OIAm Core products
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The OIAm core products are created and used within the architectural process. They function as the starting point for the other products to be delivered during project guidance.
Organizational Context Analysis
The Organizational Context Analysis (OCA) creates an overview of an organization, including its goals, organizational structure and business processes, the application landscape and existing infrastructure. An OCA is especially convenient when there is no concise Business Architecture and Information Architecture description. In that case, the OCA provides essential background information to the architectural process for infrastructure. Infrastructure architects need first to understand how infrastructure facilities serve the organization in which these facilities have been deployed and are being used. To create a categorical, structured overview of existing infrastructure landscapes, the OCA offers a Global Taxonomy. This Global Taxonomy can be reused when setting up a Reference Architecture.
Reference Architecture
A Reference Architecture is the framework within which an organization’s infrastructure principles and present and future standards are described and defined. The Reference Architecture is structured using the Building Blocks Model. The standards included in the Reference Architecture have the form of a Building Block: single, logically defined facilities of which functionality and intended use and management are described, together with the Elements (technical components, like hardware, software and protocols).
Product Catalogue
To prevent project architects, engineers or service managers from selecting Building Blocks which are incompatible (for example a high availability Application Platform coupled with a Centralized Storage facility with only best effort availability) each Building Block is detailed in the Product Catalogue. The Product Catalogue describes abstract patterns built up from combinations of Building Block that together offer complete, balanced infrastructure solutions. Service managers can reuse these patterns when defining their Service Catalogues. Unlike a Service Catalogue, a Product Catalogue does not concern itself with details such as back-up schedules or physical maintenance agreements. The Product Catalogue is meant to assist service managers in creating an easy to understand Service Catalogue with functional descriptions of available infrastructure services written at appropriate levels of abstraction.
The Reference Architecture, the Product Catalogue and the Service Catalogue are separate products in their own right. This guarantees the maintainability of these products to a certain degree. A single modification of a particular standard in the Reference Architecture does not automatically necessitate a change in the Product Catalogue and the Service Catalogue. A new Product can be easily defined without changing the Reference Architecture. Basically, the infrastructure architecture repository in this wiki contains both a Reference Architecture and a Product Catalogue.
Future Developments & Planning
Since an infrastructure should essentially function as a common utility, a regular evaluation of the services it provides should be carried out. Organizational developments, existing problems and mismatches as well as technology innovations which could benefit the organisation will be examined in detail during Future Developments & Planning workshops. Other architectural disciplines, service managers, engineers and key business representatives should participate in these workshops in order to create maximum insight and support for planning infrastructure development.
In the figure below, relationships between the core architectural products are shown:
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