Enterprise Architecture Components for Cloud Service Consumers

Eapen George

and George Feuerlicht

1,2,3

Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Unicorn College, V Kapslovně 2767/2,130 00 Prague 3, Czech Republic

Department of Information Technology, University of Economics, Prague, W. Churchill Sq. 4, Prague 3, Czech Republic

Keywords: Business-IT Alignment, Cloud Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Components, Service

Oriented Architecture.

Abstract: Enterprise Architecture (EA) and appropriate governance enables cloud computing adoption by consumer

organisations. EA is gaining acceptability as an approach for strategic alignment of business and IT and as

key enabler for cloud computing. EA practices consist of a range of activities and covers many of the

elements necessary for enabling cloud computing. This paper discusses the key architectural components

necessary from the perspective of a consumer organization for the adoption of cloud computing and

discusses these elements in the context of EA frameworks and governance. The ability to use maturity

assessments on these architectural components to determine organizational readiness to achieve cloud

benefits is introduced.

1 INTRODUCTION

A number of innovative technology solutions are

driving changes in the nature of business and how

enterprises are addressing their market opportunity

and customer needs. Adapting to and leveraging the

opportunities that these new trends and emerging

technology capability bring is becoming an

important aspect of how business can get ahead of

the competition. The cloud paradigm is an

amalgamation of a number of proven and emerging

enterprise technologies, and enterprises are

leveraging the cloud paradigm to varying degrees.

A key aspect of cloud computing is that it has

brought about a cost model that leverages economies

of scale. By taking aspects of IT out of the enterprise

and into large scale utilities, the economies of scale

benefits are being accrued to enterprises (NIST,

2013). This has been especially true of IT hardware

infrastructure, but the benefits have not been equally

achieved for IT processes such as strategy, planning

and governance. Enterprises have attempted a trial

and error approach to adopting the suitable processes

that benefit from cloud computing. A Cloud Service

Consumer can be defined as an organisation or a

user or an IT system that consumes services

delivered by a cloud service provider (IBM CCRA,

2014).

Today, most business and IT leaders understand

the benefits of cloud computing but they need a

pragmatic, effective and transparent approach to

cloud adoption. Most existing methods tend to focus

on prioritization at a specific solution level and fail

to consider wider issues such as alignment of IT

strategy with overall business objectives (Feuerlicht,

George, 2013). Determining the business value is

important because it measures the potential for

realization of benefits directly related to the adoption

of cloud computing. Enterprise Architecture

provides a framework and models to assist IT

management with better utilization of IT, and

alignment of IT with business. Understanding the

challenges and operational constraints that the

organization faces helps to identify how cloud

computing can benefit the organization and what

business and IT capabilities will gain most from

cloud adoption. Enterprise architecture is a key

enabler for an effective adoption of SOA (Service-

Oriented Architecture) and hence cloud computing,

and this has been highlighted in the literature

(Ibrahim, 2007).

In this paper we firstly discuss the role of

Enterprise Architecture with specific focus on cloud

computing (section 2), and then consider the

problem of EA maturity assessment (section 3). In

section 4 we discuss our conclusions.

360

George E. and Feuerlicht G..

Enterprise Architecture Components for Cloud Service Consumers.

DOI: 10.5220/0005468303600365

In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2015), pages 360-365

ISBN: 978-989-758-098-7

 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

2 ROLE OF ENTERPRISE

ARCHITECTURE

As discussed in (George, 2013), Enterprise

Architecture is being used as an approach to

managing both business and IT at a strategic level

and forms the basis for achieving agile business-IT

environment enabling IT to respond to rapid changes

in business requirements as market conditions

change. At the same time, the building blocks of IT

(i.e. infrastructure components, business

applications, etc.) are becoming commoditized,

reducing the competitive advantage that

organizations gain directly from deploying

individual IT components. It is the combination of

various IT components and business functions in the

context of an EA framework that can deliver

business value and competitive advantage. SOA

architecture enables organizations to be more agile

and cost effective, and cloud computing delivers

similar benefits to IT.

2.1 Enterprise Architecture Functions

Enterprise Architecture in an organization is

achieved through the means of EA activities that

cover management activities and analysis and design

approaches. The activities carried out in the context

of EA can vary from organization to organization

depending on the scale, maturity and objectives of

the organization. However, it is possible to identify a

number of core activities that typically occur and

can be classified as EA activities. For example, in

one characterisation eight core activities that include

defining IT strategy, modelling EA component

architecture, facilitating IT transformation,

developing and enforcing standards and managing

IT risks have been identified (Bente, 2012).

