Assessing Your IT Infrastructure Architecture

Few firms get to really design their infrastructure architecture with a blank sheet of paper. Your technology architecture is most likely the product of many years of evolution — old platforms being replaced by newer ones and years of cumulative changes and updates to keep your applications going. At some point, this accidental architecture becomes too expensive and unwieldy to manage, ultimately making your firm less competitive in the marketplace. Determining if you've reached this point is a complex analysis that incorporates inputs from business, IT, and external sources. But enterprise architects can help by developing a clear future target state and figuring out which gaps to close first. This methodology provides the outline for conducting your own internal infrastructure assessment, the types of data you'll need, and advice for scoring and ranking the gaps you need to address.