The document discusses the role of a business architect in leveraging emerging technology trends to innovate existing business models. It outlines several key technology trends including utility platforms, digital spaces, personalization through analytics, networked worlds, democratization of knowledge, transparency, and edge economies. These trends require architectural thinking using concepts like ecosystems, industry stacks, platforms, and APIs. The role of a business architect is to understand these trends and collaborate to apply them in a way that achieves a company's business network strategy and positions the company competitively within its industry.

1. Time to be a Business Architect
Prof. Bala Iyer
Twitter: @BalaIyer

2. 2Time to be a Business Architect
Contents
• Technology Trends
• Why care about architecture?
• How to transform architecture?
• IT architecture concepts (city planning analogy, managed evolution)
• What to measure about architecture?
• Metrics
• Future - BONUS!! API

3. 3Time to be a Business Architect
• A business architect understands the emerging technology trends and uses them to
innovate on existing business models.
• To be a business architect:
• Understand technology trends
• Identify current business models
• Lear to apply concepts like:
• Ecosystems
• Industry stack
• Platforms
• APIs
Business Architect

4. 4Time to be a Business Architect
Dawn of the network era
• Atoms to bits
• Everything is connected
• Network effects --Winner-take-all markets
• Service-oriented thinking
• Warrants strategic consideration
• Strategic errors can be costly
• Requires a different lens

5. 5Time to be a Business Architect
Disruptive Innovation
Clayton Christensen, HBS Professor

6. 6Time to be a Business Architect
Technologies at Work
6

7. 7Time to be a Business Architect
Remember
7
• It’s important when discussing technology to
ask what business problem is it solving
• Padmasree
• Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for Cisco.

8. 8Time to be a Business Architect
Evolving IT StackEvolving IT Stack
Hardware
Software
Intelligence/Services/Analytics
Cloud
Users
Social
Gaming
Behavioral
Change Layer
Mobile
8
Social
Mobile
Analytics
Cloud

9. 9Time to be a Business Architect
Trends
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1. Arrival of Utility Platforms and platform based competition 
Agility
2. Digital spaces -- Disintegration of organizational boundaries 
Cost savings
3. Sensors  Personalization -Information explosion  Big Data
and Analytics  Customer satisfaction
4. Connected world  Era of Networks  Access to resources
5. Democratization of knowledge  Learning organization
6. Age of Transparency  low coordination costs
7. Edge Economy  Production to consumption logic  Innovation
• Era of the Entrepreneurial Leader

10. 10Time to be a Business Architect
Utility Platforms
10
• Social
• Commerce
• Analytics (measurement)
• Open source
• Critical capability: Culture of fast
experiments
• Reward: Agility
Platform-based competition is the norm with dominant winners and role players
We are moving from the internet economy to the App economy

11. 11Time to be a Business Architect
Digital Spaces
11
• Digital identity
• Digital influence
• Virtual workforce
• Sharing economy
• Critical Capability: Navigation
• Rewards: Cost Savings, innovation
Digital natives are forming a larger portion of the working economy and
enforcing their values

12. 12Time to be a Business Architect
Personalization -- Analytics
12
• Data is the currency, insight is the goal
• Critical Capability: Sense making
• Rewards: Customer Loyalty
Data is back in vogue and a key source of competitive advantage

13. 13Time to be a Business Architect
Networked World --Social Networks
13
• Wielding digital influence
• Building social capital
• Strength of weak ties
• Critical Capability: Architectural control
• Rewards: Access to resources
Connections are the new wealth,
isolation is the new poverty.

