Ulrichhildebrand

 

Federated Architecture is a pattern which describes an approach to enterprise architecture that allows interoperability and information sharing between semi-autonomous de-centrally organized components.

The pattern can be applied to

• Organisation architecture
• Information technolgy architecture

This is an approach to the coordinated sharing and interchange of information, based on models and common concepts. The pattern emphasizes a controlled sharing of information among autonomous components. Highest possible autonomy is given to the different cooperating components by adherence to models and their interfaces.

Solving complex problems

"Complex architectures are extremely hard to manage, not only in terms of the architecture process itself, but also in terms of getting buy-in from large numbers of stakeholders. This in turn requires a very disciplined approach to identifying common architectural components, and management of the commonalities between federated components — deciding how to integrate, what to integrate, etc."

The pattern gives at the same time the highest possible autonomy and independence as well as reducing complexity significantly. It shows a high degree of flexibility and agility – which at the end means, taking local particularities seriously, especially for:

Highest possible autonomie for

• Funding
• Migration planning
• Operations
• Platform choice
• Provisioning computing power

The FA with its emphasis on autonomy by sharing of a model is forced to deliver a constitution, a federated architecture foundation (FAF), something like The Ten Commandments, common concepts, principles and even a common technical architecture: "a corpus juris". In the absence of a global authority, the federated architecture has to resolve two conflicting requirements: the components must maintain as much autonomy as possible, but at the same time the components must be able to achieve a reasonable degree of information sharing. This is the reason federated architecture strongly demands for governance. The FAF is the legislative body, which needs an executive or an architecture enforcement QC process and sometimes a jurisdiction.

Again, the federated architecture delivers the highest possible flexibility and agility among independently cooperating components and at the same time reduces complexity significantly. It should be considered for each problem with the route cause of unmanageable complexity of e.g. functional business and non-functional IT requirements by a central one-fits-all approach. It is especially applicable for longterm migration scenarios, decoupling and decentralization trends, heterogeneous environment, where a big bang approach cannot be applied and will not solve the problem of constantly changing underlying realities.

The federated architecture is an architecture vision to foster managed independence among loosely coupled cooperating components sharing a vision. It is applicable for:

Managed independence of

• Organization units
• Information technology systems
• Processes

The concept of federation relies on the concept of syndication. Composite applications can be build using the interfaces and models as well as defined common components.

Federated architecture as database architecture was first introduced by the Denis Heimberger 1982 and 1985 with the title: A Federated Architecture for Information Management:

"This federated database architecture allows a collection of database systems (components) to unite into a loosely coupled federation in order to share and exchange information. The term federation refers to the collection of constituent databases participating in a federated database."

Federated organizations

Federated architecture as an organisation was first introduced by the US Federal CIO in the early 90ties and was adopted by other large organization like banks, IT architecture organizations, etc. Large, complex organizations with independent lines of business (LOBs) federate the administrative and IT functions among several local authorities. It enables LOBs to maintain diversity and uniqueness, while providing interoperability. LOBs have full autonomy to develop standards for applications and infrastructure and to define enterprise architectures. The goal of the LOB is to optimize performance at LOB level. Federated Architectures define common or shared architecture standards across autonomous program areas, enabling state government entities to maintain diversity and uniqueness, while providing interoperability. Federated Enterprise Architecture: A collective set of organizational architectures (as defined by the enterprise scope), operating collaboratively within the concept of federalism, in which governance is divided between a central authority and constituent units balancing organizational autonomy with enterprise needs. The central authority’s architecture focuses on the dynamics of economies of scale, standards, and the well being of the enterprise, while constituent units’ architecture has the flexibility to pursue autonomous strategies and independent processes.

Federated information technolgy systems

Most recently the principle was carried over to application design by large software vendors, emphasized in large scale database system architecture as well as portal infrastructure and identity management. It is also used to mange pricing in service industries, where the requirement of  bundling services and invoice customers according to these service-bundles needs independently, across product areas organized processing systems to syndicate their service definitions and pricing determination. It allows to introduce new pricing models in market-oriented time. A holistic customer view as well as a detailed and traceable fee calculation will allow for transparent information towards the customer.

External links

• Gardner on Federated Architecture
• Zachman on Federated Architecture
• Discussion about federated architecture used by Organisations, Meta Group, 1999

• Richard P. Martin on Federated Computing Architectures
• Federated database architecture by IBM

• Federated portal architecture by SAP

• [1]

References

de:Föderierte Architektur

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