CIS53008 Management of Information Technology Proof Reading Services

CIS53008 Management of Information Technology Proof Reading Services

Executive Summary

The below assignment has concentrated on the adaptation of Open Group IT4IT™ Reference Architecture by Delta Lloyd. This is a report developed for the CEO of the organisation as a consultant. The adaptation procedure along with the challenges faced by the organisation has been discussed in the report. The recommendations and results of the adaptation procedure are also analysed in the report. A periodical explanation of the development of this report has also been presented.

Activity-A

Introduction

IT4IT reference architecture is a framework to guide the business in the IT practices so that they can attain higher outcomes in the comparison of traditional architectures. The architecture is a conceptual guide for business to engage IT in such a way that entire value stream can lead the benefits effectively. The report will present the background of technology and justify the reasons to use in business of Delta Lloyd which is a business offering service in finance, insurance and pension sectors. The report has been discussed the challenges and benefits those can be attained with the use of IT4IT architecture. The road map and recommendations will be offered to assist the organization in implementation  process.

Background

The Open Group organization has announced the IT4IT standard in October 2015. The standard defines reference architecture which is treated as the holistic approach to management the information technology inside the organizations to attain insights and control to make boundary less flow of information in value chain. The reference standard is useful to guide the business for the design, obtain and regulate the implications to run the information technology (Josey, 2015). Entire service cycle can be managed with systematic control and traceable activities of the business created around the main focus of ‘How to’ for end users in value chain and reference architecture.

IT4IT has is not a replacement for the existing standards and technologies but it is used to improve the performance and quality through the value chain because ITIL and COBIT like standards offer process level but unclear on the prescriptive behavior. IT4IT is a natural next step reference architecture to address the requirements related to how to process and manage service model and life cycles. IT4IT is significantly returns the saving on cost, complexity, trace-ability for end-to-end IT production. The usability and utilization of the value chain in the organization can be improved with the help of IT4IT as it helps to optimize the value chain stages and reduce the risk of failure in the change management inside the business (Osório, 2016). The framework is systematically starts with planning and ends up with outcomes those are not the theoretical attempts but follows the achievable practices.

Justification of IT4IT adoption

Delta Lloyd has services in finance, banking, investments, pension and insurance sector. The organization has chosen to adopt the IT4IT for the cloud services and implementation so that overall business can be enhanced. The organization has adopted IT4IT to reduce the risk and enhance the value chain for customers to manage the uncertainty and suitability. The organization has used the reference architecture to address the issues like uncertainty in interaction with data service model, compatibility with newer technologies for cloud computing and service brokering, handling of data (Paji? et.al, 2014). With IT4IT, the organization has scope and opportunity to make the process and implementation in service model and value chain more centric to data rather than process. The organization used the opportunity to attain the discipline, efficiency and predictability in business functions which result in the form of improved services and products.

The implication of IT4IT has promoted the business functions more centric to data and organization has achieved the higher throughput in practices. The existing model like COBIT and ITIL are refined to attain the benefits. IT4IT has delivered the benefits of cost-effective and suitable reference architecture for the business processing with information technology so that a systematic process can be used to measure the quality standards and outcomes in between the process. The architecture has empowered the business for cloud based computing to meet the opportunity and outcomes in the distributed processing among users and customers (Josey, 2015). The intended outcomes, effective management of data in business functions, simplicity in operations and easy support to digit technologies has encouraged the Delta Lloyd to adopt IT4IT in business.

Adoption road map

IT4IT focuses on the value chain and service backbone model to deliver the efficiency and agility in business. The organization processes the assets and capabilities under the control of systematic practices of the architecture.  Delta Lloyd used the following four value chain streams to support the implementation of IT4IT reference architecture.

Strategy to portfolio: the organization can customize service model backbone for the activities so that effective outcomes can be attained in IT value chain (Pääkkönen and Pakkala, 2015). Instead of dynamic process, organization can prepare the case study to follow in the digital requirements and outcomes.

Requirements to deployments:  the stream has the activities to implement the requirements in the form of existence in the IT values. Build process is used to implement the case study or context of the organization in processes. It ensures that the data and efforts for the build are addressed effectively.

Request tofulfill: the prepared build stream can be used to deliver the product and service through IT value chain as the build stream is used to address the functions and requirements for the delivery of product (Betz, 2016).

Detect and correct: The implementation of the requirements of the organization are detected and corrected according to changes and demands so that Delta Lloyd can achieve the best solution and outcome from the operations accomplished with information technologies systems.

Figure 1: IT value chain and streams in IT4IT

Figure 2: IT4IT reference architecture L1

Challenges

Delta Lloyd has faced certain challenges during the adoption of IT4IT reference architecture because the architecture does not offer any strict implementation process for the benefits but works as an optimization mechanism. Following are key challenges those are faced to attain the performance and higher outcomes in the business with the help of architecture:

Integral optimization: it is quite difficult to optimize and integrate the components of the business operations according to IT4IT architecture as it defines a lot of functions those are complex and interrelated to other functions. Therefore, the architecture needs strong base to optimize the functions and activity towards the production and service availability (Norta et.al, 2014). It is challenging to integrate the unstructured business practices into a systematic form.

