The Open Group Architecture Framework [TOGAF]

The Open Group Architecture Framework is best known by its acronym, TOGAF. TOGAF is owned by The Open Group. The role of the IT architect is to be able to understand the business problem and the business domain and explain it to the technical people, and to be able to understand the technology domains and explain the technical possibilities to business people.


TOGAF divides the enterprise architecture into four categories. These are the pillars of TOGAF and are known as architecture domains.

• Business architecture—Describes the processes the business uses to meet its goals
• Application architecture—Describes how specific applications are designed and how they interact with each other
• Data architecture—Describes how the enterprise data stores are organized and accessed
• Technical architecture—Describes the hardware and software infrastructure that supports applications and their interactions

TOGAF can be viewed as an architecture process instead as an architecture framework. Architecture Development Method (ADM) is the main part of TOGAF. TOGAF views the world of enterprise architecture as a continuum of architectures, ranging from highly generic to highly specific. It calls this continuum the Enterprise Continuum. The enterprise continuum has different levels, those levels are

• Foundation architecture: This is the most basic architecture and this can be used by any IT organization in the world.
• Common system architecture: This is next level of architecture. This will be common among many organizations. But this cannot be used by all organizations as it is. Among a group of organizations this is common, but the architecture for another group might be different from architecture of another set of organizations
• Industry Architecture: This level of architecture represents architecture applicable for an industry. This can be used by a set of enterprises in same domain.
• Organizational architecture: This is the most specific level of architecture. These are the architectures that are specific to a given enterprise.

TOGAF 8.1 has two categories in enterprise continuum. The first one is architecture continuum which is same the continuum explained already in this paper. The second one is known as solution/product continuum. The different levels in this are similar to corresponding levels in architecture continuum. The different levels in solution/ product continuum are

• Products and services
• System solutions
• Industry solutions
• Organization solutions

Architecture Development Method (ADM) has the following nine basic phases:

• Preliminary phase: Framework and principles. Get everyone on board with the plan.
• Phase A: Architecture vision. Define your scope and vision and map your overall strategy.
• Phase B: Business architecture. Describe your current and target business architectures and determine the gap between them.
• Phase C: Information system architectures. Develop target architectures for your data and applications.
• Phase D: Technology architecture. Create the overall target architecture that you will implement in future phases.
• Phase E: Opportunities and solutions. Develop the overall strategy, determining what you will buy, build or reuse, and how you will implement the architecture described in phase D.
• Phase F: Migration planning. Prioritize projects and develop the migration plan.
• Phase G: Implementation governance. Determine how you will provide oversight to the implementation.
• Phase H: Architecture change management. Monitor the running system for necessary changes and determine whether to start a new cycle, looping back to the preliminary phase.

These phases provide a standardized way of analyzing the enterprise and planning and managing the actual implementation. The advantages of using the TOGAF approach are that it provides:

• A process for designing an information system in terms of a set of building blocks.
• Details of how these building blocks interact and fit together.
• Establishes a common vocabulary for use in the design, implementation and governance, etc. of enterprise architecture.
• Includes a list of recommended standards to use with the organization’s enterprise architecture.
• Contains a set of structured and rigorous methods for the implementation and governance of enterprise architecture.
• It can be easily mapped to other tools like Zachman framework, DODAF, COBIT4, ITIL touch points, MDA modeling standards etc.

TOGAF is important for the enterprise IT architects for one simple reason: It's needed. Large organizations can no longer afford to create isolated applications that perform single functions and don't communicate with other applications. Nor can they ignore the effect that actual business conditions have on their technology requirements. Enterprise architecture is stepping in to provide the link between a business and its technology infrastructure, and TOGAF provides a standard way, using best practices, to enable that link. Architects and developers who want to be architects can leverage TOGAF now, making themselves more effective and more useful in industry both today and in the future.

