Service strategy
To help you plan a strategy for your service, we can map dependencies on other services, link your service's data to other data sources, show the impact when technologies will reach their end of life, and identify opportunities created by new technologies.
Service mapping
Information Services (ISG) maintain a catalogue of services and their dependencies. This covers all ISG services, and we are working with the Service Catalogue owners to extend coverage to other administrative services as well.
The catalogue identifies four types of service:
- business services - those that provide a service to users
- application services - the IT applications that users actually see
- infrastructure services - behind-the-scenes services such as networking
- functions - more general business functions, such as project management or enterprise architecture
Enterprise Architecture can help you:
- place your service in the overall set of University services
- identify which services yours depends on and which others depend on your service
- map business processes to the services and IT systems that implement those processes
Technology life cycle
We work with Production Management to maintain a record of when each IT application, database, supporting middleware and operating system will reach their end of life. This is used to plan upgrades, replacements and other approaches to ensure that services are maintained. This is an important factor in planning the strategy of any service that relies on IT systems.
Business input is needed to determine how long an application will be required to meet business needs. It may be that the end of life of a service is determined by business needs rather than technical obsolescence.
De-duplication
An understanding of the service and its dependencies can sometimes suggest opportunities for removing duplicate processes and/or systems. The analysis may identify services that provide overlapping functionality, or find examples where several IT systems are in use to provide similar services.
Such duplication is often costly, not only in terms of maintaining the IT systems but also in requiring people to learn and use multiple systems, perhaps re-keying data from one to the other.
Where appropriate, services should follow the technical standards agreed by the University. We can advise on current and planned standards.
Technology opportunities
A key goal of Enterprise Architecture is to encourage the re-use of existing systems, and to implement systems in such a way that they can be reused.
We can advise on where a service may benefit from reusing existing IT capabilities, including data models, processes and system integrations.
We can also advise on where new technologies may offer new opportunities, such as moving services to the cloud instead of running them in-house.
Data management
Administrative services rely on good quality data. Management information and strategic planning depends on access to data from across the University, with agreed definitions and structured so that each data set can be joined with others. Enterprise Architecture can advise on data management and on the design of data structures to meet these needs.
Each data source should have a data steward who is responsible for that data. We can advise regarding the responsibilities of the data steward and can put the nominated person in touch with the University's data steward community.
On the technical side, we can help with data modelling, ensuing that the data fits with the University's overall data model.
Contact us
To find out more, please contact us.