IT customers, application providers, and system integrators generally do not use standard representations to describe either application requirements or proposals to satisfy them. The resulting ambiguity exposes application selection and integration processes, however well-structured and executed, to error and delay. Adoption of the ArchiMate® visual modeling language, an Open Group standard, would therefore increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the business application marketplace.

1. Article
Streamlining IT Application Selection and Integration with a Standard
Modeling Language
By Iver Band
Abstract
IT customers, application providers, and system integrators generally do not use standard representations to describe
either application requirements or proposals to satisfy them. The resulting ambiguity exposes application selection and
®
integration processes, however well-structured and executed, to error and delay. Adoption of the ArchiMate visual
modeling language, an Open Group standard, would therefore increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the business
application marketplace.
can resolve these ambiguities, but often only after lots of
WHY ISN’T IT EASIER TO SELECT AND INTEGRATE
churn and rework.
APPLICATIONS?
Involving application providers only intensifies this
By now, IT customer organizations should find selecting
challenge. Crafting an RFP, answering respondents’
and integrating a major packaged or hosted application a
questions, and clarifying their responses all add
lot easier than it actually is. Standards for common IT
additional perspectives and agendas, as does system
components, assemblies, and services are mature or
integrator selection and subsequent collaboration.
steadily maturing, as are standards frameworks for many
Indeed, many vendors task very different people with
industries and functions. Tools and APIs for all phases of
initial relationship-building, responding to RFIs and
application development are generally rich, full-featured,
RFPs, and delivering formal customer presentations.
and increasingly well-integrated. Custom development of
The customer must therefore reconcile a variety of
entire applications has become less necessary for IT
graphic, written, and spoken material from different
groups due to a wide variety of mature software
sources.
packages and a growing number of hosted applications.
Traditional IT challenges such as agile software HOW CAN APPLICATION SELECTION AND
development, project management, information security, INTEGRATION BECOME EASIER?
and operations management are supported by broadly
What could be done to enhance the certainty, efficiency,
recognized methods and bodies of knowledge.
and velocity of the IT applications marketplace?
However, when IT customers select and integrate a Participants could use standard representations of IT
major application involving diverse user communities application supply and demand that use graphics as well
and legacy applications, the pace of work often as text. Both customers and vendors could use
accelerates as the pace of accomplishment slows to a ArchiMate, The Open Group standard visual modeling
crawl. Much of this difficulty stems from the complexity language for enterprise architecture, to represent
and ambiguity of integrating the contributions of business, data, application, and technology
stakeholders with diverse perspectives, responsibilities, architectures, as well as architectures that combine and
and intentions. To select applications, customers and relate these layers. As of this writing, the ArchiMate 2.0
their consultants typically use structured methods that extensions for expressing motivations and
collect and weigh application and vendor attributes implementation plans are nearing ratification, and some
against prioritized or weighted current and expected enterprise architecture practitioners are working with
requirements. Some even construct conceptual models them already.
of their current and desired states. However, since the
If customers modeled their conceptual application
same words or pictures can mean different things to
architectures and application requirements using
different people, ambiguity is unavoidable. As a result, it
ArchiMate, application providers could respond in kind.
is often difficult to predict the progress or ultimate impact
Certainly, free-form customer-supplier interaction would
of selection processes due to instability and
still be necessary, but a commonly understood model
misunderstandings concerning application scope,
would organize and focus these exchanges. Customers
requirements, and key stakeholders. Selection teams
could better orient application providers with models that
associate requirements with broader concerns and key
70 © Journal of Enterprise Architecture – May 2011

2. stakeholders, as well as critical business capabilities and representatives should receive basic instruction in
processes. Customers requiring implementation plans reading ArchiMate diagrams.
could tie requirements and conceptual system If more IT customers, application providers, and system
architectures to specific projects within broader integrators embrace ArchiMate, they will increase the
programs. effectiveness and efficiency of their own organizations,
Application providers could respond by elaborating their trading partners, and ultimately the IT applications
customer models with their proposed applications and marketplace. Verifying these improvements could be the
integration approaches. Both customers and application subject of future research as ArchiMate gains broader
providers would benefit from the precision and re- acceptance.
usability of these models. Customers and their system
integrators would have a head start on their target ABOUT THE AUTHOR
application architectures, and application providers could Iver Band is an enterprise architect at Standard
re-use them for subsequent proposals. The selection Insurance Company, where he works on next-generation
process would also prepare customers and system customer service solutions as well as enterprise
integrators to expedite application integration by building architecture methodology and tools. He also participates
on a shared model. in The Open Group ArchiMate Forum. Iver joined
ArchiMate can be easily styled or extended to meet the Standard Insurance in 2008 after 16 years at HP, where
needs of particular industries, functions, organizations, his roles included software and IT engineering,
or methodologies. Modelers can add metadata to the architecture, and management. At HP, he was also the
objects represented by its symbols, and can even add or second Visiting Technologist at HP Labs, where he led
replace symbols. In these cases, the extending party just the development of a patented method for managing
needs to provide a reference that explains its styles or network access control.
extensions to its trading partners. Eventually, the
mapping of ArchiMate to the Object Management Group
(OMG) XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) standard will
allow direct translation of ArchiMate models into other
languages.
IT CUSTOMER ORGANIZATIONS CAN LEAD THE
WAY
ArchiMate 1.0 is a recent (2009) standard, and many in
the IT industry have not even heard of it, but IT
customers have the power to drive mainstream adoption.
They can use ArchiMate in their application selection
and integration efforts, and require or encourage
vendors to respond in kind.
ArchiMate is fairly intuitive, and diagrams with well-
labeled symbols are therefore broadly comprehensible
with minimal introduction. The language is supported by
a number of major modeling tools, and is compatible
with a wide range of architecture development
methodologies. I have used ArchiMate diagrams with
vendor representatives as well as senior executives in
both IT and user organizations, and have found that they
work at least as well as diagrams with non-standard
graphics. Also, it is easy to identify ArchiMate symbols
by annotating them the first time they are used, or by
providing simple legends or even brief verbal
explanations. Therefore, vendors should not be afraid to
take the initiative to use ArchiMate diagrams in
proposals and project deliverables, even if the customer
has not requested it. Enterprise architects and other
professional modelers, however, should prepare
themselves with self-study or formal training. Also, a
wide range of IT professionals and influential user
© Journal of Enterprise Architecture – May 2011 71