After discussing how to use enterprise architecture for IT planning, reducing IT costs and M&AI had several request to share case studies that shows how the theory (which I already discussed) is used in reality. This post contain three case studies for IT planning, reducing IT costs and M&A. I hope you'll find it useful for your needs.
Using Enterprise Architecture for IT planning and increasing law and regulation Compliance
Client environment:
The client is an energy company that operates part of the energy market. The company’s got a 4 years license to operate from the government. To renew the license the company needs to demonstrate 1) full compliance to the relevant energy market laws and regulations. 2)99.9 percentage availability of the company services to the market energy. The company approaches us one year before license renewal to be able to present compliance and availability to the regulators.
Client business goals:
Approach:
We followed a modeling approach in order to capture current situation, identifying gaps and create migration plan (IT roadmap) to fulfill the above business goals in one year time frame. Using the models we manage to simplify the complexity of the enterprise business, information applications and technology domains and cross relations between those domains. Being able to reduce complexity significantly enable us to come with a conclusion and a roadmap within three months of work.
Steps:
Conclusion:
Following modeling approach of enterprise architecture and using existing IT assets documentation (CMDB, applications catalogue, Information modeling in Er-Win or any other tool) enable us to understand very easily and quickly, what are the gaps between the current situation and the business goals. We found out that 40% of the business capabilities are not supported or partly supported by IT assets. The work manages to show visually, by using a heat-map, where are those gaps. Following the heat-map, a migration plan was created to show how the gaps are going to be filled in the next three years. The relations and dependencies that were captured by the mapping work, used to better understand IT maintaining implications. This knowledge (which wasn’t available before) managed to increase IT availability to 99.9 percentage.
Using Enterprise Architecture for Decreasing IT costs while increasing IT availability
Client environment:
A governmental agency which provides a variety of vital 24*7 services to citizen, companies and other governmental agencies. The diversity of business services created an IT structure where each IT team is sole responsible for certain business domain, which created the typical silo IT structure. 5 years ago the clear boundaries between the agency business domains became vague, causing integration between IT teams. The demand for integration starts to prevent from the agency to achieve 24*7 availability of it services. On top of the integration problems and due to the economic situation the IT department needs to reduce 25% of its budget.
Client business goals:
Approach:
We followed a modeling approach in order to capture dependencies and relations of current IT assets as well as their relations to the business domain in order to identify projects, application, technologies and servers that are redundant or may be retired in minimum impact and maximum budget reducing. The modeling approach also being used to understand cross relations between cross IT teams solutions increases IT services availability. Using the models we manage to simplify the complexity of the enterprise business, information applications and technology domains and cross relations between those domains. Being able to reduce complexity significantly enable us to come with conclusion and roadmap within three months of work.
Steps:
Conclusion:
Following modeling approach of enterprise architecture and using existing IT assets documentation (CMDB, applications catalogue, Information modeling in Er-Win or any other tool) enable us to understand very easily and quickly, what can be retired and how. Our approach also enables us to quickly understand relations between cross IT teams assets, thus increasing significantly IT services availability. Using collected and analyzed data we manage to reduce technologies and products (mainly their licenses and support agreements) and redundant IT assets. Our work managed to save 3M$ per year and 7M$ for next year budget. A migration plan was created to show how the identified costs saving gaps are going to be filled in the next three years. The relations and dependencies that were captured by the mapping work, used to better understand IT maintaining implications.
Using Enterprise Architecture for Mergers and acquisitions planning
Client environment:
Our client is a High-tech Company with M&A (mergers and acquisitions) strategy as an enabler to become a leader in their field. Their strategy experienced many difficulties mainly due to different IT issues while dealing with M&A from IT perspective. Due to the fact that IT caused most of the issues, the IT was accused as a barrier to M&A.
Client business goals:
Approach:
We followed a modeling approach in order to capture dependencies and relations of business and IT assets needed for acquisition from both business and IT perspective. We created two architecture maps to describe what’s needed from business and IT perspective when the company enters M&A process. We described the business domain, application, technologies and hardware architecture that if will be found in acquired company the merger from IT perspective will be transparent. Using those architecture maps and mappings of the acquired company IT we manage to understand in advance what the obstacles that we might encounter in a given acquisition.
Steps:
Conclusion:
Within two months we managed to build architecture maps both for business IT perspective of M&A. those maps were built from 5 different views, 6 matrixes and 12 basic building blocks as well as principles and blueprints. Using this mapping we managed to find out in advance IT issues in two M&A, thus to change the attitude of the enterprise to IT and to assist two successful M&A.