data Centre infrastructure and network changes, including infrastructure security – pertaining explicitly to the retained applications.

And that’s not all. The remediation accountability includes Vendor Management and/or Legal aspects – for example identifying the licenses and contracts around service management, application management and infrastructure management that need to be terminated.

The remediation function in a project typically supports:

    1. Solution Architecture, by providing architectural input
    2. Service Introduction, to enable this function to take care of retained-side legal matters
    3. Integration Testing and User Acceptance Testing of the functionality, for as far the retained side is concerned
    4. Solution Deployment

The objective of the remediation work is to understand all the IT-related impact the new solution has and to safeguard a coherent IT landscape and IT Governance model after go-live of this new solution.

Mendel

ENSEAD Advisory selected reading – June 2012

Dear Senior and Executive Management in Enterprise IT and staff,

There’s no need to deny it, you are flooded with information. Before you’ve evaluated the one hype, the next buzz word is already dominating your tag cloud and screaming for attention all over your screen. To relieve this burden a bit ENSEAD Advisory started to share a selection of noteworthy reading for you through Facebook.

Topics all relate to the IT Supply side – mainly SAP – and range from planning and preparing for projects and programmes with an IT element; via their inception to the phase out of the delivered IT solution. In other words, topics span across the entire lifecycle of IT solutions. To make it even more compact for you, here’s a summary of topics and items and comments ENSEAD shared with you during June!

Gartner says worldwide spending on Enterprise Application software [Enterprise IT] is expected to increase 4.5 percent in 2012. That’s excellent news for (SAP) Enterprise Architects!  Because what every great architect should understand is that if you don’t get it built, your work doesn’t matter – as per the words of marketing guru Seth Godin.

Gartner even has more encouraging news for senior IT staff. “In spite of clouds and outsourcing, the need for a smart internal group that helps a business explore, define and exploit technology enabled change opportunities will not disappear.” How else can businesses survive this age of “Continual Enterprise Transformation”, as ENSEAD Advisory likes to call it? Happy to help here by the way: this is the core business of ENSEAD Advisory (next to turning opportunities into tangible solutions).

Enterprise IT Applications are sourced more and more as-a-service these days, delivered from the internet (yep, aka cloud-based solutions). Contracts with well-defined and transparent Service Level Agreements are not market standard yet, Gartner seems to say. The debate about what went wrong (and who is to blame) around cloud outages, happens mainly through public interviews, blogs and articles. It seems that when something goes really wrong, transparency quickly becomes the norm again.

Good news for SAP: they celebrate the one-year anniversary of SAP HANA. Reason for a party: SAP’s combination of SAP Sybase ASE, SAP Sybase IQ, SAP Sybase SQL Anywhere and SAP HANA revenue enabled SAP to secure fourth place in global market share, says IDC. ENSEAD Advisory was one of the first to share the news on the SAP HANA Essentials e-book, which causes traffic to the ENSEAD Advisory site to explode… The Newsletter from the Business Process Experts Community also starts with SAP HANA but also features an article on Enterprise Mobility, as well as on when to use PI, BPM and Business (ABAP) Workflow.

– Mendel

SAP HANA Essentials e-book now available for free

SAP HANAEssentials e-bookThe new SAP HANA Essentials e-book by Jeffrey Word is being published intermittently. The first version is now available free of charge and contains a good overview with customer success stories and use cases, an overview of hardware vendors and their solutions, as well as a chapter on implementation projects . A bit annoying is the hammering all the time on selecting the right consulting partner. Expected around fall 2012 are the chapters on SAP HANA Architecture, Business Cases & ROI Model, SAP HANA Applications, SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse on SAP, Data Provisioning with SAP HANA, Data Modeling with SAP HANA, Application Development with SAP HANA, SAP HANA Administration & Operations, and SAP HANA Resources.

– Mendel