In any organisation, the EA functions and

activities play a major role in the evaluation of new

technologies and in ensuring that any new IT

capability is delivering the planned business

benefits. In the context of cloud computing

evaluation and adoption it is possible to identify the

following key activities:

1) Creating the essential elements of the

Enterprise Architecture – the business architecture,

the applications architecture, data architecture and

technology architecture and evolving these

architectures to meet the changing business needs. In

the context of cloud computing adoption, it is critical

that all the architecture elements have been

adequately defined so that informed evaluation

choices can be made. Evolving the IT environment

to meet changing needs and adopting new

technology and computing models that will deliver

competitive advantage for the business is a key

activity.

2) Evaluating the business value of new

technologies and computing models such as cloud

computing.

3) Defining standards and policies for the

effective, secure and smooth running of the IT

environment.

4) Defining the maturity of the organisation with

respect to key skills and organisational capabilities

and preparing plans to address gaps.

5) Managing and mitigating risks. In the context

of cloud computing adoption, this involves defining

an acceptable level of risk for the available cloud

options and ensuring that the organisation has the

capability to deliver defined mitigation approaches.

IT departments in organisations have grown

large and complex providing multiple functions.

This has happened as the importance of IT to the

business grew which resulted in more IT solutions

being adopted and hence requiring a large and

complex IT organisation. The advent of cloud

computing promises to streamline and reduce IT

department growth since major functions that are

usually under the management of the IT department

are being provided by cloud service providers.

Figure 1 is a high-level illustration of key functions

that are relevant to cloud IT.

Figure 1: IT Functions for cloud IT.

As previously described Enterprise Architecture

covers a broad set of functions. IT Governance

incorporates IT Management and ensures that IT

structures and performance are supporting the

business objectives (ITGI, 2012), (Ross, 2006).

EnterpriseArchitectureComponentsforCloudServiceConsumers

361

IT Operations focuses on the operational support

requirements and works with IT Governance to

support the requirements and business goals (ISACA

2012). Development/QA is the solution development

function with QA (Quality Assurance) that provides

testing and quality assurance.

In this paper we present an approach that covers

the following two important elements:

1) Defining the foundational EA that will enable

cloud IT to leverage EA frameworks such as

TOGAF

2) Defining the governance structures for cloud

IT and defining the operations mechanisms

leveraging standards such as ITIL (ISACA, 2012).

2.2 Enterprise Architecture Layers

EA deals with all the main and relevant enterprise

elements, especially focusing on aligning IT

structures with the organisations objectives and

vision. As highlighted in (George 2013), an EA

helps IT functions to deliver business value

indirectly, for example by reducing complexity

through standardization of technology platforms,

and by improving governance through defining roles

and responsibilities.

An EA program in an organisation will deliver

intellectual property assets for an organisation that

include artefacts such as strategies, models,

methodologies, roadmaps and define technology

infrastructure and services, best practices and

metrics. An EA framework, e.g. TOGAF (TOGAF

2009) provides guidelines, methods and best

practices to help an organisation work through an

EA program. EA for a given organisation consists of

four layers as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Enterprise Architecture Layers.

This layered approach is considered in the context of

cloud computing for the cloud service consumer in

the next section.

2.3 Enterprise Architecture

Components for Cloud Computing

The service-based paradigm is the approach through

which cloud computing is delivering value to

organisations. The service-based paradigm is

promoting improved agility and adaptability of

business process. The service centric business aims

to be agile enough to be able to support business,

process and technology changes. Business process

is the key element of how enterprises organise their

work and business processes are supported by

software capabilities. This service-based approach

when incorporated into the layered enterprise

architecture models has the service concept as the

main linking capability between the layers (Land

2009). This layered model is illustrated in Figure 3.

The way in which these layers exist in the cloud

environment is also illustrated in the diagram.

Figure 3: Service-based layered EA model and cloud

mapping.

Business Layer

The business layer models the organization structure

and the business services it produces, business roles

and business processes, and business objects.

