Shortly after earning a Master of Science in Operations Research and Statistics at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Bombay), I joined as a Research Scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Lab for the Computer Science Department. I developed an AI application for routing and scheduling crews that delivered operation efficiency of 36% for our customers and won numerous awards and national recognition.

Later, moving to the United States, I worked as a Software Engineer with companies such as AT&T and IBM. One key highlight was developing security architecture for single sign-on for over 200 mission-critical apps at AT&T. It was followed by a stint with NLM, where I delivered Data Integration between the NLM and FDA, Search Engine, and Conversational AI for self-service.

Next, I worked at Aol as an Operations Architect, a key role in enabling billing and subscription services and setting up enterprise standards and best practices. While at Aol, I earned a Master of Science in Technology Management at George Mason University and a Chief Information Officer Certificate at United States Federal CIO University.

Over the last ten years, I have led consulting, solution center, and pre-sales at SRA International / General Dynamics Information Technology, CenturyLink / Savvis / Lumen, and IBM / Kyndryl. Notable Accomplishments in Apps and Data Space:

• SRA International / General Dynamics Information Technology: Executed the modernization of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine adverse event reporting system (The Largest Program in the World) to enable self-service and green initiatives to deliver digital reporting and remote work options.
• IBM / Kyndryl: Onboarded a large new logo client in the insurance industry to adopt Hybrid Cloud, DevOps, and API-driven managed services to deliver on-demand one-click Guidewire Apps environments, reducing the environment delivery timeline from 45 days to 8 hours.

I have co-founded:

• Software Development and Research Center at Mumbai Education Trust
• Suchna! Portal
• StrategiesTool.com

Learn more about me:

• My Blog: https://techblog.baghel.com
• Resume: https://suchna.com/resume
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaswantsingh

Key Accomplishments:

• Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) Platform: As the Head of Big Data Practice at CenturyLink Technology Solutions (formerly Savvis Inc), I led the delivery of strategy, implementation, and managed services. The Big Data platform solutions that my team provided were instrumental in driving business growth for a leading financial services company and a leading omnichannel retailer.
• Cloud Computing Evangelist: Delivered keynote on Best Practices for Developing and Deploying SaaS at SaaSCon; created Cloud Adoption Strategy framework for Enterprise Hybrid IT Strategies.
  
• Site Reliability Engineering: At Aol, I deployed a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), led the implementation of DevSecOps for the Core Access Operations Apps portfolio for business agility, and authored the book Getting Started with Oracle SOA BPEL Process Manager.

Core Competencies:

• Leadership: Global Management, Profit & Loss (P&L), Financial Engineering, Coaching & Mentoring, Enterprise Architecture, and Analytical Problem Solving
• Data & Cloud: Data Ecosystem, Data Democratization, Data Platform Architectures, Data Stores(Warehouse, Lake, LakeHouse, DataMart, DataMesh), Data Security, Data Hub, and Data Fabric; Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Container as a Service (CaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Serverless & Cloud-Native Architectures with Azure, AWS, GCP, OCI, IBM Cloud, VMWare, and OpenShift
• Apps & Automation: Apps, Software, System, and Infrastructure Implementation, Rationalization, and Migration & Modernization; Release Automation (Continuous Integration/Delivery/Deployments and Testing Automation), CI/CD Pipelines, DevSecOps, Service Automation, Resource Provisioning Automation, and Infrastructure as a Code (IaaC)

IBM / Kyndryl, Inc
Jun 2018 - Present
Client Technology Leader @US Financial Services

• Responsible for CTO advisory initiatives to Kyndryl & Client C-Level executives for co-creating integrated solutions from idea to go-live to deliver enterprise excellence
• Provided mentoring and thought leadership for Digital Transformation, Enterprise Architecture, Apps & Cloud Migration & Modernization, DevSecOps, and Information Technology Outsourcing and Insourcing Initiatives plan and execution. It has produced over $225M in revenue
• Created a framework for assessing app portfolios to develop cloud disposition plans, roadmaps, and business opportunities.
• Onboarded new logo-integrated client in the insurance industry to adopt Hybrid Cloud, DevSecOps, and API-driven managed services to deliver on-demand one-click Guidewire application environment (US Largest Implementation). The solution reduced the environment delivery timeline from 45Days to 8Hours
• Designed enterprise security and compliance mandates solution to deploy Corporate Apps in the Azure Cloud for a strategic outsourcing client in the fintech industry
• Architected Cyber Resiliency and Disaster Recovery solution that delivered 20% TCO savings and enabled an application-based disaster recovery for a strategic outsourcing client in the insurance industry

CenturyLink Inc / Lumen Technologies
Oct 2011 - May 2018
Senior Director - Global Advanced Services Solution Center

