LeanIX Whitepaper Nine Key Use Cases Solved With EA
LeanIX Whitepaper Nine Key Use Cases Solved With EA
CONTENT
P3 Introduction
P15 Summary
White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
Introduction
What value proposition does enterprise architecture (EA) deliver upon? In the not-so-
distant past, the demand for enterprise architects was on the decline. To say that trend
has shifted would be a drastic understatement.
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White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
Ensuring compliance
Enterprise architects are integral in
maintaining their company’s compliance with
financial and government regulatory bodies.
Take, for example, the European Union’s
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
This regulation imposes unprecedented rules
on the management of the personal data.
The GDPR proposes severe penalties for
noncompliance – up to €20 million or 4% of
the global annual turnover for the preceding
financial year. Enterprise architects can clearly
demonstrate GDPR compliance by ensuring all
pertinent data is gathered and presented in a
well-organized manner.
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White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
Figure 1
Nine Key Use Cases for Enterprise Architects
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White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
center?
to its activities.
During a merger, business capability maps define Use built-in tools such as LeanIX Surveys, to gather all
activities that need to be fulfilled independent of of this information and save it in the repository. LeanIX
processes and organizations. These maps assign software serves as a single source of truth that is
applications to user groups and business capabilities, strong, referenceable, and easily accessible.
even if the organizational structures and procedures of
the two companies are very different. This overarching Assess different target application landscapes
view of applications and their contributing business Enterprise architects plan the optimum target
value makes it possible to assess redundancies landscape. Should one IT landscape be absorbed?
and gaps in IT support from both a functional and Should we cherry-pick the top-performing applications
technical perspective. of both companies? To support this decision, LeanIX runs
an elaborate analysis of the functional and technical
Record initial state of IT landscapes fit of each application. Enterprise architects can then
During a merger or acquisition, recording the initial propose a best-fit solution from concrete data.
state of both IT landscapes is critical. LeanIX helps you
to answer essential structural questions, like: LeanIX customer, Helvetia, was able to reduce
redundancies and realize substantial savings in their
• What systems of record does each company have? merger with Nationale Suisse. In its half-year report,
Helvetia reported IT as a major contributor to these
• Where is master data stored?
savings. The establishment of transparency was a
• What are the locations of each supporting data crucial first step toward doing so. Today, the LeanIX
inventory serves as the single source of truth that
strategic IT management decisions are based upon.
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White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
Figure 3
Application Portfolio
View by Business
Criticality and
Functional Fit
LeanIX internal research indicates that large enterprises From there, they can use the LeanIX application matrix
(with >€1 billion annual revenue) have an average of and application rationalization surveys to quickly assess
650 applications deployed at one time. The largest 10% the usefulness of applications and make data-driven
of companies average a staggering 3400 applications recommendations on which applications to tolerate,
running simultaneously. The lion’s share of many IT invest in, migrate, or eliminate. Finally, enterprise
budgets is spent on operating legacy systems and architects will have the information to plan a roadmap
managing applications – many of which are not mission to implement the rationalization project through
critical. To stay abreast of current innovative trends, consecutive decommissioning projects.
provide first-class customer service, reduce cost,
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White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
40% 80%
has acquired more than 13 companies with no
standard IT integration plan for their IT landscape.
As a result, their application landscape grew
reduction in new time saved in new
more complex and redundant. The management
application queries app queries
board of NORMA Group decided to harmonize
business and technology on a global scale to
set the stage for future growth. After loading all
Figure 4
Application Matrix
Report by Functional Fit
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White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
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White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
Figure 5
Dataflow Model with
Data Objects by
Application
1. The inability to support business LeanIX teamed up with Flexera, creators of Technopedia,
the most complete and authoritative enterprise IT data
2. Higher complexity
worldwide, to provide a comprehensive repository of
3. Security vulnerabilities technology data. Technopedia automatically updates
the information of over a million products, spanning
4. Compliance issues
more than 50 million market data points. This up-to-
5. Lack of skill and support from vendors date information feeds directly into LeanIX and presents
your organization with high quality data about your
6. Lower IT flexibility technology inventory. Access to current data prohibits
disconnected information silos, lack of integration, and
incomplete data about technology.
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White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
• Did the application have more or less establish stakeholders within the company, identify
outages year-over-year? which data is personal data, detect and assess risk,
define checks, and implement measures to ensure
have on revenues?
• Which applications are using this data?
