The Evolution of Standardization in Architecture
I have the benefit of living through some major changes in technology in my life. I first developed my passion for computers and programming through my father, who was an IBM Systems Engineer. My father was with IBM during the time of the announcement of the System 360 and generations of computer systems architectures after that. It is interesting to see how the pendulum has swung regarding architecture and standardization over the years.
Architecture and standardization sounds like a technical issue that business leaders can ignore, but business leaders must partner with technology leaders to deliver on the promises of technology, standards and architecture as much today as they did during the System 360 days. They must partner because standards and architecture are tools that allow applications and data to connect and fit together like puzzle pieces. As in the 1960s, today, good architecture and standards will help assure your applications, data and technology all fit together in one puzzle, not multiple puzzles that are hard to make fit together.
Back in the System 360 days, the biggest challenge for customers was migrating (essentially re-writing) all of their business enterprise applications for the new architecture to take advantage of all of the benefits IBM was delivering in the System 360. One of the major benefits was the promise of this architecture being expandable. At the time, every IBM system had a different architecture, meaning applications written for one could not run on another without a complete re-write. Examples from more "modern" history (1980s) included the System 34, System 36, System 38 and AS/400 in the small to medium-size IBM systems. The larger systems and System 360 architecture did evolve over time into multiple releases including XA. That is just the IBM ecosystem. There were competing architectures from companies like Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Burroughs, Honeywell and even Apple on the desktop platform.
More recently (last decade) mainframe architectures have become transparent but companies were still faced with increased support costs unless they standardized their technical architecture. At this time, the choices were primarily around the desktop and laptop infrastructure -- Mac vs. Windows and even choosing between vendors like Apple, Lenovo, HP and Dell. Companies were struggling with huge challenges in getting users to adopt the devices and architectures that were the "standard" for the company. Many companies extracted huge value by evolving to a single standard for workstations (desktops and laptops) which allowed them to simplify and streamline the entire lifecycle and supporting processes from building the "image" of applications to deploy, loading those images on the machines, distributing the machines, training users, supporting users (use questions and problem determination), replacing problem machines and migrating to new operating systems, applications, etc. which started the whole process again. In my early days at McKinsey, we realized huge savings through this standardization lever.
About 3-5 years ago, the early adopters were beginning to explore the idea of "bring your own device", essentially giving users choice in the devices (workstations, laptops, tablets and phones) they wanted to use. In some cases, companies literally allowed users to buy their own device and the corporate IT organization would support it, making sure all enterprise applications worked on whatever platform they brought.
This seemed like a huge pendulum swing back to diversity. In reality, it was further leverage of standardization in architecture. But, the standards went deeper into the technology such that those standards insulated applications from the technology the users were interacting with. Applications could be built in a way that allowed them to work on any device from a mainframe in the cloud, on a desktop or laptop, on a tablet or on a phone. This blog is an example of that. Through the standard web architectures (like HTML) I can write this blog and you can easily see it on a laptop, on your tablet or on your phone. The only difference today seems to be the differences between the device platforms; Windows, Apple and Android. But, good adherence to standards has even made those differences minor by comparison to the huge architectural changes technologists and business people faced only a few decades ago.
More and more, business leaders and their technology leaders can focus on the business application and value to the business without worrying about architectural challenges. But, that assumes technology leaders have the ability to implement these standards and keep them current ... a matter of Governance, that I will explore in my next blog.
