Market Analysis
Architecture Marchitecture
A Marchitecture is an architecture produced for marketing reasons, normally by a vendor. It is designed to put the vendor in the best possible light by emphasising the positive as well as hiding the negative. If you are in marketing you will spell it Marketecture.
Whereas an architecture is an attempt to define how the various, and many, components of a system fit together and interact.
Why do we produce architectures and why do they seldom meet the various demands laid on them?
The first question is easy to answer. Any system that is worth discussing is complex and human brains are not good at dealing with complexity. Our solution is to divide the world up into manageable chunks and then show how they relate. Having done this we have the added advantage that we can modify or replace bits without breaking the whole; as well as handing the individual components out to separate groups for development.
The more difficult question is why are they often inadequate?
The first requirement is that an architecture should be a graphical representation with written back up. This leads to the first set of reasons for inadequate architectures. Some people are less able to think graphically than others. More serious is the medium used - two dimensional A4 pieces of paper, or the digital equivalent. Architectures, like the plans for a house do not conveniently flatten
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themselves out into two dimensions.
The second requirement is that the picture should mean something meaningful. Sounds obvious but too often two boxes are put side by side for no apparent reason except that the producer wanted both of them on the same piece of paper.
Please tell us about your pet hates in marchitecture diagrams.
Here is my list as a starter:
In a future article I will discuss some techniques to alleviate these problems. In the meantime if you are looking at an area, first devise your own architecture and then use that to critique vendor diagrams.
Copyright 2003. Originally published by IT-Director.com, reprinted with permission. IT-Director.com provides IT decision makers with free daily e-mails containing news analysis, member-only discussion forums, free research, technology spotlights and free on-line consultancy. To register for a free e-mail subscription, click here.
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