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1.Book Review by Mike Rosen
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2.Book Review by Grady Booch
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3.Original Press Release from the Publisher
Book Review: Information Systems Transformation
by Mike Rosen - Director, Cutter Consortium Enterprise Architecture Practice, Chief Scientist, Wilton Consulting Group
If your enterprise is like most others, you probably have some trusted old systems that have served well but have become problematic for one reason or another. Perhaps the platform is no longer supported, or growth and add-ons have evolved into an expensive and difficult-to-maintain application mess. Information Systems Transformation: Architecture-Driven Modernization Case Studies , a book by William Ulrich and Philip H. Newcomb, offers some relief. You might recognize the first author as a Cutter Senior Consultant in the Enterprise Architecture practice. Coauthor Philip Newcomb is CEO of a company that specializes in system modernizations.
The book starts by describing the challenges related to system transformation and introduces three common approaches to transformation: Greenfield replacement, COTS deployment, and middleware encapsulation. Then the authors go on to discuss the shortcomings and issues with the typical approaches and present some grim statistics about typical success (actually failure) rates. The solution: an architecture-driven approach that incorporates modernization in an incremental, risk-based process that delivers business value. The section "IT Versus Business Value" drives home the point that these projects should be evaluated on the value of the business processes they support, and improvement to them, rather than cost savings to IT. After all, as the authors point out, IT is typically less than 5% of an enterprise's budget. There is so much more opportunity for cost reductions in the business by applying well-designed IT solutions.
Chapter 1 continues to introduce the basic concepts, architecture, and techniques of modernization, focusing on the importance of an adequate assessment of the real problem and not jumping to conclusions beforehand. This is followed by a quick overview of various transformation approaches.
Chapter 2 covers tools and service options to help enable these approaches.
Chapter 3 covers the existing and evolving standards that apply to Architecture-Driven Modernization (ADM). Ulrich is co-chair of the ADM Task Force at the Object Management Group (OMG) and has been guiding the development of these standards for about five years now. The chapter describes the importance and benefits of standards with respect to modernization and provides an overview of the standards and their relationships. It goes into some depth on approved standards, including: knowledge discovery, abstract syntax tree, pattern recognition, and structured metrics metamodels. Emerging standards are also discussed, including: ADM visualization, ADM refactoring, and ADM transformation.
Chapter 4 describes modernization scenarios and their use in developing roadmaps and guiding projects. Of course, this is done with an understanding of how the scenarios relate to business and IT architectures. Twelve scenarios are described, along with the benefits, applicability, and risks of each. Transformation scenarios include: COTS deployment, architecture consolidation, SOA transformation, user interface refactoring, language/platform migration, data conversion, and others.
Chapters 1-4 make up Part I of the book and provide an introduction to modernization. Part II, chapters 5-14, provide ten different case studies from military, government, commercial, and research areas. The case studies illustrate many of the transformation scenarios defined earlier. Anyone considering a transformation project can probably find a relevant example here. One thing that I found interesting is that all of the cases include a proof-of-concept component to the project. The amount of information and detail in the cases is impressive -- often 30-40 pages long -- and each case comes with an excellent description of the problems and solutions.
Finally, chapter 15 provides a summary of the key concepts and a guide for moving forward -- launching and sustaining modernization efforts. This includes a discussion of the pitfalls, a well-articulated set of 15 "guiding principles," and where and how to get started.
Overall, the book provides a crash course on architecture-driven modernization, what to do, and, just as important, what not to do. Anyone who is contemplating a modernization project should start by reading this book.
Originally published in EA Advisor, March 2010
Book Review: Information Systems Transformation
by Grady Booch - IBM Fellow & Chief Scientist, Software Engineering in IBM Research
“Ulrich and Newcomb's book offers a comprehensive examination of the challenges of growing software-intensive systems. Every system has an architecture, but as the authors explain, it is only by continuous, intentional architectural transformation that one can attend to costs while simultaneously creating a mechanism wherein innovation may flourish.
I enjoyed the many case studies. Every circumstance is unique, but the authors have offered up best practices for systems modernization from their experience. Their focus on architecture as an artifact for governance is sound, but they go far beyond the technical issues and address many of the social and economic practices that help one evolve a good technical architecture.
From the moment one writes a line of code, it becomes legacy, and that legacy accumulates. Whether it becomes a cause of innovation inertia or a source of future value is a factor of how it is continuously modernized.”
