In simple words, digital transformation is all about enabling services to consume with ease internally and externally. Everyone is busy planning and executing Digital Transformation in their business context. Digital transformation is a journey, not a destination. Digital Transformation 3As Agility, Autonomy, and Alignment give us a framework to monitor the success of an enterprise's digital transformation journey.

• Agility: Enterprise services capability to work with insight, flexibility, and confidence to respond to challenging and changing consumer demands.


• Autonomy: Enterprise Architecture that promotes decentralization. The digital transformation journey needs that enterprises provide Autonomy at the first level to make the decisions by services owners.


• Alignment: Alignment is not a question of everyone being on the same page - everyone needs to understand the whole page conceptually. The digital transformation journey needs that everyone has visibility into the work happening around them at the seams of their responsibilities.

The digital transformation journey without 3As is like life without a soul. Continuously establish the purpose fit enterprise 3As to monitor innovation economics.

Enterprise Applications Rationalization (EAR) produces an Applications Disposition Plan (ADP) for starting or continuing an enterprise Journey 2 Cloud(J2C). The Applications Disposition Plan refers to the following SixR:

• Retire: Either the Business Function can be served by another Application in the Portfolio or Not in Use
• Retain: Presently Optimized keep As is or Not in Scope or No Business Value in Changing Deployment
• Rehost: Lift-n-Shift or Tech Refresh to Infrastructure As a Service(IaaS) Deployment
• Replace: Replace the business function with Software As a Service(SaaS) Deployment
• Replatform: Replace the systems architecture with Function As a Service(FaaS), Platform As a Service(PaaS), or Container As a Service(CaaS) Deployment
• Rewrite: Rewrite with Cloud Native, or Open Source Architectures and Technologies

infrastructure Technology Outsourcing Partner (iTOP) - Partner works with the enterprise infrastructure owners to co-create the standard infrastructure Technology services for the enterprise.

infrastructure Services Innovation Partner (iSIP) - Partner takes a multi-step approach. First, baseline the business roadmap. Second, baseline the roadmap of the applications in alignment with the business roadmap. Then, the partner develops the enterprise infrastructure services catalog in collaboration with business, applications, and infrastructure owners for business agility. The catalog is either composite in nature built using standard infrastructure services or custom-built services enabling business innovation and agility.

The word Technology Stack means different things to different people due to their roles and responsibility. The context of Technology Stack also changes it's contents such as Application Technology Stack versus Server Technology Stack that hosts an Application Component(s). The Application Technology Stack serves the Strategy and Design needs while Server Technology Stack serves the Implementation and Engineering needs as a result the Application Technology Stack drives the Server Technology Stack.

The Technology Stack schema elements are given below:

• Server Platform such as x86, Mainframe, Mac, Solaris
• Operating System such as Windows, Linux, Solaris
• Middleware - Web, App and Database Platforms
• Application Products
  • Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS)
  • Opensource-off-the-shelf (OOTS)
• Hardware and Software Appliances such as Google Search Appliance

Application Technology Stack may have multiple Server Platform and Operating System while Server Technology Stack will have only one Server Platform and associated Operating System. Application and Server Technology Stacks both can have multiple Middleware Platforms and Application Products.

The Applications Metadata is the information about an application that provides high level quick insight into the underlying business architecture, application architecture, system architecture and infrastructure architecture of the application. The Applications Metadata of an enterprise portfolio is a key foundation to develop IT strategy that includes cloud strategy, applications and infrastructures rationalization strategy, data center migration and consolidation strategy, technology refresh strategy, security strategy, and business continuity & disaster recovery strategy for the enterprise.

Sample Schema Elements for Applications Metadata:

• Core Information
  • applicationName
  • description
  • serviceUrls
  • applicationType
  • businessFunction
  • businessCriticality
  • userBase
  • userType
  • securityAndCompliance
  • cloudReadiness
  • roadMap
  • knownIssues
  • comments
• Target SLAs
  • Site
  • System
  • Service
• Implementation Information
  • implementationType
  • technologyStack
  • applicationArchitecture
  • applicationDependencies
• System Maintenance
  • blackoutPeriod
  • maintenanceWindow
  • maintenanceTypes
• Sizing Information
  • userBaseSize
  • transactionVolume
  • transactionRate
  • operatingSystemsInstances
  • webAppServersInstances
  • databaseServersInstances
  • databaseSize
  • filesystemSize
• Software / System Deployment Life Cycle (SDLC)
  • type
  • lifeCyclePath
  • lifeCycleDuration
  • testingType
  • testingDuration
  • state
• Backup and Disaster Recovery
  • performanceObjective
  • RPO
  • RTO
  • deploymentState
• Contacts
  • business
  • development
  • testing
  • productionSupport

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework that facilitates a validation process to allow email receivers to find out if the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol(SMTP) relay is allowed to relay email for users from a site domain like aol.com, yahoo.com, gmail.com etc.

This helps mark email messages as SPAM sent using someone else email address by the email receiving also known as Mail Exchanger(MX) servers. Enterprise email systems often use SPF framework to prevent SPAM messages delivery to their employees.

It is one of the industry leading standards to identify SPAM. The alternate frameworks to identify SPAM are Domain Keys IM aka DKIM and Sender ID.

SPF implementation depends on the internet’s lifeline Domain Name System TXT Resource Record for a site domain in the authoritative DNS server. Presently, SPF version 1 specifications are in use that helps site domain owner to publish the authorized SMTP relays.

SPF mechanism prefix are “+” Pass, “-“ Fail, “~” SoftFail, and “?” Neutral. Evaluations of an Domain SPF Records and Intended Actions are given below:



It is highly recommended that you setup SPF or similar framework like Sender ID or DKIM for your mail domain to allow MX servers to identify email SPAM and to ensure outbound email delivery. It also helps you protect your brand image by not allowing the SPAMMERS to use your mail domain to send emails.

TIA-942 is a Data Center Standards publication developed by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) to set guidelines for planning and building data centers, particularly with regard to cabling systems and network design. The standard deals with both copper and fiber optic media.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is not simply a technology or a product: it's a style of design, with many aspects like architectural, methodological and organizational unrelated to the actual technology such as implementing an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) in an application stack.

SOA is the new generation distributed computing platform whose components and sub-systems are a service provider to the enterprise and/or cross enterprise than a project. SOA design pattern(s) expects you to conceptualize, implement and manage re-usable business function(s) of an enterprise as a service.

Primarily, SOA services consumers and providers interacts using decoupled interfaces to promote the efficiency, agility and productivity in an enterprise for designing, implementing and managing business functions. In business terms, SOA enables an organization to leverage economies of scale and scope in their products and services offerings.

Service is a function that is well defined, self contained, and doesn't depend on the state of other service(s). In some cases, a service provider is a service consumer as well. If the services are consumed over HTTP(S), than it's called Web Services. HTTP(S) is the application protocol mostly used for SOA Services, also known as SOA Web Services. Usually, the request and response from the services is an XML.

An Enterprise SOA is expected to create a collaborative environment without worrying about underlying heterogeneous processes, tools, and technologies of other services. SOA services platforms are expected to be stateless, secure, scalable, available, backward compatible, and meet the Service Level Agreements (SLA), and Service Level Expectations (SLE).

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.