The enterprise architect identifies that there is yet another layer to map in order to gain the line of sight on how the strategy is impacted by the current digital infrastructure that the AEC-company makes use of; and the enterprise architect realises that the current mappings so far has focused mainly on the As-Is enterprise architecture of the AEC-company. Nonetheless, as the enterprise architect thought for himself, the journey has to start and end somewhere. The end is the To-Be architecture and in between is the transitional architecture(s).
With the As-Is enterprise architecture in mind the enterprise architect begins mapping the AEC-company’s application landscape and puts it to the infrastructure that has been chosen in the past. The AEC-company makes use of the product suits from Autodesk to produce the construction consulting products, the engineering consulting products, and sustainability consulting products.
While doing the mapping the enterprise architect begins mapping out the AEC-company’s core business usage e.g., the Microsoft Office productivity suite, the Microsoft based ERP-system, Microsoft Dynamics ERP that is used in combination with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the HR-application suite and the salary management suite. The enterprise architect chooses to map the applications to the infrastructure that the vendors have informed the AEC-company that they are making use of, and in this case the enterprise architect chooses to map the cloud computing devices as devices and after doing so, the enterprise architect maps location to each of the infrastructure devices.
Line of Sight
The first illustration provides the enterprise architect with the view of relationships among the objects in the model that shows the As-Is architecture and that supports the engineering consulting product and the construction consulting products.
The second illustration provides the enterprise architect with the insights into how the infrastructure (Technology layer) supports the sustainability product and the supporting processes of the AEC-company.
