Can EA help you decide in improving the ability of your organization to carry out its mission? Know which software architecture model suits your business needs!

Software architecture creates an outline for designing a solution for the project. It ensures that the security, availability, performance are in accordance with the planned characteristics of the project.

Best software architecture authorizes a match between the desired and delivered functionality of the project. Software application architecture gratifies that the right amount and type of funding of personnel resources are available throughout the project lifecycle. It ascertains that project backed with enterprise application architecture creates new opportunities for the future and positions the organization consistent with its vision and goals. The development and implementation of organization EA and segment architecture result in measurable cost savings.

(Note: EA is an abbreviation for Enterprise Architecture)

What is a software architecture for enterprise?

Software Architecture is a layout plan for the organized development of software. It leads to sustainability and the long-term evolution of IT systems. Here we focus on the bigger picture instead of the day-to-day.

Enterprise Application Software (EAS) satiates an organization’s need instead of its stakeholders/customers/employees. Enterprise computing is used for efficient production operations to support IT and back-office departments.

What are the elements of enterprise architecture?

The six elements of an EA documentation method:

• EA documentation framework
• EA components
• Current EA views
• Future EA views
• EA Management
• Transition Plan
• Multi-level threads that include security, standards, and workforce planning

What are the main problems of enterprise architecture?

• Some roles within EA might be misleading
• Ineffective communication
• Low EA maturity and commitment
• Complicated EA tools

Enterprise Architecture (EA) Requirements

• EA is required if all the IT costs (accreditation, system security plan, risk assessment, privacy impact assessment, configuration/patch management, security control testing and evaluation, contingency planning/testing) integrate into one;
• EA helps in potential workforce planning issues like staffing and training and associated investment;
• If the overall vision of the business translates into actionable business;
• If the security categorization process for information systems matches with and complements the organization’s enterprise architecture and commits to protecting organizational mission/business;
• If the conceptual solution architecture supports the target performance, data and business architectures and the transit from as-is state to the to-be state;
• If your organization’s digital business strategy (models, designs, technology) impacts your organization’s EA discipline and deliverables;
• If both the leadership teams and business adjust current business and information environments to fulfill the target performance architecture;

Types of Software Architecture

Layered (n-tier) Architecture

Many best software frameworks like Java EE, Express and Drupal are built upon this most common type of software architecture. Data enters from the top and works its way down to through the bottom. Each layer checks the data for consistency, reformats the values. Model-View-Controller (MVC) structure is based on this software development approach. Layered architectures are preferable as they are easy to test, easy to maintain, easy to assign independent roles, easy to update and enhance layers separately.

With caveats like – slicing up tasks and defining separate layers, fitting the requirements within the patterns, turning the source code into organized modules, defining the roles and relating it with relationships, passing data across layers with logic, taking care of messy inter-dependencies, yet staying independent and relevant – layer-architecture approach is suitable for new application development. Enterprise applications require touch-ups in their legacy code, easy to understand by developers with fewer experience calls for testing and maintenance standards.

Event-Driven Architecture

The event-driven architecture manages the waiting time by accepting all data and delegating it to various modules via a central processing unit. This handoff generates an “event” and delegates the code to that type or the concerned modules. E.g.: Point of sale terminals require swapping of cash cards to accept a payment. It generates another event where users have to validate their PIN if it is not an NFC mode. The transaction completes, an invoice generates. Besides this, fraud detection, real-time monitoring are other examples.

Writing web page code involves JavaScript that reacts to events like mouse clicks or keystrokes. An event-driven model is preferable for complex projects that handle multiple operations/multiple transactions. This approach suit projects that scale easily.

It can be complex to test applications based on event-driven architecture. Error handling is challenging. The central unit delegates tasks to modules. It keeps a backup plan which can fill up in case any module fails. Even-driven applications slow down in the case of buffer messages. This model suits asynchronous systems, applications where the individual data blocks interact with only a few of the many modules and user interfaces.

Microkernel Architecture

This approach is suitable if a module or a set of core operations calls more than once. Eclipse is a development environment for Java that opens files, comments, edits them and starts background processors. Displaying a file and editing it is part of a microkernel. Extra features layered on top are called plug-ins, which also make it a plug-in architecture model. It pushes some tasks to the microkernel. Different business units come together with calls to the core functions in the kernel. Plug-ins require handshaking code so that the microkernel is aware when the plug-in is ready. Kernal is the core. Therefore, every functionality moderates as it becomes difficult to change at a later stage.

A microkernel is a minimum software that helps operating systems with routine tasks like memory management, process management, process scheduling mechanisms and inter-process communication. It allocates these processes to the available user space. It applies to projects with predefined core routines.

Microservices Architecture

Companies that do not know which devices will be compatible with their services make use of this architecture. Currently, Netflix, PayPal, Amazon, eBay, and Twitter are using Micro-services architecture. Instead of building one big program, many tiny programs pop up each time a new feature adds up to the project. Looking at Netflix’s UI, we find that every minuscule feature/module/tab/icon/button/link/navigation/sections that we find comes from a separate service. It seems like Netflix is a constellation of dozens of smaller websites that happen to present themselves as one service. And Netflix can scale up and down based on the changes in demand.

But all the services much be independent to avoid clashes. Further, we rarely find applications whose tasks break into independent units. Plus, using many micro-services at once can be blurring. Performance of the apps that use micro-service architecture suffers as activities spread across different micro-services. And, communication costs are important.

This type of software architecture is suitable for websites with small components, corporate data centers with established businesses, evolving new business startups, and outsourced development teams (spread across different locations).

Space-Based Architecture

A space-based architecture comes at the forefront when the applications that once worked on a single database, scale up with increasing demand when usage peaks and database become inconsistent. When the database becomes incapable to log transactions, the entire website/web application/mobile application fails. It is also known as distributed architecture, where a data set is split across into sub-jobs and then aggregated when done. Caveats associated with it include transactional support with RAM databases, generating enough load to test the system, caching data without affecting other copies is difficult.

This architecture model is best to create streams, user logs, high volume data, low-value data, social networking sites. It does not fit apps for banking/insurance/finance without occasional loss.

In Conclusion: How does a software architecture in an Enterprise help

The above list might be just what you need to approach your project in the best possible way, right from the beginning. Enterprise app development companies often mix one-two-many enterprise applications architecture to create the desired solution.

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