Methodology:
ATC {architecture and technology consulting}
The goal of our architecture and technology consulting
(ATC) practice is to bring leading-edge technology solutions and consulting to
our customers in various industry segments:
·
Telecom and Datacom
·
Banking, insurance, and
financial services
·
Retail
·
Utilities
·
Original equipment
manufacturers (OEMs) of computers
·
Original software development
companies
Our ATC practice is organised under three
sub-practices:
Architecture |
|
|
Performance engineering |
|
|
Technology |
The architecture sub-practice offers strategic
consulting to assist customers in defining the fundamental software
architecture for their enterprises. It does this by using a unique methodology
and by making technology choices based on industry trends. Some of our
important architectural services are:
·
The review of enterprise
architecture
·
Planning the re-engineering
of legacy systems
·
Componentisation
·
Integration
The performance sub-practice undertakes performance
engineering consulting, using our trademarked benchmarking and tuning
techniques, to ensure that the architectures chosen are guaranteed to perform.
Structured capacity-planning models allow hardware and software infrastructure
to be planned in an informed manner.
The underlying approach in both these areas is to work
closely with customers, to position technology, in a cost-effective manner,
within an architecture that brings our customers the greatest business
benefits.
The systems software and embedded technology
sub-practice provides core technology-development services in areas such as
embedded control, VLSI design, electronic system design, digital signal
processing, storage technology, and networking and telecommunication protocols.
We offer a range of services in these areas, including end-to-end product
design, software development, prototyping, integration, hardware / software
porting, re-engineering, and sustenance.
Our ATC practice continually carries out proactive
exploration in emerging technologies. Affiliation with industry forums and
active participation with standards bodies such as TIA and 3GPP2 enable us to
add and refine the repertoire of reusable assets that can be positioned as a
value proposition to our customers.
Our consultants bring a great depth of understanding
in technology internals and experience in specialised areas. They can guarantee
that the consulting and the software support and delivery carried out is
pragmatic, and that it can anticipate industry trends. Besides, there is our
support throughout projects and engagements, based on the underlying knowledge
systems processes of the practice.
Case Study
Our client, part of a large global banking group, is
an aggregation of smaller banks. It specializes in the middle market segment
and focuses on increasing fee-based services and cash management. The key strategy
at the bank is growth by acquisitions. Traditionally, investments in IT at the
bank were tactical, i.e., in order to catch up with current business needs. The
bank’s growth strategy (inorganic via acquisitions), changes in technology and
changes in business environment (T+1/STP) resulted in the need for reassessing
the capability of current architecture to be able to grow the business and meet
customer needs.
The architecture needed to be assessed with a focus
on the following key areas -- system communication and integration,
maintenance of multiple systems, data warehouse capabilities, flexibility
constraints of old architectures, web-enabling existing applications and
challenges to meet STP/T+1 business model.
Solution
The
assignment was carried out with an objective to assess the current architecture
and conduct a capability gap analysis.
The scope
of the assessment included documenting the known business strategies, drawing
up business architecture, evaluating the application architecture, and defining
a high level technical architecture.
Key
activities carried out as part of the exercise and the major deliverables of
the same were:
·
Interviewed key business leaders to glean the known
business strategies
·
Created the business architecture
o Defined
the business architecture layers based on various organizational models and the
bank’s business strategies
o Collated
the business processes from various business functions
o
Compressed common business processes
o
Defined business components by grouping related
business processes
o
Placed each business component into relevant business
architecture layer
·
Defined the current application architecture
o Identified
the applications supporting the business units: corporate and institutional
trust and wealth management
o Collected
information about each of the applications and how they interfaced with each
other and with the external world
·
Defined an 'ideal' application architecture for
scalability, flexibility and extensibility
o Compared
the 'ideal' application architecture to the current application architecture
from both functional and technical perspectives
o Created
the standard definition framework (high level technical architecture) and
mapped the existing standards to the framework
·
Evaluated the key gaps from the technical
architecture in detail, found from the business and application architecture
·
Recommended the prioritized list of activities to be
done
The inputs
were primarily derived from the following sources:
o Study
of organization charts, strategy documents, consultant reports, intranet
o About
25 interviews with people at various levels (VP to GSVP) and in various areas
(business, operations, technical)
Highlights
/ benefits
The
summary of the report was presented to a cross-functional audience and was
received very well. The final report submitted contained the identified
business strategies, business architecture, ideal application architecture,
high-level technical architecture, and an assessment of application and
technical architecture. The prioritized list of activities based on the
assessment was also included.
Assessment
was also done from the perspective of STP/T+1 readiness. Opportunities have
been created for conducting a detailed assessment of core application,
consulting for making the bank STP/T+1 ready, assisting the bank transition to
the new business environment.