Cathay Pacific selects iServer for their Strategic Architecture Initiative
"Through the use of iServer, we are ensuring the quality, fit and integrity of the overall Enterprise Architecture".
Leyton Brownlie
Architecture Practice Manager at Cathay Pacific
Industry
Transport
Region
Australasia
No. of Users
300
Products Used
EA, BPA
As part of an IT department transformation in 2009/10, the Cathay Pacific Information Management Team (IMT) reestablished the enterprise and solution architecture capability with the ambition of moving from ‘architecture by luck’ to ‘architecture on purpose’.
The federated organization structure created inefficiencies in delivery and prevented long-term enterprise IT planning. The cyclical nature of the industry required long term planning and diligent cost control. The need for a strong architecture process, a clear vision for the future and the path to achieving it were evident.
The company selected Orbus Software’s iServer as its Architecture Repository tool for this initiative, to rebuild the architecture function as part of the reorganized IT department.
Selecting and implementing an Architecture Repository tool was an early step for the team. Cathay Pacific wanted a ‘fit for purpose’ tool to facilitate representation and communication of the Enterprise Architecture strategies, blueprints and reference architecture as well as standardised delivery of solution architecture and design.
After assessing EA tool vendors and products, Cathay Pacific selected the full product suite of iServer, developed by Orbus Software, because it met the airline’s key architecture requirements, its functional fit, its alignment to principles (i.e. Open Standards - TOGAF 9) and its cost comparison.
iServer is an enterprise architecture repository and modeling environment for Microsoft Office and Visio users where Visio shapes (such as business services, applications, technology components, organizational units, etc.) and Office document components are stored and managed as Repository objects.
The key concepts that determined the selection of iServer as the EA tool at Cathay Pacific included:
Some of the benefits that the architecture practice at Cathay Pacific has seen through the use of the iServer Architecture Repository and establishment of the Cathay Pacific Architecture Framework (CXAF) include:
"As our Architecture Practice continues to improve and deliver, we are looking to iServer to help further mature our practice by enabling infrastructure design, architecture standards definition and use, road mapping and transition states, SOA modeling as well as to help us calculate and improve enterprise debt."
iServer is helping the architecture function of the IM team at Cathay Pacific to ensure the quality, fit and integrity of the overall Enterprise Architecture.
The low-risk, low-cost combination factored heavily in the decision-making process, especially as many team members had concerns about the ease of adoption of EA tools within a fairly new team, based on less-than favourable previous experiences with more complex and costly solutions at other organizations.
In summary, iServer provided a comprehensive architecture repository and modeling environment that has enabled the Cathay Pacific architecture team to make rapid progress, achieving significant productivity gains and improvements in the quality and value of architecture throughout the change program.
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