If you want to have any hope of understanding what is going on at your company from a technical standpoint, you need to fully appreciate the way in which the systems architecture works. Ultimately, what is the overarching guiding force that is tying your company together from a technical standpoint? If you are fully hoping to understand your systems architecture and take steps to improve it, you are certainly going to need to ask yourself a few key questions that are going to help you get a better grasp on it all. With this in mind, the following article will examine this in more detail.
What are the software components you are using?
First of all, you are going to have to do an inventory of all the different software components at your business, as this is going to give you a much greater understanding as to what is going on. Ultimately, you are going to need to work out whether these are actually the best ones for your business needs and whether they are going to work well with one another at the same time.
How can you better integrate your systems?
Once you have a full picture of each and every one of the systems that you are using, it is then important that you actually know the main ways in which you are going to be able to integrate all of the systems successfully. The more that you understand this, the better it is likely to be in terms of ensuring that you are putting in place the right architecture. You can also start to do your own research and look into areas such as a restful API and how this can benefit your company as a whole.
Are there sensitivities in the system or is extra data protection needed?
While you want to have all of the different parts of the system working well with one another, you also need to make sure that if there are any additional protections required, it is important that these are all put in place. Ultimately, you do not want to create a system that is going to lead to any additional security breaches and could result in a situation where you are not fully protecting what you need to the most.
When will you review your systems architecture?
Once you have your systems in place, you then need to ensure that you are setting a date to review everything, otherwise, you can easily end up in a situation where you are not making the most of what is going on behind the scenes. At the same time, you may also find that any efforts that you have made to improve have not been as effective as you had initially hoped that they would be.
If you are able to ask and answer these questions, you are much more likely to understand your systems architecture and (more importantly) be able to make improvements to it along the way.
