Who Cares about Software Fortresses?

The software fortress model has a lot to offer, especially for the high-level manager who is trying to understand the overall enterprise architecture, and for the enterprise architect who is trying to explain it.

For CTOs, the software fortress model offers these immediate payoffs:

• It aligns technology boundaries with organizational boundaries within the enterprise.

• It provides an intellectual framework for modeling and managing the technical complexity of enterprise systems.

• It cleanly separates issues that must be decided at the enterprise level from those that can be decided at the local level.

• It is independent of technology and allows groups with different technology biases to discuss architectures using a common language.

Enterprise architects will appreciate the following additional benefits of the software fortress model:

• It cleanly defines natural technical boundaries across which autonomous groups can agree to disagree .

• It provides a methodology for achieving interoperability between software systems.

• It provides a methodology for defining security at the enterprise level.

• It provides an intellectual framework within which different technologies can be meaningfully compared .

But CTOs and enterprise architects are not the only ones who will gain from the software fortress model; this model has the power to transform the entire industry. For the first time, the entire industry will have a lingua franca for discussing enterprise applications. Customers and clients will be able to communicate readily with programmers and architects, Java programmers will be able to understand Visual Basic programmers, and architects from different business fields will be able to compare approaches to common problems.

Over time, the software fortress model will influence the software platforms themselves . Tools will appear to directly support the model. Platforms will evolve as the model exposes underlying platform weaknesses. New technological approaches will be explored as the model helps us better understand the needs of the enterprise.

Perhaps the most important contribution of the model is simplification: simplification of security, simplification of interoperability, and simplification of collaboration. Simple systems are inherently better than complex systems. They are cheaper to build, they are more reliable, and they are more secure. We can all get behind that.