Article at a glance:

The Paris guide to IT architecture

As you walk around Paris, you see a wonderful variety of buildings, dating from many centuries. Whether built in the Middle Ages or last year, these buildings are tied together by an infrastructure—roads, bridges, public transport, sewers, and so forth—that defines the cityscape and controls its evolution. Tearing down the old city and replacing it with a new one wouldn't be feasible even if it were desirable; city planners try to preserve some old assets while replacing others and adding new ones. Likewise, as technology moves along, a company cannot replace all of its IT systems at once. The trick is to stay on top of each component's life cycle, so that the information architecture doesn't become obsolete.

The take-away

By establishing an IT infrastructure as flexible and stable as the infrastructure of Paris, a company can enable old applications to coexist with new ones, such as e-commerce and CRM. The IT architecture becomes an evolving asset, and applications can be added, enhanced, renovated, and replaced along different time lines.