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Articles & Books From Susan L. Cook
Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-23-2022
When planning and implementing your IT architecture, ease the process by reviewing critical information: major IT architecture concepts such as common tasks, standardizing technology, and consolidating and centralizing technology resources; collaboration solutions to institute across the enterprise; and system maintenance processes that can be automated to help you increase savings and reduce administrative overhead.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Standardization of technology is a common part of IT architecture projects. A standardized technology reduces complexity and offers benefits such as cost savings through economy of scale, ease of integration, improved efficiency, greater support options, and simplification of future control. Some common targets for standardization include
User workstation environments: This includes desktop hardware, operating system, and user productivity suites.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Taking on an IT architecture project means dealing with myriad detailed tasks. No matter the nature of your IT architecture project, however, be sure to cover this abbreviated checklist of common, high-level tasks:
Eliminate resource silos: Getting rid of separate information resource silos through consolidation and centralization makes many other projects possible.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
A good IT architecture plan improves efficiencies. When your IT architecture program includes consolidation and centralization of technology resources, particularly in the data center, you gain improved resource use, document recovery, security, and service delivery; increased data availability; and reduced complexity.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Part of IT architecture includes improving efficiencies by restructuring enterprise resources. The more system maintenance processes that you automate in the IT architecture, the greater cost savings you can realize from reduced administrative overhead and support.
Operating system patches/updates: Most operating systems have some type of native automated patch management solution, and third-party solutions are also available.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Collaboration solutions facilitate IT architecture teamwork by allowing team members to communicate, share data, and create repositories of collective intelligence, regardless of location or scheduling complications. They may decrease travel and telephone costs significantly. In IT architecture, common collaboration solutions include
Social networking: Social networking tools, such as chat, blogs, and forums, provide new and flexible methods for sharing information.
A solid introduction to the practices, plans, and skills required for developing a smart system architectureInformation architecture combines IT skills with business skills in order to align the IT structure of an organization with the mission, goals, and objectives of its business. This friendly introduction to IT architecture walks you through the myriad issues and complex decisions that many organizations face when setting up IT systems to work in sync with business procedures.