• Directed large cross-organization matrix teams for multi-million-dollar complex solutions design and implementations in Apps, Data, Cloud, DevSecOps, SAP, Big Data, Apps & Infrastructure Rationalization, Data Center Migration, Consolidations & Modernization, Integration, and Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery
• Managed and built high performing team of pre-sales and post-sales solutions architects delivering Digital Transformation across global enterprises strategic initiatives plan and execution that produced over $600M in revenue
• Created Cloud Readiness Assessment and Big Data Practice that brought opportunities in Digital Transformation
• Strategic Large Deal Pursuits (LDPs) and Onboarding go-to-person that produced 100% success rates

SRA International / General Dynamics Information Technology, Inc
Mar 2010 - Sep 2011
Chief Architect – Cloud and SOA Center of Excellence

• Cloud and SOA Center of Excellence Leader to provide thought leadership for conceptualizing, creating, and implementing optimized IT solutions in response to the SOWs, RFPs, and RFIs of over $15M that involved technology strategy, rationalization, modernization, integration, development, and operations strategic initiatives plan and execution that produced over $315M in revenue
• Developed Enterprise Cloud vision & strategy and provided technical leadership to engineering and operations stakeholders
• Designed & Delivered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (World’s Largest Program) Apps modernization roadmap that enabled self-service and green initiatives to support paperless reporting and remote office

Previous Professional Experience
Before Feb 2010

• Operations Architect @{America Online (Aol Inc)}
• Software Architect@{United States National Library of Medicine, Lockheed Martin Management Systems Designers (MSD) Inc}
• Co-Founder@{StrategiesTool, Suchna!, Baghel Corporation}
• Senior Software Engineer@{AT&T, IBM Global Services}
• Research Scientist@{Founding Member@Mumbai Educational Trust’s Institute of Software Development & Research, and Artificial Intelligence Research Lab, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay}

• Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies & Design Study Group, Cloud Migration & Modernization Solution Design Options, and Industry Leading Practices, Presented at IBM Your Learning
• Getting Started with Oracle SOA BPEL Process Manager, ISBN 978-1-84968-898-7, Packt Publishing
• Web Application Security Implementation and Industry Best Practices Handbook, Presented at SRA University
• Best Practices for Developing & Deploying SaaS, White Paper, Presented at SaaSCon, Santa Clara, California

• United States Federal CIO University
  Certified Chief Information Officer
• George Mason University
  Master of Science degree in Technology Management
• Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
  Master of Science degree in Mathematics, Specialization in Operations Research and Statistics

Introduction
Enterprise Applications Rationalization is a process to create business-driven application system architecture. That demands continuous input and collaboration across business, technology, and operations. We often find that enterprises lack support from business owners for the Enterprise Applications Rationalization. The Applications Disposition Strategy from applications architectures and runtimes only is a recipe for disaster down the line.



So What?
Enterprise Applications Rationalization is the mission-critical journey for any enterprise. Not doing it can put an enterprise in the same boat as Aol and Yahoo in a matter of time. The III-Phase approach enables an enterprise to stay relevant in the marketplace with the end-to-end alignment from a business model to the application runtime.
Phase-I:
Identifies Initiatives to adopt technology innovation to prepare for startup disruption and improve the competitive landscape.
Phase-II:
Build roadmaps for Business, Applications, Systems, and Enterprise Architecture for delivering Phase-I initiatives and issues solutions.
Phase-III:
Enterprise Applications Portfolio mapping into Retire, Retain, Replace, Rehost, Replatform, and Rewrite (SixR) in alignment with the objectives established in the previous Phases.

The Cloud Native Application Architecture is the leading mainstream application architecture to stay relevant for 2020 & beyond. The key business drivers for Cloud Native Application Architecture are:

• Speed of Deployability of Everchanging Users Needs and Industry Innovation
• Economical Application Experimentation and Operations & Maintenance
• Ability to Utilize Best of Breed Technology, Platform and Framework and Adopt Next One Leading in Industry

The Cloud Native Application Architecture Pillars are identified in the diagram below to develop and deliver an Enterprise Could Native Application Architecture Strategy and Solution.

