What's All the Fuss About Architecture?

Software Architecture is all the buzz in the IT world right now. What's up with that? I think of it like this. Over the past decade, the decentralization pendulum gradually swung full-tilt towards distribution. To a large degree, individual divisions or departments were chartered with building out independent systems, absent of any unifying IT strategy. In fact, in some cases, software was being put into production completely within a business unit with no IT involvement at all! New applications sprung up like dandelions, as businesses scrambled to respond to competitive pressures and leveraged the climate to wrestle "control" away from the IT "Borg."

While for some time, this approach yielded favorable results in terms of flexibility and speed to market, it was a course of divergence that could only lead to one place - the place we find ourselves today. Disparate systems, duplication of resources, closets full of unknown capabilities, inability to leverage corporate assets, etc, etc. Meanwhile, the "science" of Software Architecture and enterprise technologies have continued to mature to the point where intelligent IT strategies promote more enterprise-scale thinking and yield tremendous competitive advantages.

It'll be our job to ensure that the pendulum swings back into balance so we position IT to be the "go to" guys and gals for the business... a partnership of mutual objectives and ambitions... jointly pursuing the overall goals of the business.

Cheers.