Enterprise requirements and business: the reference architecture is effective to meet the requirements of the organization but it is necessary to address all the structures inside the organization and recognise their capabilities and roles. However, most of business cannot adopt the enterprise planning in the starting phase without any additional motivation. It is also complex for Delta Lloyd to simplify the architecture.

Data reconsiderations: The availability of data from the values streams and processing at different level of organization become the barrier for the organization to adopt IT4IT architecture. The consideration of data for production and services is complex till the first outcome is generated (Zimmermann et.al, 2013). The organization faces the difficulties to address the requirements and benefits during the outcome production.

Outcomes of IT4IT adoption

IT4IT adoption is described as single powerful tool for the enterprises to manage the data and process effectively in which a wide range of functions, data and tools for assets and operation management are under the pin of control to improve the performance. The reference architecture is effective to outcome the results in the insurance activities of the organization. Delta Lloyd can create benefits in the form of centralised data storage and processing on cloud services and enhance the data sharing (Why IT4IT, 2017). The scalability and compatibility issues are addressed effectively by the architecture as it supports the cloud based installation for all the business operations. The architecture also enforces the practices of digital operations in DevOps, IoT and agile so that automation can be used in enterprise.

Outcome of IT4IT is that it make the process of insurance, customer handling and data manipulation in Delta Lloyd free from the errors and speed up the execution. The architecture produces the efficiency, predictability, simplicity and agility in the operations of the organization. The architecture is used as the guideline to transform and control the data in organization so that employees as well as customer make be benefited with the use of cloud based services and storage effectively to process the task quickly. The framework is suitable to address the link up and quality management with the reduced risk in the business for the market scopes and benefits (IT4IT overview, 2017). A better control and proper management are outcomes of the architecture to assist the organization in routine operations via optimization and integration of objectives and practices.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Delta Lloyd can make benefits with the implementation of IT4IT architecture in business so that entire value chain for IT operations can be simplified and objective directed to attain the benefits with service model backbone dependency. However, there are certain constraints and challenges to implement the IT4IT and attain the outcomes so that organization is suggested to follow the practices for effective outcomes:

1.It is recommended to understand the organizational requirements behind the implementation of the architecture in the comparison of existing architecture. IT4IT improves the reliability and avoidance of risk in the outcome but it needs enterprise structure clear and optimized to make the operation digital and objective directed.

2.Data should be gathered properly because to process with four value streams of the architecture (About IT4IT, 2017). Wrong values generate wrong results and reduce the efficiency of assets and cost utilization to meet the specific objectives.

3.The organization is suggested to optimize the practices and to make the existing architecture compatible to IT4IT through fine refinements. It is required to attain the lower maintenance and roll backs in detect and correct value stream but generate the higher outcome in build and deliver streams.

4.It is recommended to enforce the architecture together with process as the data needs consideration for the processing (Betz, 2016). Process flow and data control should be effective when the organization is optimizing the outcome with IT4IT architecture.

The report has been presented the background and justification behind the use of IT4IT reference architecture in Delta Lloyd organization. It also has been concluded the road map to implement the IT4IT architecture in the business. The report has been addressed that the organization can came over the challenges and adopt the architecture to purify the outcomes of business through value chain streams and service model backbone dependency. The report has addressed the benefits over ITIL and COBIT like architectures and recommended certain practices to attain higher valued return.

References

Books and Journals

Paji?, A., Panteli?, O. and Stanojevi?, B., 2014. Representing IT Performance Management as Metamodel. International Journal of Computers Communications & Control, 9(6), pp.758-767.

Zimmermann, A., Sandkuhl, K., Pretz, M., Falkenthal, M., Jugel, D. and Wissotzki, M., 2013, August. Towards an integrated service-oriented reference enterprise architecture. In Proceedings of the 2013 International Workshop on Ecosystem Architectures (pp. 26-30). ACM.

Betz, C., 2016. Implications of digital transformation, Agile, and DevOps for IT curricula, with recommendations.

Pääkkönen, P. and Pakkala, D., 2015. Reference architecture and classification of technologies, products and services for big data systems. Big Data Research, 2(4), pp.166-186.

Norta, A.,Grefen, P. and Narendra, N.C., 2014. A reference architecture for managing dynamic inter-organizational business processes. Data & Knowledge Engineering, 91, pp.52-89.

Osório, A.L., 2016, October. Towards Vendor-Agnostic IT-System of IT-Systems with the CEDE Platform. In Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises (pp. 494-505). Springer International Publishing.

Josey, A., 2015. The IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, Version 2.0–.

Josey, A., 2015. The IT4IT™ Reference Architecture, Version 2.0–A Pocket Guide. Van Haren.

Online

About IT4IT, 2017 [online] [Accessed Through] <http://blog.goodelearning.com/it4it/what-exactly-is-it4it-heres-the-full-story/> [Accessed on: 27^th March, 2017]

IT4IT overview, 2017 [online] [Accessed Through] <http://www.opengroup.org/IT4IT/overview> [Accessed on: 27^th March, 2017]

Why IT4IT, 2017 [online] [Accessed Through] <https://techbeacon.com/why-new-it4it-reference-architecture-game-changer> [Accessed on: 27^th March, 2017]