Michael Dell founded the company named DELL in the year of 1984 in Austin, Texas. At the time of establishment Michael had a capital of around $1,000 with a unique vision of how to design the technology the ways of manufacturing those technologies and how are those technologies going to be sold. In the industry of computers, the company the able to make an incredible mark by having 5.4 million customers and by having an annual budget of around $1 billion (Ahlemann et al. 2012). The company has its business running in 180 countries and also ships items around the world and the amount of systems that are being shipped per day is around 10,000. The company has decided to produce personal computers along with the production of various multinational hardware’s and infrastructure, IT Services and Solutions, and ultimately ended with the manufacturing of various regional order management systems, different facilities, and different ways of operating the processes and the systems all around the world (Iacob et al. 2014).
Rhonda Gass the Vice President of IT Strategy, Technology and Governance is in charge of directing this It giant to the future associated with the three-year roadmap that is provided by the Enterprise Architecture (EA) team for the purpose of driving this company (Simon Fischbach and Schoder 2013). Most of the main programs that lies at a higher position of the roadmap costs around ten to hundred millions of dollars and of the programs in the roadmap are” Global Quote to Cash”, “Global Service Delivery”, “Solution Selling”, “Execution of Global Manufacturing and Recurring” and “Usage based Transactions”. Oracle is providing DELL with an executive guidance in the transformation journey along with an establishment of long term view for the requisite system processes and all other different technologies. Projects are also undertaken by individuals so as to build the capabilities for general purpose projects (Zarvi? and Wieringa 2014).
The company started its journey with the production of various software’s but eventually with the flow of time it started to move its business from hardware production to production of solutions for the software’s along with the solutions for the different services that the company provides (Lapalme 2012). For the purpose of embracing the other countries and the different sets of products the company has moved rapidly from the vendors for the domestic purposes. To make the situation worse DELL decided to acquire several other large companies in the year of 2011 and this included companies like the Perot System and also later in the year of 2011 DELL also included other three companies. Gass also stated that the simple layer that are being used in the existing system are not going to work out anymore as they are not able to tackle the new capabilities as well. For example, one of the difficulty that was faced by DELL was during the implementation of the payment for common type for all the online as well as the offline sales process across all around the world (Simon Fischbach and Schoder 2014). The IT engineers of the company estimated that it would take around 19 to 24 months for the service to be deployed all around the world. It was also realized by the IT engineers that by having around 12different management systems for the order, 27 different interfaces for the products and the customer data and disparate data representation in the various warehouses of the company was acting as the main barrier in the different processes along with the performance of the company. This was the main reason for the management of the company and the business leaders to approach each other to act in a joint venture for the purpose of solving the various problems. The need for embracing the globalization, consolidation, and standardization so as to make advancement of the company was realized by the company (Bente Bombosch and Langade 2012).
Establishment of the business architecture involve the various views of the company for example the business strategy, business capabilities, business processes, knowledge and many more (Engelsman and Wieringa 2012). The main things which are included in the Enterprise Architecture are as follows:
There is a need of taking a systematic approach for the purpose of achieving different objectives (Roth et al. 2013). For the purpose of revising all the essential capabilities along with completion of the plans the business architecture teams need to sit down each year. All this plan will be typically focusing on the working or aim at working for around three to five years. There is also a need for the creation of a map which will be showing all the logical models that are needed for the company to work properly. The business architecture team will also be looking into the gaps of the capability and they will be talking to the other teams for the purpose of filling all this groups (Bernus Nemes and Schmidt 2012).
The corporate objectives of the company will be achieved if it is able to rationalize all its IT infrastructures (Buschle et al. 2012). The main things that are involved in the transformation process includes the consolidation of the multi-national system for the purpose of improving all the efficiency along with the decreasing of the costs and the standard are to be enforced which are very much common. The rationalization exercise will greatly help in the process of identification for the necessary standards and the complexities are also to be identified so as to eliminate all this complexity that has arose in the long journey of the company (Bernard 2012). The technologies that are required for the eliminating of all the problems so as to achieve success are also identified. The first stem of rationalization includes the discussion about the technical issues or for the purpose of starting with the business level. The next step of this rationalization exercise includes the understanding of the current situation of the company’s IT portfolio along with the various processes involved in the business. This step is followed by the mapping of the different capabilities of the business along with the capabilities of IT. This process of mapping involves the developing of a scoring criteria so as to analyze the current portfolio (Aier 2014). The last step involves the taking of decisions for the purpose of selecting the right standard which will ultimately result in propelling the organization forward. The final result of the rationalizations will be the different standards. The main structure of the organization will be kept forward which will include the strategy, goals, objectives, operating models, capabilities, business processes, information assets, and the governance of the company. The architects of the enterprise can track all the applications along with all the technologies that are being used and also the architects can inventory the applications by the use of the blueprint (Chorafas 2016). The duplicate processes and the applications are identified and becomes consolidated after the completion of the inventory and mapping process.
