nexus apps

Having an inclusive data economy is a must-have for modern organizations. Effective information sharing is vital to reaching customers, opening markets, improving transparency, sparking innovation and improving trust among stakeholders (Newman, 2011). From an implementation perspective this means joining silos of information to meet emerging demands (Thoo, Friedman, & Beyer, 2013). However, developing a data economy positive information architecture to support the organization requires a data layer that is nimble and adaptable. Volume, velocity, and variety of data that is relevant has grown to a point that it has pushed many applications to the limits of their capacity (Yefim, Douglas, Ross, 2012).

New technologies like gRPC and graphQL can help organization overcome some of these hurdles. These services greatly decrease (halved in some cases) data transfer loads and allow custom request contracts to be created, essentially enabling a single service call to return data from multiple sources. These are new principles for application architecture but are required for modern information architectures that constantly have new and varying data types and sources all with their own management needs. Innovations like these are the result of data becoming the nexus of enterprise decisions, bringing the application architecture and information architecture domains closer together, providing even greater justification for a deeper investment in proper enterprise information architecture.

References:

Newman, D. (2011) Overcoming Silos: Evolving From Stand-Alone Information Architectures to Shared Information Architectures for the Emerging Data Economy. Gartner.
Thoo, E. Friedman, Ted. & Beyer, M. (2013). Data Integration Enables Information Capabilities for the 21st Century. Gartner.
Yefim, N. Douglas, L. & Ross, A. (2012) The Nexus Effect: How Big Data Alters Established Architecture Models. Gartner.

The Nexus of Forces (cloud computing, social, mobile, and information) is a major challenge for IT strategy. I believe culture is the key for capturing the benefits of cloud computing, social business practices, mobile and information processing. Gartner identifies five core principles for a nexus-enabled application architecture:

Figure 5. Core Principles of Nexus-Enabled App Architectures

These principles evolve to developing cloud-first applications, which require a cultural transformation of the enterprise to be successful. Cloud-first application architectures embody collaboration, for services to be effectively utilized they need to be shared. For enterprise culture, this means InnerSourcing. Lines of business sharing value they create for others to use and build on. Establishing a collaborative culture also leads to a continuously planning one, which will only tighten alignment across enterprise layers and drive successful innovation.

References:

Natis, Y. (2013) The Nexus Effect and How the Nexus of Forces Alters Established Architecture Models. Gartner.

Data Drives Nexus App Architecture

Culture Drives Nexus App Architecture