What is the primary driver for architecture in many companies?

In high growth industry like Telecom, Airlines, Finance, Insurance, Retail, Manufacturing, Energy, etc. senior management is constantly looking for innovation and facing the daunting task of aligning the IT systems with business goals to ensure competitiveness without much success. Very often, IT managers find themselves in the middle of chaos wherein the enterprise spending more than $100 million per year to develop and maintain information technology systems which are not able to support changing business requirements. In fact, there is growing need to consolidate the multiple line of business (LOB), face the complexity of rationalizing 70 or 100 plus IT systems and task of mapping their relevance to the enterprise profitability.

"The framework has been applied in Global 2000 organizations* such as
Volkswagen
Boeing
Sprint
Swisscom Mobile
Bank of America
Health Canada
Allstate Insurance
Federal Express
Johnson & Johnson
NCR Corp
Glaxo SmithKline
Volkswagen
General Motors
Canadian Imperial bankof Commerce
note-* based on public domain information
Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a comprehensive framework used to manage and align an organization's business processes, Information Technology (IT) software and hardware, people, operations and projects with the organization's overall strategy. A strong Enterprise Architecture process helps to answer basic questions like: What are the organization's business processes and how is IT supporting those processes?
The Zachman Framework has become de facto standard for Enterprise Architecture for aligning the business goals with Information Technology Investments world over. It's not surprising to note that why Fortune 2000 companies are using this framework as a blueprint for ensuring business improvements, cost reductions as high as $500 mn (and more) and increasing the opportunities to collaborate with partners across the multiple market segments and crossing the geographical boundaries.

With its growing consumer market, India is gearing to become a major base for the productdevelopment firms and new technology companies, This conference will provide an opportunity to the architects, program managers, CIOs and CTOs to share knowledge of innovative architecture which represents the next generation of organizational practice.

In India, very small fractions (<1>

SaaS predictions for 2008 and beyond

Now that 2008 has arrived, along with the New Year's resolutions and the ever-present pundit predictions, I thought it was the perfect timing to dive into what Saugatuck Technology just reported as being their Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) predictions, highlighting five key trends for 2008 and beyond:

SaaS platforms and marketplaces will begin to proliferate, becoming a significant channel opportunity for vendors, as well as a key means by which users will gain access to SaaS solution capabilities.

SaaS is becoming an international phenomenon, driven by both local demand as well as large multi-nationals who are adopting SaaS business solutions on a global basis. While US SaaS adoption is clearly going “mainstream”, Europe and Asia are only now beginning to experience the steep adoption ramp that the US has witnessed over the past two years. Whereas average US market growth rates will likely slow into the 35-40 percent range in 2008, European market growth rates should exceed 60-70 percent next year.

SaaS merger & acquisition activity will explode. No doubt a serious feeding frenzy is about to unfold and it could be anticipated that a large number of venture-backed start-ups and emerging SaaS companies would be acquired by either SaaS pure-plays, ISVs hungry to enter the SaaS fray or on-shore & off-shore IT services and BPO providers who are eager to leverage a SaaS model.

Traditional on-premise application ISVs will earnestly begin to fight back. Approximately 15-20 percent of ISVs have already either begun new initiatives or gained access to SaaS assets and development experience through M&A activity. However, over the next 12-24 months, this number is anticipated to rise dramatically, as a tougher economic climate will only exacerbate an already challenged on-premise and traditional perpetual license model.

SaaS development platforms will evolve and 2008 will see explosive growth in the adoption and use of SaaS-based software development platforms and services. Wide availability of open, standardised tools and technologies in subscription-based, on-demand environments will help streamline and reduce the costs of software development and customisation.