The team of architecture consists of the architects of the business, architects of the information, architects of the applications and the infrastructure specialist. The team moves on to the next process of business process transformation after the completion of the rationalization process (Hoogervorst and Dietz 2015). When the Centre of excellence is created DELL will move onto the organization of the company around five major key processes which includes the development, sell, market, fulfil of needs and lastly support. The company was thinking only about the physical process which mainly is manly involved in the running of the company. This is better understand by the use of an example which is the similarity in the logistic domain which includes the sending of a technician after receiving a service call or the delivering of the parts which are in warranty to the repair depot. Which initially makes DELL to focus on the design of the general logistics thereby making the company increase its performance in the future. For this reason, the management of the company identifies the market along with defining the directions so as to make the strategies by the IT department to work properly along with the different units and provide appropriate solutions to the problems (Kappelman and Zachman 2013). The company also needs to make decisions about supporting the systems tools involved in the product lines by making use of designs that are very much common and will support this processes by looking into the products from the view point of a customer which will also involve the consistency which is one of the important factor.
The IT investments of DELL are to be prioritize and this will include the aligning by the use of references of the architecture and after the identification of the various capabilities which will have a high return compared to the investments (Jugel and Schweda 2014). To govern the efforts of transformation there is a need for the team of DELL to enforce various references for the technology models and have to create an architecture review board. It should be clear to the business owners and the managers that they are not the owners of the organisation or any of the requirements of the organisation. There is also a need for asking the enterprise architects to define along with optimising the various processes of the business. Besides this they should also be properly equipped so as to understand the different processes of the business. The architectures with proper knowledge will help in understanding of the fact that each and every department are confirmed with a consistent practice of the business along with the different processes and the standards. There is also a need for maintenance of a cross-domain perspective so as to represent the vision along with the various requirements of the business (Da Xu 2014). Is not necessary to include all the business processes in the optimization process and design but there is a need for a clear understanding of the roles of the enterprise architects which is one of the main aspect of governing and monitoring of the different processes mainly during the involvement of the cross-domain IT capabilities. So the conclusion derived from here is that the business architects are not the process analyst. The main role they will be playing is defining ways in which the business processes interacts with the other key processes involved and are the various impacts of the processes on the organisation. To do this the architects need to understand the internal as well as the external forces which will be acting so as to influence the organisation. The thing that is included in the internal factor is the IT standards and the operational requirements of the business. With a solid governance practice DELL will be able to anticipate all the business along with the IT risks associated with the organisation in an easy way and this will help in ensuring the compliance of the organisation which will include a corporate strategy, policy and different statutory regulation (Giachetti 2012).
Conclusion:
Various companies have entitled the Enterprise architecture so as to create a detailed map and blueprint so as define the system, data and the various assets included in the technology of the organisations. This is mainly done for the current state as well as for the future. According to the demonstration provided by DELL which includes the involvement of the enterprise architecture that is much more than any other routing plan exercises. The company has a vision which will be greatly helpful in understanding of the fundamental capabilities that has been identified and also the ways in which the IT projects are to be directed so as to realize the different capabilities and also to have an aim of extending them in a consistent way throughout the enterprise and this will be done in a cost effective manner. Association of the enterprise architects with the organisation is one of the logic of the various business processes and the IT infrastructure along with this it will be serving in the long term view of the different processes systems and the technologies of the company. There is also a need for undertaking of projects by individuals so as to build the purposes of general capabilities and these general capabilities are mainly based on the architecture which is not meant for fulfilment of the immediate needs.
References:
Ahlemann, F., Stettiner, E., Messerschmidt, M. and Legner, C. eds., 2012. Strategic enterprise architecture management: challenges, best practices, and future developments. Springer Science & Business Media.
Aier, S., 2014. The role of organizational culture for grounding, management, guidance and effectiveness of enterprise architecture principles. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 12(1), pp.43-70.
Bente, S., Bombosch, U. and Langade, S., 2012. Collaborative enterprise architecture: enriching EA with lean, agile, and enterprise 2.0 practices. Newnes.
Bernard, S.A., 2012. An introduction to enterprise architecture. AuthorHouse.
Bernus, P., Nemes, L. and Schmidt, G.J. eds., 2012. Handbook on enterprise architecture. Springer Science & Business Media.
Buschle, M., Ekstedt, M., Grunow, S., Hauder, M., Matthes, F. and Roth, S., 2012. Automating enterprise architecture documentation using an enterprise service bus.
Chorafas, D.N., 2016. Enterprise architecture and new generation information systems. CRC Press.
Da Xu, L., 2014. Enterprise integration and information architecture. CRC Press.
Engelsman, W. and Wieringa, R., 2012, March. Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Enterprise Architecture: Two Case Studies and Some Lessons Learned. In REFSQ (Vol. 7195, pp. 306-320).
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Hoogervorst, J.A. and Dietz, J.L., 2015. Enterprise architecture in enterprise engineering. Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures, 3(1), pp.3-13.
Iacob, M.E., Meertens, L.O., Jonkers, H., Quartel, D.A., Nieuwenhuis, L.J. and van Sinderen, M.J., 2014. From enterprise architecture to business models and back. Software & Systems Modeling, 13(3), pp.1059-1083.
Jugel, D. and Schweda, C.M., 2014, September. Interactive functions of a cockpit for enterprise architecture planning. In Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference Workshops and Demonstrations (EDOCW), 2014 IEEE 18th International (pp. 33-40). IEEE.
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