Grady Booch
IBM Fellow & Chief Scientist, Software Engineering in IBM Research
Complete press release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Bob Dodd
Case Studies and Expert Advice Help Businesses Deliver Information Systems Transformation Solutions
"Ulrich and Newcomb's book offers a comprehensive examination of the challenges of growing software-intensive systems. Every system has an architecture, but as the authors explain, it is only by continuous, intentional architectural transformation that one can attend to costs while simultaneously creating a mechanism wherein innovation may flourish.” - Grady Booch, IBM Fellow & Chief Scientist, Software Engineering in IBM Research
Burlington, MA – February 16, 2010 – Every enterprise has substantial investments in a wide variety of aging software systems - complex infrastructures that manage business operations around the globe and serve as the lifeblood of the organization. Aging systems are hard to evolve and extremely difficult to replace due to their inherent complexity, fragmentation, redundancy, and highly coupled integration with other enterprise systems (often comprised of incompatible technologies). This situation necessitates frequent, costly and risk prone modifications that stifle operational efficiency and hinder competitiveness and business agility. To rectify this situation, IT executives are now positioning modernization at the core of their strategic objectives. Architecture-Driven Modernization (ADM) restores the value of entrenched systems by capturing and retooling various aspects of existing application, data and technical architectures, allowing old infrastructures to deliver more viable and sustainable business solutions to the enterprise while incorporating new technologies at a greatly reduced overhead.
According to Ed Yourdon, noted Author and Consultant:
"Modernization is going to be a more and more important part of the overall IT strategy. William Ulrich and Philip Newcomb's important new book, Information Systems Transformation: Architecture-Driven Modernization Case Studies summarizes best practices and then gives us nearly a dozen solid case studies of how real companies are succeeding with this critical work."
Information Systems Transformation: Architecture-Driven Modernization Case Studies, a new book by William Ulrich and Philip Newcomb, provides a practical guide to organizations seeking ways to understand and modernize existing systems as part of their information management strategies. It includes an introduction to ADM disciplines and standards, including alignment with business architecture, as well as a series of scenarios outlining how ADM is applied to various initiatives. Ten chapters, containing in-depth, modernization case studies, distill the theory and delineate principles, processes, and best practices for every
industry, ensuring the book's leading position as a reference text for all of those organizations relying on complex software systems to maintain their economic, competitive and operational viability.
Information Systems Transformation: Architecture-Driven Modernization Case Studies
By William M. Ulrich and Philip H. Newcomb
Published by Morgan Kaufmann
ISBN: 978-0-12-374913-0
Copyright Feb 2010
$59.95 USD €43.95 EUR £29.99 GBP
Key Features:
•Acts as a one-stop shopping reference and complete guide for implementing various modernization models including core concepts, common scenarios, and a guide for getting started.
•Concepts are illustrated with real-life examples from various modernization projects, allowing you to immediately apply tested solutions and see results.
•Ten chapters containing in-depth modernization case studies, covering multiple platforms, industries and government agencies from four different countries.
About the Authors:
William M. Ulrich is President of Tactical Strategy Group, Inc. and a management consultant. Mr. Ulrich has been in the modernization field since 1980 and continues to serve as a strategic advisor on business and IT transformation projects for corporations and government agencies. In 2005, Mr. Ulrich was awarded the Keeping America Strong Award for his work in information systems modernization. He is Co-Chair of the OMG Architecture-Driven Modernization Task Force and the OMG Business Architecture Special Interest Group, Editorial Director of the Business Architecture Institute, and author of Legacy Systems: Transformation Strategies.
Philip H. Newcomb is Founder and CEO of The Software Revolution, Incorporated (TSRI) and creator of TSRI's acclaimed architecture-driven modernization services and toolset JANUS(tm). He is coauthor of Reverse Engineering (Kluwer 1996) with Linda Wills, Coeditor of the 2nd Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (IEEE 1995) with Elliot Chikofsky and principal author of the Abstract Syntax Tree Metamodeling Specification (OMG Specification 2009). With more than 35 publications and 70 successfully completed information system modernization projects he is a recognized leader in the application of artificial intelligence, automatic programming and formal methods to industrial-scale software modernization.
About Morgan Kaufmann: Since 1984, Morgan Kaufmann has published premier content on information technology, computer architecture, data management, computer networking, computer systems, human computer interaction, computer graphics, multimedia information and systems, artificial intelligence, computer security, and software engineering. Our audience includes the research and development communities, information technology (IS/IT) managers, and students in professional degree programs. Learn more at www.mkp.com.
Contact Bob Dodd, 781-313-4726 or r.dodd@elsevier.com, for an electronic review copy, access to our expert authors, or to publish excerpts of our material.