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White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
Figure 6
GDPR Compliance &
Security Survey
6. Standards Governance
Overview of use case
The use of standardized information technology in large and purpose, all bound by organizational trust rather
corporations has measurable benefits: reduced training than command and control. Being open and adaptive
time, lower support and maintenance costs, better to new technologies is crucial to both your organization’s
bargaining power with a smaller number of vendors, and mission and its ability to operate efficiently. Similarly,
enhanced communication. being flexible when it comes to individual preferences
— whether it is working on a specific platform or using a
Standardization often goes hand in hand with particular spam filter — can help employees work better
centralization, the process of giving your IT department and encourage creativity.
more control over purchases of hardware and software,
as every new piece of software equipment you add to For these reasons, it is important to adopt a
your IT arsenal can require installation, maintenance, standardization policy that fits your situation and needs.
staff training, repair, patches, upgrades, etc. How can enterprises improve good governance while
staying agile simultaneously? LeanIX can steer you in the
Standardization can have its drawbacks as well, as right direction.
technologies change very quickly, and processes need
to be updated when technology is updated. To stave How EA and LeanIX can help
off killing innovation, companies also use alternative With LeanIX, you can document your technology
concepts, like radical agility. Radical agility, a term standards in a transparent and efficient manner. First,
coined by LeanIX customer, Zalando, is an architectural it is important to create company-wide standards and
concept that builds on a service-oriented architecture. make them accessible. Then, identify the use of non-
This method allows engineers to get work done while standard technologies. Find out why these technologies
management gets out of the way. The radical agility have an exception. From there, plan standardization
approach is based on three pillars: autonomy, mastery, guidelines that best fit your company.
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White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
LeanIX enables you to note important information for Microservices break down monoliths, which allows for
each technology in an organized manner: rapid changes and short release times along with high
scalability and autonomous teams. Companies that
• Create IT Component Fact Sheets for every use microservices deploy new software releases five
standard with a defined lifecycle, and add a times faster than those that do not use microservices.
“standard” tag. Regardless, companies that have adopted microservices
still have the same hurdles as companies that have
• Set a successor in the case of outdated technology. not adopted them when it comes to legacy issues and
missing information.
• Define a Tag Group for all with a necessary
standard status (e.g., leading technology, How EA and LeanIX can help
exceptional use, sunset). In a microservices organization, state-of-the-art EAM
can create more added value than ever. Although
• Add a “Standard” Status Tag to each standard IT it is not always easy for companies to introduce
Component Fact Sheet microservices, there are excellent reasons to do so.
In the not-too-distant future, every organization, no
• Create a Technology Stack for the whole list of matter the industry or sector, will become a software
standards (e.g., databases, application servers, company. LeanIX forms the link between individual
methods). teams and technologies, and provides a holistic view of
projects’ impact to operations. All employees can get
• With LeanIX integrations with ITSM providers, like up-to-date access to information on the IT landscape in
ServiceNow, enterprise architects can make sure their personal context, which is a basic requirement if a
that only standard technologies that are overseen microservices architecture is to work.
by the EA are deployed.
LeanIX supports microservices architectures by allowing
We also support the concept of a radical agility all key information to be stored in a single source of
architecture. For the concept of radical agility to work, truth. This lets stakeholders better understand critical
standardized interfaces are needed. dependencies across microservices with regard to how
certain IT components support various applications.
By automating the transfer of critical information,
7. Monolith to Microservices and storing that data in a central repository, LeanIX
Overview of use case empowers faster development cycles.
Rapidly accelerating digitalization is forcing many
businesses to rethink their architectures. To meet
the constantly growing expectations of tech-savvy
customers, companies must ensure that their products
are available on all digital channels as quickly as possible.
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White Paper Nine Use Cases Solved With Enterprise Architecture
How can EA and LeanIX help? Identify the current applications supporting
LeanIX software helps you govern and improve the IoT capabilities.
your cloud initiatives by providing an automated,
comprehensive view of multi-cloud environments at Detect gaps in the application support.
enterprise scale.
Evaluate the quality of capability support
For a successful cloud transformation, a wide variety based on defined criteria.
of factors should be considered: current and future
capabilities, the application portfolio strategy, Develop requirements for existing
operational and organizational questions related to applications.
people and processes, as well as cost metrics. These
complexities must be fully understood in order to Spot the need for enhancements or
mitigate risks and maintain compliance across cloud new applications.
deployments. LeanIX helps by providing a 360-degree
view into cloud architecture and integrating with leading
cloud providers to automate the import of data.
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White Paper The Definitive Guide To Application Portfolio Management
Summary
Digital transformation is here to stay, and the need LeanIX solves the most common use cases associated
for enterprise architects to manage the complexities with enterprise architecture and brings measurable
corporate IT will only continue to rise. Tools like Excel value to organizations across all industries. We have
and PowerPoint, though initially attractive, pale in helped enterprises gain transparency in their application
comparison with using a specialized EAM tool to landscape, save millions in cost, and avoid costly
oversee today’s technology landscape. compliance penalties.
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LeanIX’s Continuous Transformation Platform® is trusted by Corporate IT and Product IT to achieve comprehensive visibility and superior governance. Global
customers organize, plan and manage IT landscapes with LeanIX’s automated and data-driven approach. Offering Enterprise Architecture - , SaaS- , and Value
Stream Management, LeanIX helps organizations make sound decisions and accelerate transformations. LeanIX has hundreds of customers globally, including
Adidas, Atlassian, Bosch, Dropbox, Santander or Workday. The company is headquartered in Bonn, Germany, with offices in Boston, San Francisco and around
the world. For more information, visit www.leanix.net.
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2021v3.0 www.leanix.net