The informatization of Chinese enterprises has also gone through the process of starting from nothing, from existence to many, and from many to scattered. We can call this process the "enterprise informatization construction stage", in which we build information systems for various departments and business areas.
However, as business requirements continue to change, systems continue to increase, processes continue to optimize, systems become more and more overwhelmed, and the prestige of IT in the enterprise is getting lower and lower, IT is facing many challenges. It is necessary to optimize the IT structure and enhance the value of IT through "enterprise informatization integration". Enterprise informatization has entered a new stage of comprehensive integration.
1. Challenges faced by enterprise IT architecture
Challenge 1: It is not that there is no system, but that there are too many legacy systems
The problem faced by enterprises is often not that there is no system and requires a lot of construction, but that there are too many related information systems, and most of them are low-level repetitive construction. The main reason is that most enterprises do not have a complete IT organization system, nor a standardized IT strategy and planning. Each subordinate enterprise and each department puts forward demands according to their own needs, conducts system development or purchases commercialization in their own fields. software. The application level of these systems is uneven, it is a pity to abandon them, and their architecture and application mode cannot meet the needs of the overall development of enterprises. These systems are independent of each other, cannot be integrated, and data cannot be shared, so it is difficult to reflect the overall IT strategic value. How to deal with these complex legacy systems is the first problem that large enterprises must face and solve when conducting IT strategy and planning.
Challenge 2: Information explosion, data heterogeneity, and difficulty in integration
With too many problems in the information system of the enterprise, the new problem is that there is too much data and information explosion, but the correlation between these information is small, the data consistency is difficult to guarantee, and there is too little useful information. On the other hand, due to the independent deployment of systems by each enterprise and each part, these data are scattered , and it is difficult to obtain the operating data of the subordinate enterprises that the corporate headquarters needs to know in time . quickly and accurately in the system.
In the current information systems of most enterprises, most of them deal with basic documents, vouchers and account books at the business operation level, while management and control information, as well as analysis and decision-making information are rarely processed. In terms of processing structured data and unstructured data, the effective management and analytical utilization of unstructured data by enterprises is particularly weak, and there is no effective solution for co-processing these two structured types of data.
Challenge 3: Enterprises need e-commerce support, but the technology is heterogeneous and it is difficult to coordinate
With the rapid development of the mobile Internet and a unified computing environment built by large-scale distributed services, the scope of enterprise business collaboration has shifted from within the enterprise to on-demand collaboration based on an extremely open and dynamic industrial ecological chain. The problem is that the unprecedented distribution and openness mean that its software models, interoperability frameworks, communication protocols, and other aspects show significant diversity and differences, which directly lead to the inability of business processes to run through each system. The realization of cross-enterprise whole-process e-commerce operation has brought huge technical challenges, which need to be solved urgently.
Challenge 4: The business changes rapidly, and the rigid IT infrastructure is difficult to quickly respond to the traditional IT system. It is realized based on business needs. It faithfully reflects the original intention of the system design. This is what the IT system should do. Change it again and it will be perfect. But things backfired, business needs are far less stable, and their speed of change is far beyond the ability of information systems to adapt. From a business perspective, such rapid changes are normal and an inevitable requirement for companies to respond to changes in customers and markets.
However, from the perspective of the existing IT system, the business process is solidified in the IT system, and it is extremely painful to deal with the change. In many cases, the change of the business process is equivalent to system reengineering. High-speed business development, flexible business process processing, dynamic and changeable organizational structure, and low-cost operation system constitute the core connotation of the differentiated competitive advantage of Chinese enterprises. on demand. The current IT system is seriously rigid, and it appears to be intentional but powerless in the face of new corporate challenges.
All of the above symptoms boil down to a lack of an integrated enterprise IT architecture.
2. Characteristics of IT architecture integration requirements
How to do a good job in the overall planning of enterprise informatization construction to avoid the formation of information islands; and how to eliminate existing information islands and create a borderless information flow are the inevitable needs of today's enterprises, especially large enterprises, in the informatization construction.
At present, the characteristics of the integration needs of large-scale enterprises in my country's IT architecture are as follows:
Requirement 1. Enterprise informatization requires IT architecture planning method. The scientific enterprise IT architecture overall planning methodology is the fundamental method to guide the construction of enterprise informatization.
The lack of the overall planning of informatization in most enterprises has spawned a scattered, messy and disordered enterprise IT structure, which inevitably leads to the formation of enterprise information islands, which makes IT redundant construction, information resources cannot be shared, business cannot be coordinated, management It is difficult for the executives to make scientific decisions, and the execution of business strategies is also severely restricted.
At present, the popularization and implementation of the IT master planning methodology represented by enterprise architecture has begun in China. More than 73% of large and super-large enterprises have started or built enterprise architectures, and a considerable number of large enterprises have realized the impact of enterprise architecture on enterprise business and The ability to support the strategy, and take this as the key to the enterprise's future competitiveness.
Requirement 2. Enterprise informatization requires IT infrastructure integration
In the construction of enterprise informatization, as far as large group enterprises are concerned , the management of traditional distributed data centers lacks flexibility, the utilization rate of resources is low, the operating cost is too high, and the continuous increase in energy consumption and space occupation continue to swallow the enterprise's Profits, these have become serious shackles restricting the sustainable development of enterprises, which need to be improved urgently.