More on TOGAF is available at

 http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf8-doc/arch/

Technology and life

Technology is a part of our life. If we think a day without using any electronic devices or any technology, how will it be? If we think a day of ours from morning to evening, what all things we use? Among all those devices and technologies, one device is always with us like our shadow. Yes, the mobile phone is too attached to our life. Let us see some facts from surveys before discussing further on this.

An Indian smart phone user spends around three hours a day on the handset mostly in entertainments apps in mobile. According to a Nielsen-Informate Mobile Intelligence survey, Indian smart phone user spends 72 per cent of the time on activities such as gaming, entertainment, applications (apps) and internet related content.

The same survey states that the Indian young mobile users prefer texting (sms) and chatting than the vice calls. From the survey, it is understood that the young generation, age group 15 – 24, uses mobile phone more than three hours a day compared to an average two hours a day of usage of the people in the age group of over 31 years. The younger generation spends around 45 minutes in chatting and SMS compared to around 15 minutes for the age group more than 31 years. It also found that 68 per cent of the 15-24 year olds used a chat app last month as compared to 42 per cent for the 31 year old and above category. So many other facts are also there in the survey results.

Electronics Hardware Design: a perception of a designer

1 Introduction

This article tries to throw some light to the board design industry in India. Board design industry represents a small sector in the semiconductor industry. we see a general structure of the industry, hardware design flow, typical business models, challenges, opportunities etc. This is prepared by referring various research reports and articles on this topic.

2 Industry

Any industry has different players. Electronic design industry is also not an exception for this fact. According to one Article in “Electronics For You {EFY}” on its May 2009 issue, India is slowly becoming the design capital of the world. Design service is a supply side activity. We can classify the entire semiconductor industry to different heads namely

• Very large scale integration (VLSI) design segment
•  Embedded software design segment
•  Board/hardware design segment

Hardware board design industry is the smallest contributor to the semiconductor industry in  India. The majority of the board designs are less than 10 layer boards. There are two categories in this sector. One is analog design and second one is digital design. India performs very well in the digital design segment  but India is not at its best in analog design. Hardware board design can be the development of reference boards for the ICs or board design as part of new product developments or as a hobby or... India has the ability to design complex multi-layer boards. The growth of this segment is aided by 

• Increased outsourcing by service providers.
• Re-engineering opportunities
• Captives partnering third-party service providers and bringing in increased business. 

Cloud Computing

We can see that the term cloud computing is used to mean hosting of hardware in external data centre, utility computing, platform services, and application hosting. It is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product. It represents a new business model in which the service is delivered using different internet protocols. According to “computer world” magazine, “Cloud computing describes a system where users can connect to a vast network of computing resources, data and servers that reside somewhere "out there," usually on the Internet, rather than on a local machine or a LAN or in a data center. Cloud computing can give on- demand access to supercomputer-level power, even from a thin client or mobile device such as a smart phone or laptop”.  The cloud service providers deliver service through internet, which are accessed using a web browser client while the actual business software and server are at a remote place. One classification of cloud is based on the different layers at which we can share the services; this is possible once the computers are connected using internet protocols. The different layers are

• Client
• Application
• Platform
• Infrastructure
• Server

Now we will see where the services provided by the companies fit in the above set of layers. The cloud client represents software or hardware or a combination of both which facilitates the cloud operation. The cloud client doesn’t have an independent use if cloud doesn’t exist. Example can be a web browser

Application layer represents software as a service (SaaS). SaaS is software that is developed and hosted by the SaaS vendor and which the end user accesses over the Internet. Unlike traditional applications that users install on their computers or servers, SaaS software is owned by the vendor and runs on computers in the vendor’s data centre. Broadly speaking, all customers of a SaaS vendor use the same software: these are one-size-fits-all solutions. Well known examples are Salesforce.com, Google’s Gmail and Apps, instant messaging from AOL, Yahoo and Google, and Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) from Vonage and Skype.

Next layer is platform layer. Cloud services in this layer is known as platform as a service (PaaS), which delivers a computing platform or solution stack as service. PaaS provides virtualized servers on which users can run applications, or develop new ones, without having to worry about maintaining the operating systems, server hardware, load balancing or computing capacity. Well known examples include Microsoft’s Azure and Salesforce’s Force.com. It facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers.