Business services expose business functionality to

the environment and business processes deliver the

ICEIS2015-17thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems

362

business behaviour of the organisation. Two

organisations in the same industry delivering the

same business service may appear different to the

customer if the business processes supporting the

business services exhibit different behaviours. Cloud

service integration tools provide business processes

with integration to application service components

in the cloud environment. These tools include cloud

brokers and cloud service integration capabilities.

Application Layer

The application layer describes application services

and their components and their interactions, logical

data entities and their relationships, and the resulting

services offered to the Business Layer. Services are

the building blocks of the application layer

architecture. The application service is available via

a web browser or web services API (Application

Programming Interfaces). Application components

and composite services enable the creation of

services dynamically improving business agility.

SaaS (Software as a Service) capability hosted by

the cloud service provider may be a part of the

services and applications portfolio available to

service consumers. Service Integration includes

Service Meshes and Service Mashups that enable

dynamic service assembly and service integration

(Raj, 2013). Service Components are a combination

of consumer application service components and

generic application support service components.

Technology Layer

Technology Layer models hardware, virtual

machines, application support software, networks

and storage showing how these components translate

into services provided to the Application Layer. The

Technology Layer in the cloud context consists of:

PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure

as a Service). Both PaaS and IaaS are cloud

capabilities provided by the cloud service provider

and hence the consumer organisation does not need

to provide the technology infrastructure. However,

governance structures including operational support

need to be adapted or enhanced to support the cloud

environment.

The EA model described above defines the

required elements for delivering cloud computing

services for the cloud service consumer.

2.4 Cloud Computing Governance

Cloud computing by divesting hardware and

software can reduce the size of the IT organisation.

Also, governance and management structures related

to hardware, networking and system software can be

reduced. However, some governance structures need

to be enhanced and new ones created to support

cloud computing.

IT governance and service management are

critical elements of IT and have been subject of

extensive research interest. Oragnizations have used

established frameworks such as COBIT (ITGI,

2012) and ITIL (ISACA, 2012) to address their

governance and service management requirements.

With respect to cloud computing, COBIT

provides support for the following three areas of

governance (Feuerlicht, 2012): 1) tools to manage

governance compliance, 2) best practice processes

to implement governance, and 3) governance

maturity model which help to determine the

readiness of the organisation for cloud computing

adoption. COBIT provides the necessary criteria to

ensure that the ITIL processes and functions are

performing to agreed to levels of quality. ITIL works

closely with COBIT and is responsible for ensuring

that ITIL best practices are in place to support and

maintain cloud services.

In a service-based environment such as the

cloud, SOA Governance and IT Governance aspects

are relevant (RAJ, 2013). Additional governance

activities for the cloud include activities related to

consumption and management of cloud services.

This includes IT Service management, Change

Management, Security management and Risk

management. Service Level Management includes

service level contracts and performance monitoring

for all entities participating the cloud supply chain.

Cloud governance needs to address design time

activities to support service development and run-

time activities to manage policy enforcement.

3 MATURITY ASSESSMENT

The EA components described as elements of EA

for cloud and the governance structures can be

evaluated to provide guidelines for organisations to

establish their readiness for various stages of cloud

computing. Maturity levels provide a mechanism for

assessing organisational or technical skill levels for a

particular capability (Ross, 2004). (Ross, Weil,

2006) have described a method for assessing

maturity levels of EA implementations.

IBM (IBM, 2015) has defined maturity levels for

cloud service providers as part of their cloud

computing reference architecture (CCRA). Using a

similar approach a set of maturity levels for the

cloud service consumer under the capability

Services Structure and Access can be defined as

follows:

EnterpriseArchitectureComponentsforCloudServiceConsumers

363

Maturity Level 1: basic IaaS capability for

hosting applications as services

Maturity Level 2: use of individual cloud

services

Maturity Level 3: EA enables catalog of cloud

services and static access to the catalog

Maturity Level 4: EA enables a fully capable

cloud environment and enables integration

Maturity Level 5: EA design and implementation

enable seamless integration of application services

transparently regardless of location of the underlying

service

The application architecture component of the

EA can be assessed to determine the maturity level

the current service structure capability for a

particular business scenario or business service. The

target maturity level to address a specific business

need such as agility can be determined for the

business scenario. This allows the organisation to

determine the gap and the steps that need to be taken

to bridge the gap. It is not always necessary to be at

the highest maturity level to achieve a particular

business outcome. This enables focused allocation of

resources based on the business requirements.