Effectively integrating infrastructure resources such as servers, operating systems, databases, and middleware that support enterprise information systems, improving the utilization rate of IT assets, and promoting the transformation of large-scale enterprise informatization from extensive and decentralized to intensive and integrated models have become today's technologies. The urgent need of enterprise informatization.
Requirement 3. Enterprise informatization requires information integration and comprehensive utilization
Due to the widespread existence of enterprise information islands, between various business departments of an enterprise, between enterprise headquarters and regions, between enterprises and suppliers, partners, and customers, their respective information resources are scattered in independent information systems and cannot be obtained. effective sharing .
The important dependencies and related information hidden between various scattered business data resources cannot be analyzed, presented and mined in a timely manner. As a result, the headquarters cannot timely understand the operation status of the subordinate enterprises, and cannot make a unified plan and precise control of the operation process. It is difficult to provide a comprehensive, timely and effective basis for the scientific decision-making of the group from the overall height. Therefore, how to quickly and centrally aggregate important business operation data and display it individually to key stakeholders of the enterprise is an indispensable and important means for enterprises to realize scientific decision-making of strategy and business, and to avoid business risks.
3. Problems that need to be solved in the integration of enterprise IT architecture
How to build a unified information platform to solve the problem of information island and integrate existing enterprise resources. In the Internet-oriented e-commerce environment, it is not only necessary to solve the internal coordination of the enterprise, but also to solve the external coordination. For group companies, it is also necessary to solve the problem of the headquarters' management and control of subordinate enterprises, improve insight, and reduce diversified and cross-regional cooperation. To overcome the information gap, establish an enterprise "radar system", improve control, ensure the strategic implementation of the system and the realization of plans, implement group management and control, provide flexible collaboration, and innovate enterprise business processes to meet the needs of enterprise management, control and collaboration. All of this must rely on an integrated enterprise IT architecture.
According to the business status and future development trend of the enterprise, the enterprise IT architecture integration solution focuses on the following issues: ● Overall planning of enterprise IT architecture
● Integration of enterprise organizational structure, interaction and presentation
● Enterprise business process integration and continuous optimization
● Integration of enterprise application functions
● Integration of enterprise heterogeneous data resources
● Consolidation of enterprise infrastructure
4. Ideas and strategies for integrating IT architecture
Enterprise IT architecture integration is a comprehensive system engineering, involving the standard and unification of IT planning methodology, vertical organizational integration, horizontal business integration, basic data integration and infrastructure integration.
1. Proceed from the standardized enterprise architecture planning and promote the integration of IT architecture: The theory and method of enterprise architecture are increasingly being paid more and more attention and attention by the government and enterprises. The role of the enterprise architecture is that it can carry out the top-level design of informatization on the basis of a full understanding of business strategies and processes, form a flexible, stable and robust IT architecture, and build a harmonious IT application environment. Therefore, developing enterprise architecture under the guidance of standard and normative methodology is the most effective way to fundamentally solve the problem of comprehensive integration of enterprise IT architecture.
2. Realize organizational integration and open up the boundaries of enterprise interaction and presentation: Organizational integration is to unify the organizational structure, access channels and identity authentication between the subordinate and subordinate departments within the enterprise, as well as between the group and its subordinate enterprises. Here The above realization provides a personalized workbench for each stakeholder of the enterprise, and realizes the comprehensive interaction and presentation of the enterprise.
3. Realize business integration and open up the boundaries of enterprise business: standardize the structured method and access method of business processes, realize business integration, and form closed-loop management of pre-budgeting, process control and post-event analysis.
4. Realize the integration of application and data, and open up the boundary of application and information: standardize the structured method and access method of business processes, realize the integration of application and data, and form a closed-loop management of pre-budgeting, process control and post-event analysis.
5. Realize platform integration and open up the boundaries of enterprise IT infrastructure: build an integrated enterprise IT technology architecture platform, and realize on-demand, efficient and reasonable utilization of enterprise IT infrastructure assets through the integration of platform resources and centralized intelligent management and control , reduce the total cost of ownership, protect enterprise investment, and promote the intensification and centralized transformation of enterprise IT investment.
To put the above ideas into practice, first of all, we need to find a standardized architecture development method; secondly, we need to have an integrated process-driven IT system; finally, we must have a unified basic platform that supports the integration of the architecture to realize the integration of technology and business.
5. Integrate the framework of the IT architecture
In fact, integration is nothing more than interconnecting information systems in the form of "chimneys" and "shafts", standardizing the interaction mode of application systems, connecting business processes, and unifying heterogeneous data.
Its implementation framework is:
● Realize interactive integration through a unified portal; solve system security, identity management and authorization issues through unified identity management;
● Solve the problem of data inconsistency through data sharing and conversion;
● Solve the problem of application heterogeneity through service encapsulation and adaptation of application functions;
● Change the current system's mode of organizing business processes according to different modules and departments, and realize complex business processes that run through each system through business process driving;
● Through an integrated infrastructure resource management platform, it can solve the problem of enterprise technology architecture, that is, the integration of infrastructure.