Enriching the Value Chain: Infrastructure Strategies Beyond the Enterprise [Hardcover]

Bruce Robertson (Author), Valentin Sribar (Author)

Book Description

Series: IT Best Practices | Publication Date: January 28, 2002

Enriching the Value Chain is a strategic guide to organizing your IT infrastructure by mapping business drivers to a fundamental set of proven patterns. Drawing on advanced research conducted by META Group, it shows how to build infrastructure that supports business agility -- and how to avoid architectural pitfalls that can prevent you from achieving changing business goals. The authors begin by introducing Adaptive Infrastructure Strategy: its key features, advantages, and terminology. They lay a foundation for Adaptive Infrastructure, showing how to identify gaps between where you are where you should be; and how to identify and utilize key architectural patterns, especially patterns for Web publishing and n-tier transaction-based applications. You'll walk through the design process, mastering powerful predictive cost modeling and performance measurement techniques; then refine your design on a component-by-component basis, covering security, networking, and other key layers. The book includes detailed coverage of staffing, funding, and organizational issues associated with successful infrastructure management, and shows how to effectively package IT infrastructure into common services for consumption by business unit customers. Part of the Intel Press IT Best Practices Series, focused on identifying and sharing best-practice strategies for delivering Internet-based solutions that meet key business challenges. For every IT decision-maker and implementer.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

How do forward-thinking IT professionals organize infrastructure and staff to meet the challenges of e-Business value chain initiatives head-on? Enriching the Value Chain gives you the answers:

• Strategic advice for mapping business drivers to a set of fundamental patterns and planning models.
• A way to organize e-Business infrastructure with your suppliers, trading partners, and customers.
• How to run e-Business infrastructure services for the long term with high quality.
• How to make applications become easier, more cost-effective, and quicker to integrate.

Picking up where The Adaptive Enterprise leaves off, this companion volume tells you how to achieve success in value chain infrastructure planning.

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About the Author

BRUCE ROBERTSON leads META Group's infrastructure development program, working with clients to plan their e-Business and enterprise systems from a pattern perspective. His areas of technical specialization include directory and security services, networking, middleware, and e-Business infrastructure. Previously, he was a senior technology editor at Network Computing Magazine, a director of consulting for a Los Angeles technology consulting firm, and manager of an online services marketing joint venture.

VALENTIN SRIBAR is general manager of META Group's Infusion offerings, helping clients adapt their processes and organization to cope with any combination of dramatic business and technology changes. Previously, he was a senior consultant with the technology services practice of Ernst & Young, where he developed information technology architectures and networking designs.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Pearson Education; 1st edition (January 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201767309
• ISBN-13: 978-0201767308
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,420,526 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Builds upon and supersedes authors' earlier book, April 3, 2002

By 

Linda Zarate "IT Ops Consultant" (Azusa, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Enriching the Value Chain: Infrastructure Strategies Beyond the Enterprise (Hardcover)

This book is an extensive rework of the authors' "The Adaptive Enterprise", and in my opinion supersedes that earlier book.

Like the first book this one borrows heavily from the software engineering community to employ proven techniques, such as layered design, patterns and a component-based approach to infrastructure. Where this book extends and builds upon the earlier work is the emphasis on extending the corporate infrastructure into a meta infrastructure that is characterized by B2B and supply chains. As such it lives up to the title because the goal of the extended infrastructure is to enrich the value chain - or at least support the underlying business goals.

What I like about this book is what the authors propose is not only attainable, but makes good business sense. It starts with a 22-page introduction that clearly defines what is and is not infrastructure, and the concept of an adaptivity. These are important to understanding the approach that follows. Chapter 2, Laying the Foundation, quickly gives the basics for a layered infrastructure, develops a model for associated services that are needed to make the infrastructure adaptable, and drills down into service-related issues. I am not in complete agreement with the impact that this approach has on IT organizational structures; however, I am not willing to write it off as unfeasible until I have a chance to carefully think it through. The ideas do have merit (on paper) and are better developed in the first book.

Much of the rest of the book is a rehash of "The Adaptive Enterprise", but the material is slanted towards the extended infrastructure. What is important is the emphasis on patterns and components as frameworks and building blocks. Where the first book brought infrastructure management to a new level, this book extends it in a manner that reflects the realities of connected enterprises defined by supply chain management and business partners. Please see my review of "The Adaptive Enterprise" for specifics that apply to this book, and if you're deciding between the two books, this is the one to get.