In infrastructure layer cloud services are known as infrastructure as a service (IaaS). IaaS means cpu, grids or clusters, virtualized servers, memory, networks, storage and systems software are delivered as a service.  It delivers computer infrastructure – typically a platform virtualization environment – as a service, along with raw (block) storage and networking. The best known example is Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3), but traditional IT vendors such as IBM, and telecoms providers such as AT&T and Verizon are also offering solutions.

The server layer represents the hardware and software solutions to provide the cloud services.

In order to satisfy the requirements of the business, the cloud should have some properties. Clouds should be uniquely identifiable so that the clouds can be used with other applications and with other clouds. Dynamic configuration of clouds is also an important requirement.  A cloud must be secure and system management technologies for cloud should integrate the constraints on business and the constraints on the infrastructure to make them manageable in aggregate.

Public cloud is one deployment type of cloud in which the resources and services are shared to general public on self service based in internet. Community cloud is a type of deployment in which cloud shares infrastructure between several organisations from a specific community with common concerns (security, compliance, jurisdiction, etc.), whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. Private cloud is another form in which cloud is operated for an organization and the infrastructure required will be provided in the organization itself. A hybrid form of above described deployments is also possible based on the requirement of the business.  

There are so many things in favour and against cloud computing. The great advantage of cloud computing is “elasticity”: the ability to add capacity or applications almost at a moment’s notice. It is now a viable business option for corporations and industry, the reasons for which are many: decreased costs, usage-based pricing, increased functionality, improved collaboration and communication, resource pooling, and 'anywhere access' to applications and data. A small initial cost and pay as you go approach may appeal to small scale industries, but the total cost of ownership for a long run will be more in the case of cloud. Larger companies may find it is easier to have collaborations in cloud since it won’t ask for any access to company’s local network from the other company.  

Even though we talked a lot of god things about cloud computing, there are downsides also for the cloud. We may not have a control over our data in cloud as we have in our own system. The system management tools for cloud may not address all of the system management issues pertaining to one particular company.  The cloud users risk their data in cloud systems because the cloud systems use proprietary encryption standards and this may not be recoverable on a system failure or if the company wants to work with another cloud provider. So the major disadvantage is that different service providers use different technology and standards in cloud. Clud increase the technology dependency of the business.

The migration to cloud may drive so many business opportunities. The content and technology providers will give more importance to content protection, access control, secrecy, end user licensing etc. Designs and trademarks will become more important, increasing the need to ensure the protection they provide for traditional goods and services also available in the online environment. Business depends on the receiving payment from someone so the copyright protection will be too much important in cloud world. Unlike the packaged software model - where you're selling the software itself - in most cloud models, you are only selling access to remotely-executed software. This opens up new payment models - for instance, on-demand, subscription and metered services - as well as entirely new business models - for instance, ad-supported software. Cloud will encourage more business to go online and provide service through internet.

According to one report in Economic times on June 27, 2011, what the shift to cloud computing means to India “As this shift ushers in an evolution in IP law, courts, legislature, technology companies and consumers will face a growing number of complex legal, commercial and policy issues. Given its vibrant software sector and highly-educated technical workforce, India is likely to be the source of significant innovation in cloud computing. This, combined with significant growth in intellectual property assets that has averaged 11% annually over the past three years - according to a report, IP landscape in India, by Zinnov Management Consulting - means that India is among a handful of countries with the opportunity and expertise to be at the forefront of the technical, business and legal developments relating to cloud computing.”

