The Emerging Technology and Architecture (ETA) team will partner with campus to create a cloud-smart approach to adopting emerging technology. For example, evolving online learning by leveraging modern tools and LTIs, exploring IoT for a smart campus and, helping to enable research computing in the cloud and testing machine learning techniques.
Enterprise Architecture is a practice that works in conjunction with strategic planning to provide a framework to help guide the organization through technology, process, and business transformations. The goal is to provide the following key outcomes:
- Provide an adaptable environment
- Increased innovation through agility
- Leverage scale through collaboration
- Drive decisions based on good analysis and data
- Lower total ownership operational costs
Enterprise architecture provides a standard framework for effectively defining and managing the evolution of a technology. An Emerging Technologies and Architecture team can aid in decision making by providing the following:
Reference Architectures and Roadmaps
Work with service area experts to develop technology reference architectures and roadmaps. Maintain a catalog of those artifacts that are easily accessible and available.
Business Case Development
Assist in bridging the gap between campus leaders and technology experts to develop their concepts and ideas into business cases. Help campus leaders link their business needs with technology solutions. Business needs should drive technology implementations.
A thorough TCO (total cost of ownership) will also be included. Understanding the many types of offerings available by one provider gets complicated and when an evaluation is needed across 2-3 different providers it is increasingly more difficult to determine what components and services are needed, appropriate capacities, and costs for each solution option will look like. The ETA team can assist with this.
Assessment and Analysis
Assess business needs and operations and identify reusable elements in order to reduce the impact on architectural technology debt.
Organizational Alignment
Help campus and technology leaders in aligning their initiatives with the organizational and technology architecture goals and roadmaps.
Solutions Design
Assist with understanding and evaluation of cloud computing services, as well as help with the design of solutions that follow the defined technology principles and practices. Engage with external service providers to leverage their educational and solutions architect resources to assist in solutions design.
The Emerging Technologies and Architecture team can assist in the planning that translates business needs into technology. This planning can provide guidance to the governance process as it makes recommendations regarding investments in technology both for the immediate and future needs of our stakeholders.