14. 14Time to be a Business Architect
Democratization of knowledge
14
• MOOCs
• Blogs, Twitter, discussion boards
• On the job learning
• Develop spectrum of skills
• Learn how to learn (know, do, be)
• Build identity
• Critical Capability: Information Quality Filters
• Rewards: Learning organization
BRIC nations are using smart devices to overcome the
digital divide and join the knowledge economy

15. 15Time to be a Business Architect
Transparency -- Knowledge is Power
15
• Meritocracy rules
• Distributed management
• Critical Capability: Principles driven management
• Rewards: Low overheads

16. 16Time to be a Business Architect
Edge Economy
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• Decision rights reside where they have the best access to customer information.
• Critical Capability: Learning from users
• Rewards: Innovation

17. 17Time to be a Business Architect
Video
Source: Startup Owners Manual, presentation by Steve Blank

18. 18Time to be a Business Architect
Question
• Consider each trend discussed
• How does it affect Cumming’s business model?
• Can you think of a company exploiting that business
trend?
• What value can it provide to Cumming’s?

19. 19Time to be a Business Architect
Healthcare in transition

20. 20Time to be a Business Architect
Automotive industry in transition
100 million lines of code

21. 21Time to be a Business Architect
New Context for every Company
Operating in the New Context Demands a Business
Architect

22. 22Time to be a Business Architect
New Language for Architectural Thinking
• Ecosystem
• Industry Stack
• Competitors, complementors, infrastructure providers,
platform providers, and orchestrators
• Business model innovation
• API and Modularity
• Cloud

23. 23Time to be a Business Architect
Ecosystem
Loose networks – of suppliers, distributors,
outsourcing firms, makers of related products or
services, technology providers, and a host of other
organizations – that affect, and are affected by the
creation and delivery of a company’s own offerings.
[Marco Iansiti]

24. 24Time to be a Business Architect
M-payment Stakeholders
• Platform provider
• Network Operators
• Banks
• Credit Card Issuers
• Device Manufacturers
• Merchants
• Users
24

25. 25Time to be a Business Architect
Modularity, interoperability and loose coupling are desirable properties
Key Design Concepts
• Design
• Designs are the instructions based on knowledge that turn resources into things that people
use and value
• Modularity
• Degree to which a system’s components can be separated and recombined [Schilling 2000]
• A module is a unit whose structural elements are powerfully connected among themselves
and relatively weakly to elements in other units [Clark and Baldwin]
• Interdependence within and independence across modules
• Abstraction, information hiding, and interface
• Interoperability
• The ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the
information that has been exchanged
• Business Models
• Alignment

26. 26Time to be a Business Architect
Design process
• A design process is a set of activities that starts
with someone’s problem and then devises an
architecture and artifact to solve the problem.

27. 27Time to be a Business Architect
Why design?
• Design before you build
• Have a model to understand and respond to changes – move from
as-is to to-be
• Theory /business model or a road map of your assumptions about
the business
• Design can be conscious or un-conscious
• Facilitate communication of strategy and intent

28. 28Time to be a Business Architect
Buildings Without Architecture:
The Winchester Mystery House
Number of rooms: 160
Cost: $5,500,000
Date of Construction: 1884 - September 5,
1922 (38 Continuous years!)
Number of bedrooms: approx. 40
Number of kitchens: 5 or 6
Number of staircases: 40, total stair steps - 367
Blueprints available: No, Mrs. Winchester never
had a master set of blueprints, but did sketch out
individual rooms on paper and even tablecloths!

29. 29Time to be a Business Architect
What is Architecture?
• Architecture: specifies what modules will be part of the system and what their
functions will be, given design rules
• Architecture has:
• Interfaces: describe in detail how the modules will interact, including how they fit together
and communicate
• Standards: test a module’s conformity to design rules and measure the module’s
performance relative to other modules.
Architecture wins technology wars

30. 30Time to be a Business Architect
Elements of Architecture
Principles
Policies
Architectural
Frameworks and Strategies
Processes Standards
Detailed Design Specifications
Conceptual
Logical
Physical
What artifacts are used at various levels?

31. 31Time to be a Business Architect
Business Architecture
• We define business architecture as the set of
design rules, policies, and key decisions that
position the firm in a business network in a way
that allows it to design the best business
model.

32. 32Time to be a Business Architect
Business Architect
• The role of the business architect is to
collaborate with the leaders of the firm to
interpret how business architecture both
creates and/or constrains the ability of the firm
to achieve its business network strategy.
• From a skills perspective, a business architect
can negotiate strategic, technical and change
management issues.