Green IT

Green IT refers to the environmentally sustainable computing or IT. According to one definition Green IT is “an organization’s ability to systematically apply environmental sustainability criteria to the design, production, sourcing, use and disposal of the IT technical infrastructure as well as within the human and managerial components of the existing IT infrastructure”. Another definition says Green IT is “the study and practice of designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated subsystems—such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systems—efficiently and effectively with minimal or no impact on the environment”. All definitions of Green IT talk about the environment friendly ways of doing business. At one side we need resources for productive work and on the other side we need to dispose the waste generated in the process. The colour green reminds us the colour of nature, this Green IT concept gives ideas about IT can help in reducing carbon emission and effective use of energy. In the coming paragraphs, we discuss more on this.

It is widely assumed that a typical computer uses about .65 kilowatts per hour (kWh) in use, or .35kWh (stand-by) and .03kWh in hibernate mode. Assuming that the computer spends 220 working days with 12 hours in operational mode (1716kW) and 12 hours in standby mode (924kW), and spends 24 hours in hibernate mode for the remaining 145 days (104kW), it will consume 2145 kW of electricity. According to UK government figures, 1kWh produces 0.51kg of carbon dioxide (CO2), and 1,960kWh produces 1 tonne of CO2. This makes allowance for the fact that with current nuclear capacity (which is reducing) some 15% of electricity is generated without producing any CO2. This means that a single PC in office mode costs an insignificant amount to run (£16.00 per annum), but generates 1.094 tonnes of CO2 per annum equivalent to the CO2 produced by a single passenger flying from London to Cairo – spread this across a distributed desktop environment of 2,000 PCs and you have an annual carbon footprint of 2,188 tonnes of CO2.

The above given description may give us a feel that IT industry is one of the major cause of global carbon emission but according to Gartner Research the contribution of IT industry is 2% of total carbon emission which is equivalent to the amount of CO2 emitted by aviation industry. What about the rest 98%? The good side of this is IT can do a lot regarding this. There are substantial inefficiencies in the technology and use behaviors that can be readily addressed and IT can significantly contribute to control and reduce the 98% of CO2 emissions caused by other activities and industries.

In order to understand the Green IT prospects of a company, we can do G readiness analysis. G readiness analysis consists of five dimensions: attitude, policy, practice, governance and technology. Awareness and concern of IT people regarding the climate change due IT artifacts and operations is represented by attitude dimension. It can be reflected in the IT   organizations concern to improve the energy efficiency in managing the IT technical infrastructure, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and e-waste. Green IT Policy encompasses the frameworks an organization has developed and put in place to apply environmental sustainability criteria throughout its value chain including IT sourcing, IT operations and services and IT end-of-life management. Green IT Practice refers to what extent an IT organization has translated its Green IT concerns and policies into actions along the IT activity value chain. Green IT Technology reflects the extent to which the IT organization acquires and builds a more environmentally effective IT infrastructure. Green IT Governance is the operating model that defines the administration of Green IT initiatives and is closely related to the policy dimension. These five dimensions help the organization to improve its performance a Green IT company.

The NASSCOM Green IT initiative is holistic and focuses on the following areas:

•  Make IT Green: Adoption by industry of green technologies and practices including green buildings, green computing infrastructure (energy efficient data centers, power efficient computers etc.) sharing infrastructure (shared data centres etc) and addressing issues like e-waste management.

• Make Green Happen Through IT: Deploy IT solutions  which help firms & businesses become green including like cloud computing, video-conferencing, intelligent transport systems, web-conferencing, motion and heat detection sensors among others.

• Make Green Warriors: Encourage the over 2 million employees of the IT-BPO industry to adopt a Green life-style and thereby become change agents to create a sustainable impact in the society around themselves through increasing awareness and more importantly changing behaviors.

Various models are available to assess the Green IT aspects of the IT organizations. Various certifications like ‘energy star’ are available to encourage the Green IT concept.  For a better future and for a better environment, we have to practice green.  We need to work on the unnecessary power consumption practices we have. We can address so many things by a just behaviour change. In order to reduce the waste, the companies should work on the life span of the products. Various approaches that an IT organization can follow include product longevity, software and deployment optimisation, power management, material recycling and telecommuting.