• Micro Services - Services based application design pattern that creates end to end loosely coupled services also known as micro services to build an application. Each micro service is expected to bind by the service contract of the function it delivers at agreed performance and availability. Micro Service Owner is empowered to pick the best of breed technology, platform and framework suited for delivery of the function. Each service maintains its own independent software release cycle and run time environment for end to end autonomy. The end to end Autonomy is the key to receive true benefits of the Micro Services and may require Enterprise Architecture changes not just implementing an application utilizing fine grain services.
• Serverless & Containers First - Lightweight run time environment and/or compute resources are mission critical for successful Micro Services based Application Design and Delivery. It is cost prohibitive to live with traditional run time environments that can deliver micro services autonomy. One must think Serverless & Containers first or have business justification to pick compute deployment model otherwise as a leading practice. Enables portable deployments that are not tide to an operating system and server platform.
• Everything as Code - In other words, plug-in automation everywhere just not for software release. Mutable deployments are critical for an efficient cloud native application architecture. Package everything as code in one package for infrastructure, application run time, application deployment, testing, user acceptance, security & compliance, and monitoring to deploy and scale application services at the cloud speed economically.
• DevOps and Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) - DevOps is all about bringing end to end software release cycle under single leadership at the first line manager and automation to deliver the software to end users. This may require changes to Organization Structure and Enterprise Architecture. It is a leading practice to create CI/CD pipeline for each micro service of an application to provide Micro Services Autonomy. The first line manager now got the ownership and team with skills that can design, build, deliver and support the application service at the cloud speed.
• Application Programming Interface (API) Economy - Expose organization's digital services and assets through API in a controlled way for ease of integration between partners and applications, minimize duplication and develop & deliver new capability at the cloud speed.
• Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) - Use the team human resources to perform high value services then spending cycles for typical mundane task that could be automated to maintain and support your application operations. Send logs and events into a system that can analyze, learn and identify issues reactively, proactively and predictively, and has the ability to perform the resolution for the mundane repeatable tasks by augmenting intelligence to your team supporting application operations.

Disaster Recovery (DR) Deployment Models Convergence is an expected change with the innovation in Cloud and Automation. In traditional implementations, the DR deployments options are Fault Tolerant, Auto Failover, Coordinated Fail-over and Backup & Build. The Cloud Native Applications Disaster Recovery will be either Fault Tolerant or Backup & Build.

The Auto Failover will converge into Fault Tolerant and the Coordinated Fail-over will converge into Backup & Build Deployment Model(s). Any Digital transformation is incomplete without the Disaster Recovery (DR) Deployment Models Convergence.

Brief overview of the Disaster Recovery (DR) Deployment Models can be found at https://secure.baghel.com/index.php?itemid=129.

Release Automation

• Continuous Integration, Deployment and Delivery - Blue Green and Canary Deployment, and A/B/C Testing
• Testing Automation - Unit, QA, Performance and UAT, and Security & Compliance

Resource Provisioning

• Procure and Retire of IT Services
• Baseline Builds and Configurations

Service Management

• Optimization - Auto Stop, Start and Sizing
• Auto Incident, Change and Problem Resolution - AI Ops (Reactive, Proactive and Predictive)

One needs to carefully plan and understand the Cloud Responsibility Model aka Shared Responsibility Model to ensure that there is no gap in the services needed to run the operations smoothly. The cloud deployments by default doesn't take over all the responsibilities and ownership necessary to run business digitally. The Cloud Responsibility Model below gives you an out of box responsibility framework for a typical deployment model types. It is a leading practice to start with out of box shared responsibility model but build a comprehensive Responsibility Assignment Matrix aka RACI with the Service Provider before going live in the new Cloud and/or Outsourcing Managed Services Model.

The Security Solution needs to account for the solutions for each layer described in the diagram. In specialized cases, one can assume risk but in most use cases, one should identify and implement solutions for the common threats to complete the security solution. Defense in depth is all about having security protection at multiple layers. The Security Model can serve as the point of reference when we are working on the Security Solution Design.

IP Address is also known as Internet Protocol Address. The Internet Protocol Address assignments are managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). IANA has divided the IP Addresses into two groups. First named as Public IP Address and second named as Private IP Address. The Public IP Address has to be unique in the whole world. Hence, the Public IP Address is routable to the internet. The Private IP Address is reserved to build a private network controlled by the owner of the private network without coordination with IANA and the Private IP Addresses are not unique in the world. Hence, the Private IP Addresses by default is not routable to the internet.

IANA has reserved the following IP addresses to create a Private Network: Class A: 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255 Class B: 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255 Class C: 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255 The table provides a quick guide for sizing Virtual Networks/SubNets. The Virtual Networks and SubNets are usually configured in Classless Inter Domain Routing (CIDR) notation (x.x.x.x/8, x.x.x.x/16, ... x.x.x.x/24). The largest possible Virtual Networks/SubNets is 10.x.x.x/8 and the smallest possible Virtual Networks/SubNets is 10.x.x.x/30. It is a leading practice to consider that we keep the minimum size of the Virtual Networks/SubNets at 3x plus level. While x is the size for the proposed Virtual Networks/SubNets Go-Live requirements. Please note that hosting or Infrastructure as a Services(IaaS) provider may reserve additional IP Address in Virtual Networks/SubNets that one need to adjust and align for their Private Network Design.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in the blog are those of the author and do not represent necessarily the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the study are not reflective of the stand of any entity other than the author. Since we are critically-thinking human beings, these views are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking without notice. While reasonable efforts have been made to obtain accurate information, the author makes no warranty, expressed or implied, as to its accuracy.