33. 33Time to be a Business Architect
Competencies
• Understand and deploy the economics of networks,
clouds, and business platforms as an essential element
of the justification of business networks
• Define a coherent architecture control strategy that is
both feasible and defendable in a complex business
network
• Redefine what constitutes the core systems of the firm

34. 34Time to be a Business Architect
Designed
Architecture
Emergent
Architecture
Architecture
Gap
Expected
Value
Realized
Value
Guides
Projects
Design of system
Implementation
System use
Gives
rise to
Value
Gap
It is Ongoing..
• Espoused
• Is this what we communicate?
• Emergent
• Is this what really matters?

35. 35Time to be a Business Architect
• If you were implementing analytics at Cummings, how
would you apply design thinking?
• What goals would you set?
• What are the different components?
• What principles would you implement?
• What outcomes would you measure?
Question

36. 36Time to be a Business Architect
...why Does Architectural Thinking Fail?
• Requires buy-in and collaboration across project teams
and business units
• Lack of communication between technologists and
strategists
• Compromise must be brokered in terms of time lines
and choices
• Senior management often lacks enough understanding
to evaluate the value of architecture

37. 37Time to be a Business Architect
Another weapon to use while innovating around
Business models is APIs or interfaces

38. 38Time to be a Business Architect
Tech definition:
An Application Programming Interface is a way for
two computer applications to talk to each other over
a network (predominantly the Internet) using a
common language that they both understand.
Business definition:
A way to get your data to partners and apps.
Essentially a contract.
What is an API?
Amundsen’s Dogs, Information Halos, and APIs The epic story of your API strategy Sam Ramji,
@sramji, Apigee

39. 39Time to be a Business Architect
Consider this:
60%+ traffic through APIs
More bandwidth through APIs than all the
websites
Entirely API based product and ecosystem
30% of primetime internet traffic through streaming
service managed by APIs
API drives all forms of distribution - website,
apps, partners
Amundsen’s Dogs, Information Halos, and APIs The epic story of your API strategy Sam Ramji,
@sramji, Apigee

40. 40Time to be a Business Architect

41. 41Time to be a Business Architect
API progress
• 1990s -APIs was the sole province of operating
system vendors -- IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Red
Hat, etc.
• 2000s - Internet-centric companies such as
eBay, Amazon, and Netflix began exposing their
information assets through APIs.
• 2010s- traditional brands -- such as
Mastercard, Comcast, USA Today, The New York
Times, Best Buy, and others

42. 42Time to be a Business Architect
Emergence of a new role -- Developer

43. 43Time to be a Business Architect
Developers now sit between you and your customers
and innovate for end users
They are like the retail store in the value chain
developers
Amundsen’s Dogs, Information Halos, and APIs The epic story of your API strategy Sam Ramji,
@sramji, Apigee

44. 44Time to be a Business Architect
ConsumerRetail StoreProducer
20th
Century: Packaged
Goods
21st
Century: Internet
Services
ConsumerDeveloperProvider App
Amundsen’s Dogs, Information Halos, and APIs The epic story of your API strategy Sam Ramji,
@sramji, Apigee

45. 45Time to be a Business Architect
Key Takeaways
• Technology based innovation can be learned by analogy
• Architectural Thinking is necessary for business model innovation using technology
• The building blocks for such thinking are business models, ecosystems, industry
stack, platforms and APIs
• Managed evolution, a methodology for architecture transformation, is based on
managing an architecture by identifying stable business domains and services
• Transformation of architecture can require several years, but will create significant
improvements in business flexibility and cost position

46. 46Time to be a Business Architect
Q & A
Questions?

47. 47Time to be a Business Architect
• API pricing link
• Forget “post-PC”—pervasive computing and cloud will change the nature of IT link
• The Paris Guide to IT architecture by Jürgen Laartz, Ernst Sonderegger, and
Johan Vinckier, McKinsey Quarterly, Number 3, 2000. link
Reference