New Course on Agile Business Architecture and the Cloud

More and more companies are launching new digital products or services through the Cloud. Migrating legacy applications to the Cloud is becoming more and more common. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform are all very good at showing their technical prowess in terms of a cloud architecture with their unique certification programs.  Yet, finding a very good course for an enterprise to manage efficiently their cloud initiatives that is independent of vendors is a much more difficult task.

This is why EA Principals has just launched its Business Architecture course aimed at managing corporate cloud initiatives for companies of all sizes. We think an article announcing this is critical because our Agile Business Architecture and the Cloud course provides the necessary knowledge and understanding to plan, prioritize, deliver, and manage your cloud strategy successfully at the corporate level. This course will allow you to become more customer-driven and more effective with your cloud strategy execution using agile business architecture. Our trainers include experts in both Agile Business Architecture and Cloud Architecture.

 This course includes 4 sessions to be offered in 2 days.  Each session includes a slide deck of at least 140 slides, with diagrams, videos, quizzes, and survey questions. This course also includes 2 practical examples of at least 100 slides each in PDF format. The first example is about elaborating on a new SaaS service. The second example is  about migrating a legacy application to the cloud. Each session will be recorded.

Here is the table of content for each session of this course.

Session 1 – About the Corporate Use of the Cloud

  • About Cloud Computing
  • Cloud versus On-Premises
  • Cloud Deployment and Management Methodologies
  • Infrastructure as a service (‘IaaS’) vs. Platform as a Service (‘PaaS’) vs. Software as a Service (‘SaaS’)
  • Cloud Management: Roles and Responsibilities
  • Cloud Migration of Legacy Applications
  • About Cloud Architecture
  • About Cloud Data Architecture
  • Examining the Financial Aspects of Cloud Computing
  • Selecting your Cloud Service Provider(s)
  • Elaborating a Cloud Service Agreement

Cloud management needs to include the following dimensions: provisioning and orchestration, cost and resource optimization, cloud migration, backup and disaster recovery, identity, Security and compliance, monitoring and observability, inventory and classification, and service enablement.

Session 2- A Summary of Business Architecture

  • Business Design and Strategies – the Basics
  • Providing Customer-Driven Value
  • Product Architecture
  • Finding Participating Stakeholders
  • Finding Required Business Objects/Information Concepts
  • Capability Mapping
  • Assessing and Prioritizing Capabilities
  • Aligning Applications to Capabilities

Moving to the cloud is a monumental task. By using an agile business architecture methodology, organizations are now able to build their cloud roadmap based on assessed business capabilities and focus their energy and resources first on their most problematic capabilities, which are those that are critical or of high priority and that are of low or very low performance.

This course also includes 2 examples. The first example will be about elaborating on a new SaaS service. As for the second example, it will be about migrating a legacy application to the cloud.

Session 3- SaaS Cloud Project Planning & Delivery (Theory and Example)

  • SaaS Product Architecture
  • Identifying and Assessing Business Capabilities
  • Initiatives, Projects, and Business Outcomes
  • Project and Scenario Elaboration
  • Project Financial Analysis
  • Final SaaS Roadmap
  • Agile Delivery

For smaller organizations, it’s often easier to design and develop a Software as a Service (‘SaaS’) on the cloud than to migrate a legacy application. This can be planned and architected using business and product architecture focusing on the enabling capabilities of the service to be launched.

Session 4- Legacy Application Migration to the Cloud Project Planning & Delivery (Theory and Example)

  • Identifying and Assessing Business Capabilities
  • Selecting Application(s) to Keep, Decommission, or Enhance
  • Selecting Database(s) to Keep, Merge, or Enhance
  • Selecting Initial Application(s) and Database(s) to Migrate to the Cloud
  • Initiatives, Projects, and Business Outcomes
  • Project and Scenario Elaboration
  • Project Financial Analysis
  • Final Legacy Application Migration Roadmap
  • Agile Delivery

For larger organizations, migrating some of their legacy applications to the cloud is unavoidable. Cloud offers better insight, drives better engagement, increases speed and efficiency execution, and foremost helps collaboration between employees, clients, and partners. Building an organizations’ legacy application migration roadmap based on assessed business capabilities is an excellent route to prioritize. This way, organizations can focus their human and capital resources first of their most problematic capabilities, as mentioned earlier in this article.

The next EA Principals’ Agile Business Architecture and the Cloud will be on November 7-8. For those also interested in accomplishing their TOGAF Applied Business Architecture Certification training, the content for it is added at no additional cost in an optional Day 3 of the course, provided one takes the first 2 days, as there is some overlapping content in consideration of many delegates’ desire to also become TOGAF Certified in Business Architecture which leads to the award of a certificate and an Open Badge.