(George, 2013) has discussed this assessment

approach in the context of how EA can be evaluated

against business goals and objectives.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Cloud Computing Reference Models (NIST 2013)

provide a reference architecture and a reference

implementation approach for planning and

implementing cloud computing. These reference

models give greater detail from the cloud service

provider viewpoint than from the cloud consumer

organisation viewpoint. The NIST Reference

Architecture defines the various cloud services in the

context of an overall cloud computing model and

provides a reference for cloud consumers to

understand, categorise and compare cloud services.

The IBM CCRA (IBM 2015) shows at a high level

the cloud components from both the consumer and

service provider perspective, and describes the cloud

management platform in line with ITIL definitions.

However a detailed discussion of the architecture

and governance from a consumer organisation

perspective has not been adequately covered. In this

paper the perspective of the consumer organisation

and the main architectural elements that are critical

for adopting cloud computing in this context have

been presented. Details of the architectural elements

presented will need to be further studied in ongoing

research. Further research into the relationship

between the proposed approach in this paper and the

cloud computing reference models like the NIST

model needs to be conducted. Maturity models have

been used to develop understandings of

organisational readiness for adoption of new

technologies and capabilities. The idea of using

maturity models and assessment approaches to gain

understanding of organisational ability to achieve

planned cloud benefits has been introduced in this

paper. Further research defining maturity levels and

maturity assessment approaches of capabilities

associated with Enterprise Architecture components

proposed needs to be conducted.

REFERENCES

Bente, S., Bombosch, U., Langade, S. 2012. Collaborative

Enterprise Architecture. Morgan Kaufmann.

Feuerlicht, G. and George E., 2013, Enterprise

Architecture Value Model, Proceedings of

International Conference on Enterprise Information

Systems, pages 376 – 381, July 4-7, 2013, Angers,

France, Lecture Notes in Business Information

Processing.

Feuerlicht, G. and George E., 2013, Cloud Computing

Adoption Framework, Proceedings of CONFENIS-

2013, 7th International Conference on Research and

Practical Issues of Enterprise Information Systems,

September 11-13, 2013, Prague, Czech Republic,

ISBN: 978-3-990033-081-4, Trauner Verlag, 2013,

pages 320-327.

Feuerlicht, G., Schneider, S. and Tranter

L., 2012,

Enterprise Architecture for Cloud Computing

Environments, accepted for publication in the

proceedings of The Eleventh Workshop on e-Business,

December 15, 2012, Orlando, FL, USA, published

online: http://infosys.uncc.edu/web2012/Proceedings.

aspx.

IBM 2015. Enterprise Architecture in the age of Cloud

Services”. Retrieved January, 2015 from

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/e

nterprise-architecture-cloud/

IBM Cloud Computing Reference Architecture 4.0

2014. http://ibm.co/1xnmKwQ.

Ibrahim, M. and Long G. 2007. Service-Oriented

Architecture and Enterprise Architecture, a three-

article series. IBM DeveloperWorks (April 2007).

ISACA.2012. ITIL Retrieved from http://www.isaca.org/

Groups/Professional-English/itil/Pages/Overview.aspx.

ITGI. 2012 “COBIT Framework for IT Governance and

Control.”.Retrieved from

http://www.isaca.org/Knowledge-Center/cobit/Pages/

Overview.aspx.

Landhorst, M. 2009. Enterprise Architecture at Work.

Springer.

ICEIS2015-17thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems

364

NIST 2013, NIST Cloud Computing Standards Roadmap.

Retrieved Jan 2015 from http://www.nist.gov/itl/

cloud/ upload/NIST_SP-500-291_Version-2_2013_

June18_FINAL.pdf.

TOGAF 2009, The OpenGroup TOGAF version 9.

http://www.opengroup.org/togaf.

Raj, P. 2013. Cloud Enterprise Architecture. CRC Press.

Ross, J. W., Weill, P., & Robertson, D. 2006. Enterprise

architecture as strategy: Creating a foundation for

business execution. Harvard Business Press.

Ross, J. W., & Beath, C. M. 2006. Sustainable IT

outsourcing success: Let enterprise architecture be

your guide. MIS Quarterly Executive, 5(4), 181-192.

Ross, J. 2004. Maturity Matters: How Firms Generate

Value From Enterprise Architecture. Research

Briefing, CISR, Sloan School of Management, MIT,

4(2B).

EnterpriseArchitectureComponentsforCloudServiceConsumers

365