Product longevity refers the making of products with bigger ecological footprint which means longer life cycle. This will reduce the e-waste and thus contribute towards the Green IT movement. Software and deployment optimization refers the best optimized practices in software making which will reduce the usage of the hardware resources and that will help to keep the globe green. Areas to be taken care in this regard include algorithmic efficiency, optimized resource allocation, more virtualization and effective and efficient use of terminal servers. The power management aspects look into the reduction in power consumption by the IT systems in the world.  In power management, we concentrate on reducing power consumption at data centres. Cloud computing has a good role here. Another area that we concentrate is the operating system support in reducing power consumption, this can be done by providing option like sleep mode, hibernate etc. We already have such options, but we need to fine tune the power control options of operating system. Power supplies are another area where the companies can concentrate. We can use switched mode power supplies instead of LDO based ones which consumes more power for the voltage conversions in the PCB. Storage video card and display are some more areas where we can improve the power consumption. By using the latest technologies for storage and display, we can drastically reduce the power consumption.

Knowledge management and consumer behaviour

On that heavily raining Saturday night, without even knocking the door
he (she??!!!!) tried enter into house!!!. Ha.. That was a vain
attempt. But that determined blighter managed to open the window...
He saw a mobile which was kept for charging. That was the
only thing he was able to grab.. Using a long stick he
moved the mobile near to window and .... Yea, you
can imagine what happened later..............

That was Mr.Ken's mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was his companion for quite a long time.
They started their journey together from the Sangeetha Mobile shop at Forum mall Bangalore..
Thereafter it was with him during his happiness, sadness, a little eccentric moods...

The day they met was quite memorable. After long hours of match making on internet Mr.Ken decided to see the mobile and buy outright.. Mr. Ken had checked many profiles in various websites, had read many reviews and had done a lot of technical comparisons with other models... At last he decided to go with W810i, a model from Sony Ericsson.

On that evening after visiting the Garuda mall at Richmond Road Mr.Ken reached Forum mall at Koramangala. With his friend Mr.Ken started searching for Sangeetha Mobile shop..
"Yeah..it is over there"  said his friend.
They entered the shop..
"May I help you sir" Somebody asked from behind by seeing us searching fr something..
"Oh..sure.. I am looking for a mobile .. Can you show me that model...that one...K510i"
 Mr.Ken and his friend started comparing different  mobiles with W810 features...
"Which one has the best picture quality K510i or W810i.? ....."
Salesman tried hard to sell some LG model to Mr.Ken. But kept on comparing all mobiles with W810i
After hearing so many such questions the salesman asked "Why can't you buy W810i? Why are you waisting my time?"...
Mr.Ken went there to see W810i after a thorough search in internet. He asked questions to satisfy his ego.  He ultimately ended up in buying W810i itself...


But on that rainy Saturday...!

One question is left unanswered here. Why people behave this way? If someone likes something then he or she chooses the same irrespective of however hard the marketers try to change the customer's mind.. Then how a marketer can conquer the mind-space of customers.

This was a decision by an informed customer. So companies can tackles such situations by employing the techniques of knowledge management. A combination of psychology and knowledge management tools will be the deadliest weapon of a marketer in coming days. Companies should be able to control the data and information from data But how? There is a long way to go to achieve such a control. 
   

Using emotions

This is something came to my mind. We should not reply to all statements with the same tone those have, i.e. we should not act as a mirror of emotions.  If behavior of someone changes our emotions momentarily, we can try something to calm down or can take a thoughtful reaction or simply a small break. We may try to reply to that with a clear mind and with clear thoughts. If we reply momentarily without clear thoughts or if we reply under the influence of uncontrolled emotions, that will worsen/improve the situation. It will make the situation complex. That may be against our wish or against the situation. We should not even share the things with others without mulling over it. A thoughtful reply might ease the situation.  We may thing that sharing will reduce trouble but not always. If we want to have control over situations in life, We should develop the habit of controlling and properly using our emotions at right place and at the right time.  The emotional intelligence is a key thing in one's relative gain or loss in life. An adult is one who learns from his experiences. Can we learn from future?