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Every CIO appreciates the opportunities that the Web has created for better serving customers and seamlessly integrating with partners. But the Web has only been around since 1994 and the first large-scale transactional sites didn't appear until 1996. It's no surprise, then, to find that there is precious little experience to draw upon in architecting complex web sites that serve a lot of users and tie into multiple back end systems.
Kaloke Architects have been building and deploying these sorts of web sites at an array of Fortune 1000 and Internet start-up sites from the beginning. Most have also played a key role in shaping the architectural strategies of some well-known Fortune 1000 companies. We know what works and what doesn't. We make it a point to keep up with the latest technologies. And most important of all - we know that these sites are significant investments that reflect on our customer's image. To earn their keep, they have to last, have a reasonably low cost of operation and provide a major payoff to the business.
The Architecture Strategy offering is a swiftly executed project used to establish or refine a strategic vision for using the Web to achieve business goals, along with the definition of tactical steps that yield tangible progress toward those goals. The focus can be to define a new architectural platform or to validate an already existing approach. In forming the Architecture Strategy, Kaloke keeps in mind the factors that are important to you.
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Meeting business goals, including transaction volumes |
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Ensuring the security of customer and proprietary information |
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Providing a pleasant customer experience |
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Ensuring data and transactional integrity |
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Building an extensible application portfolio that easily absorbs change and which can be built out over time |
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Reducing cost of ownership and operation |
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Leveraging existing IT applications/assets |
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Seeking opportunities to Buy vs. build |
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| The deliverables of the Architecture Strategy effort provide a clear picture of the target architecture that will best serve the business and how to get there. These can include the following: |
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Application Architecture Strategy: A component view of the overall application portfolio and how each component relates to others. Recommendations of existing assets to be leveraged or replaced, as well as identification of new components to be purchased or built. |
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Data Architecture Strategy: A data-centric view of the Application Architecture that provides insight on how to best manage data cross the portfolio, including the strategic deployment of data warehousing/datamarts. |
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Physical Architecture Strategy: Provides a component view of the server, networking, and infrastructure software required to host the portfolio. The use of hosting services is also evaluated as a part of this exercise. |
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Migration Plan: This plan identifies the first tactical steps to be taken in order to meet critical business goals, in accordance with the defined architecture. |
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| A solid architecture is important, but its pursuit cannot turn into an academic or "ivory tower" exercise. Kaloke's experience, coupled with a rapid and pragmatic approach, gives you a workable, actionable vision that helps position your firm for maximum competitive advantage. |
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