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   [ A PROUD SUPPORTER OF DBA-2 ]

The base line for any business is the ROI i.e. how much you put in and how much you get out of it. Irrespective of the product, business is "putting in the right amount of money at the right time at the right place and then taking out the right amount from the right place at the right time". Strategy is the means to achieve that...

As running a business got easier with the advent of "business technology", it also brought in the problems of cross platform business management tools integration and (sometimes secure) data sharing . Off the shelf applications made it easier to implement these solutions but Information Technology department became a cost house to manage and maintain these applications. The next step was to come up with the middleware technology which, is the step in the right direction but again, the rising costs of implementing these with constant customization and maintenance of all the middle tier code was conflicting with the return expected. CIOs and CTOs had to struggle in an effort to keep the company's technical infrastructure up to date and scalable. Yes, we are talking about the enterprise information technology infrastructure. I have been working with business management applications since last 10 years now and encountered the same problem again and again, how do we budget the projects before implementation and afterwards, how do we control the post implementation maintenance cost? How do we keep the operationally critical software we implemented from jepordizing the operations? Where (How) do we find skills to manage the latest technology?

The rapid change in technologies made it difficult to develop a stable solution and manage post-implementation maintenance and scalability. Along with that come the issues of performance, data transference over intranets and possibly the Internet, graphic user interface alignment with the underlying architecture, and the investment required to constantly update individuals’ skills to keep pace with the technological changes. It is fair to say that the solution may not always lie in the technology; it is probably more in the technical framework underlying the technology, a cross-platform, multi-dimension or multi-process independent module framework that can communicate intelligently among its components as well as externally through a core that can manage the entire application’s events, messages, and change in behaviors based on the events initiated. SOA and Web Services brought a major change in the way we think about developing applications, but most technology executives are still struggling with the cost and time associated with maintenance, technology integration, and the cost involved in implementing both. The technology meant to solve business problems has created another dilemma: “Should we spend more money to maintain and scale what we thought would make us money?” Granted, the costs will always be there, but the goal is keeping them to a minimum, knowing well (no offense) that business leadership often has not been very cooperative in this regard.

Through experience and studying business management applications for so long I decided to develop a framework that is cross-platform, intelligent, loosely coupled (scalable) and also maintained the technical as well as the business leaders vision for the enterprise ROI. I came up with DBA² - Dynamic Business Management Application Architecture Framework. An underlying technical architecture that will help the business and Technology leadership to bridge the gap between the two, a framework that not only eliminates the need to evaluate many technologies present, but also helps to align the technical goals with business strategic goals and, more importantly, financial goals, a framework that will hold the business process automation on top "As Is" and an infrastructure that can help determine the costs before the development begins -  wouldn't it be great to know where we are going before we start?

The main goals for this framework are:

• Facilitate development of an Enterprise Level cross-platform integrated business automation infrastructure
• Provide ease in application implementation through independent intelligent modules while retaining:
   
  • Technical framework integrity
  • Greater performance
  • Maximum code reuse
• Attain straightforward and simple application scalability
• Facilitate software architects and developers in realizing the bigger picture in the pre-development phase
• Achieve greater ROI and customer satisfaction by minimizing post-release maintenance
• Provide a ready-made, conceptual architecture for business management applications
• Minimize development costs and defects while providing speedy time-to-market (TTM)

Technically, DBA² is a new concept in Software Architecture and Design for developing enterprise level business management applications. The intent is to help cross functional teams realize the bigger picture even before the development begins. The business leaders can envision how their business process automation can be implemented, the architects can see the bigger picture and develop integrated applications through this framework.

The framework components, while establishing a strong and scalable infrastructure (for the application) relate to business and sub-business processes to the lowest level. This will bridges the gap between technology and the processes. The components of this framework are independent and loosely coupled while inheriting characteristics from the core components. This will help with faster development, fewer defects and quicker software implementation. The next step is to manage the Business Intelligence.

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