bimodal IT

How building a house and enterprise architecture are the same thing. A warning in advance if you don't like loose analogies you should probably stop here :)

Foundation

I have to always come back to my childhood so I can explain how my brain works. My dad is a carpenter who taught me the importance of knowing how the system works. It wasn't good enough to know things like a switch makes a light turn on. You had to know how to wire the switch, why there was a breaker panel, and even the flow of electrons. I think it is probably one of the biggest reasons that I became a developer, needing to create and learn more. I didn't want to just know a web page existed; I had to know it was HTML and JavaScript creating it, that there were HTTP requests to get the page, that a server was accepting these requests, and that there was backend system pushing it out. 

Blueprint

I think that everyone knows that a house has a blueprint, but why do we really need one? If we are in a fail fast model wouldn't we just start building a piece at a time and when the house caved in start over? Well I know better than this because my dad spent countless nights working on blueprints. He would always work to find the most optimized (for space), cost effective solution possible. Fast forward 20 years later I am in the same position, trying to create this beautiful blueprint. This one doesn't have a roof or walls but all the principals apply. Okay and yes I had several collegiate courses to help me with this one too.

Remodel

Unfortunately most of us in the real world are not Mark Zuckerberg, we are not creating systems from scratch (although Facebook is relatively old now so maybe he is too). We are needing to create a design that can pull that old house out of the dark ages and into the 21st century. The scary difference in this remodel scenario is that we have to keep everyone inside the house while we turn it into the connected home of the future. Tired of my analogies about houses yet, I warned you.

I spent several of my college years learning about Agile development, scrum methodology, rapid prototyping and just pure development at a feverish pace. I then stepped into the real life, of large corporate systems. Trying to fight through years of waterfall design methodology, mainframe systems and standards that just don't pace well. I have built countless integration scenarios between legacy and modern systems as a developer. There becomes a mixed mode of delivery and the lines are becoming further blurred. So how do we take a traditional blueprint and use it for a house that has already been built?

bimodal IT

I formulated a very direct solution, my company's systems must be able to talk amongst each other in the simplest form, while still maintaining all of the efficiencies and advantages of each system. From Apigee's Two-Speed IT with API's white-paper "Whether you think about this as bimodal IT, two-speed IT, or traditional IT/agile IT, this new approach recognizes the value of both the back-end operational systems and the fast-changing world of user engagement".

This is why I have created a blueprint for my organization to include an API centric enterprise solution. In order to make this a reality though, there will be a great deal of pain that will be required to work through (change = pain). For the legacy mainframe this means actually creating web services from scratch, in the new ERP packages this means creating a standardized gateway to the system in which developers can offer robust API's, and finally adapting the new systems being purchased to talk with the pre-existing systems. 

Having a middle layer of API management will not only allow for a single point of access, but it will provide the security and analytics to continue adapting technology in the future. By taking the time to remodel your existing software/hardware infrastructure to include this into your landscape it will allow you to be more agile with your old legacy system. 

Apigee says "Organizations continuously strive to make traditional IT more agile, but that’s not the answer here. An entirely new approach is needed". So without bulldozing the entire foundation and destroying the original blueprint that was once created for your company's enterprise. We can instead leave the house intact while replacing the roof to expand to a greater tomorrow. Adding the API's won't happen overnight and that is where the remodel blueprint will need to be architected very carefully, but once the API's are created it will allow for the faster paced world of engagement systems to access your enterprise, while keeping the systems of control that an enterprise organization needs.

Toolbox

Apigee a very well established API company that I have been working with to solve our API problem. Check out their blog post bimodal IT. More information can also be found from this Gartner article. 

"You can fix anything, with the right tool" - Don Patterson