Anthony Bradley

In the latter part of 2007 and throughout 2008 the Gartner Application Architecture team began building a collection of reference architectures and practice frameworks as part of the effort to establish a body of research for our newly formed team. Clients responded well we are highlighting this research even more in our 2009 agenda. Let’s quickly define the reference architecture and practice framework terms and then look at some of the related published research. 

Without getting too complicated we generally define a reference architecture as a depiction and examination of the major components of a system and how they interrelate. A practice framework depicts and describes a set of guidelines on how to execute on a clearly defined and scoped effort.

The Reference Architecture for Web-Oriented Architecture combines the five core principles of SOA (modular, shareable, swappable, distributable, and discoverable), the principles of representational state transfer (REST), and the architecture of the world wide web to describe the rapidly growing WOA sub-style of SOA.

Multitenancy is a fundamental capability enabling cloud computing. The Reference Architecture for Multitenancy: Enterprise Computing “in the Cloud” describes the various multitenancy patterns including the applicability and examples of each. This research can help clients better understand cloud computing ad how it can augment their application and infrastructure portfolios. 

In late 2007 we published a Reference Architecture for Enterprise ‘Mashups’ to drive more understanding on how the exploding Web mashup trend can impact the enterprise. We formed a multi-layer architecture of an enterprise mashup solution to articulate the functionality delivered by the mashup market targeting enterprise mashup deployments. This space is rapidly evolving and we will update this reference architecture in 2009. 

With Building an SOA Business Case: A Gartner Framework we delivered a very robust framework (over a year in the making) for establishing a SOA business case with full traceability from the principles of SOA to bottom line business impact. Along the way we examine business benefits and costs as well as technology benefits and costs.

How to Apply the PLANT SEEDS Framework for Enhanced Enterprise Web 2.0 Adoption was published in 2007 as a framework to assist clients in moving beyond providing social software tools to delivering social applications. It covers the top ten design principles for delivering social software environments targeted at a well defined purpose with the goal of catalyzing and nurturing productive on-line communities to deliver enterprise value. Like enterprise mashups this space is evolving rapidly and we will update this framework in 2009. 

We are planning a significant addition to the existing research base of reference architectures and practice frameworks in 2009 including reference architectures for event driven architecture, event processing, social applications, enterprise mashups, cloud-enabled application infrastructure, and service oriented development of applications (SODA). Some of the practice frameworks include business case frameworks for enterprise mashups and social applications and several frameworks for building and executing on a social applications strategy.

I realize this post is more relevant for existing Gartner clients (access to reference documents require a subscription or must be purchased) but I wanted to expose some of our research plans for 2009 and open it up for feedback. Feedback is always welcome.