Nick Jones

Yesterday morning one of the cats brought me a present; a dead bird. It’s not obvious why the cats think I need these occasional donations of small furry or feathery corpses. Do they believe I’m under-nourished? Or that I need a new toy to play with? Or was it just a hint that the feline breakfast we’d served up earlier had been a bit insubstantial? But as any cat owner knows, cats can be pretty inscrutable and understanding their motives isn’t easy. But it’s always a good idea to think about the motives behind any gift, especially when they’re not obvious.

Trust me, this does have something to do with IT. I spent yesterday with Cisco at their analyst summit and one of the messages that they’re pushing this year is architecture. Some of the key Cisco business areas such as collaboration, network technology and virtualisation are being positioned as architectures not just technologies or solutions. I admit I’m unclear as to Cisco’s distinction between an architecture and a product, or whether in their case “architecture” means anything more than “if you buy everything from us your life will be easier”.

You shouldn’t accept the gift of an architecture from Cisco, or any other supplier for that matter, without asking some questions. In an attempt to avoid getting lost down definitional ratholes (always a risk when dealing with architects) let’s take a very simple view of architecture. It’s basically a statement that says: “if you follow these rules life will be easier in the future”. Architectural rules might include buying certain technologies, using certain processes, partitioning your system in particular ways and so on. Although simple, this view of architecture illustrates a couple of its key challenges:

1. An architecture is a vision of the future. It’s basically a wager, the future is unknown but you’re betting that by following certain rules and technologies you will benefit in some way. So adopting an architecture implies adopting a particular view of the future.  

2. You can’t choose an architecture without articulating how you want to benefit from it. Are you trying to reduce costs, be more agile, become rich and famous….? An architecture embeds not just a vision of the future, but lots of assumptions about what your business or IT organisation is trying to optimise in that future.

So before you accept a gift of architecture from Cisco or anyone else, think about how well their vision of the future aligns with yours. Personally, I’d be happy if my future included less deceased birds and rodents so if any cat owner out there has any suggestions of ways to discourage those particular gifts please let me know.