Technologist and network architects alike are leading companies into a new digital frontier directed by technology-enabled platforms. These platforms are very powerful as they can enable a new ecosystem for business models, customer engagement and value creation.
InAccenture's recent Technology Vision 2016 research, the "Platform Economy" explains that:
Inmy previous blog, I identified that modern-day architects are challenged to define architectures that blend the physical and digital worlds. These architectures will be based on an omni-channel approach focused on seamless experiences, with rich context and situational awareness. Accenture's perspective on the Platform Economy expands on this notion with three important insights:
The implications are twofold:
The challenge is the level of integration and data connection complexity combined with the ability to deliver a context-based, situationally aware, loosely coupled architecture.
I consider this new thinking and architecture technique as software interconnection patterns.
Apatterncan be defined as a reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem within a given context.
While the termpatternis not new, using them to solve the heterogeneous architecture and design problems of today is needed more than ever. Software interconnection patterns describe interactions between entities that occur at the right time, can be trusted, and maintain both predictability and repeatability across an ecosystem. The lifespan of software interconnections is a key characteristic. Interconnections may have a long, temporary or repeatable lifespan that is completely based on the situation and context.
The future of realizing business outcomes from technology depends on applying software interconnection patterns effectively. The architecture for interconnection patterns incorporates the advancements in IoT,hyper-distributed computingand microservices to achieve the desired business outcomes. This requires a new level of abstraction that will allow architects to deal with the complexities of connecting many different applications, systems, devices and technologies together in a coordinated fashion.
One of the best references that describe the vision of what the new world will look like is the Internet of Things Architecture (IoT-A) provided by the European Lighthouse Integrated Project. This video showcases the power of platforms in an IoT context; connecting traditionally siloed applications and technologies across multiple industries to save critical time and lives, which without connection would not be possible.
In the video, the interconnections highlighted are event driven and involve multiple entities, devices and systems. The key to the interactions is determining which ecosystem partners need to be involved and what data is important to relay.
As the video illustrates, using platforms to blend the physical and digital worlds must be governed by design simplicity and usability. Simplicity is made possible by understanding the context and interpreting the data. Context and interpretation enable:
Other examples in the video highlight that today, and in the future, there will be a diversity of interactions between entities. Interactions between such things as:
Note:these examples are not constrained by a single person, corporation, process or protocol.
In thinking about all of the various combinations and permutations of software patterns, the 80-20 rule (Pareto principle) prevailed; 80% of interactions that cross business, IT and OT systems can be captured within three primary interconnection patterns:
These three software interconnection patterns are based on a configurable platform that can handle a variety of process orchestrations scenarios, ever-emerging integration scenarios and utilizing both traditional and new types of data sources. A configurable platform is one in which the constitution parts are modular, maintaining independence yet can be used together with minimal effort.For the tech junkies, this is like component architecture meets API Economy and microservices.
As technologists, it is our responsibility to balance complexity, simplicity, viability and individual capability through the use of abstraction. In today's software-driven world, we can learn to effectively do this by examining how abstractions have been used in other disciplines. For example:
In a similar fashion, modern-day architects should invest their time and innovation into developing methods and technologies that expand upon the notion of software interconnection patterns. This can begin with reviewing existing work that has been done related to the concepts of platforms, digital business and the API Economy.
Below are some resources that I have found helpful in my journey. If you want more reading suggestions, post a comment and I'll respond with a few others.
In my next post, I'll investigate the idea put forward by Marshall Van Alstyne that states "products have features; platforms have communities."
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