White Paper

Revision Date: 3/17/2003

Trends (Economic, Governmental, and Technical) that Impact and Influence Enterprise Architecture Development and Implementation

Affected Domains	Trend
All	The President’s Management Agenda focuses Federal Government reform with 24 e-government initiatives (release date 7/10/2002.) The vision for Federal Government reform is guided by the principles that Government should be citizen-centered, results-oriented, and market-based. These principles are integrated into the Administration’s Management Agenda, which includes expanded use of the Internet and computer resources to provide e-government services. Effective implementation of e-government solutions is important in making Government more responsive and cost-effective.
All	The Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is releasing an Enterprise Architecture model, which provides the foundation for the effective implementation of the President’s agenda. The Business Reference Model of the Federal Enterprise Architecture provides a common understanding of the federal government’s business operations and outlines three main areas: citizen services, supporting delivery of these services, and internal operations. The Model sets standard business functions that allow federal agencies to facilitate their own process of achieving program goals and will assist OMB in making IT investment decisions in the FY 2004 budget, according to OMB Circular A-11 Guidance.
All	Outsourcing/Managed Services to control network and telecommunication costs as IT budget funding remains tight. Major technology service companies and a group of smaller players are making outsourcing very tempting for CIO’s, as IT budgets remain tight. Additional discounting for these services from offshore outsourcing and managed hosting companies will drive down prices even further. Companies serving the mid to small-business market could see continued demand for dedicated server-hosting, monitoring, patching, as well as managed security and virtual data backup.
All	Legislation, mandates, and requirements will act to align organizational needs with operations. The need to responsibly and cost effectively align the organization’s operational units with its overall objectives, constraints, and required service levels will drive the adoption of Target Network Architectures.
All	The need for interoperability will blur traditional boundaries. The need to share information and resources across agency boundaries will drive open, industry-standard applications and networks.
Network	Many telecom companies that are working their way out of bankruptcy may go bankrupt again, due to the continued decline in bandwidth prices. Two powerful forces are driving this trend: one economic, the other technological. Since October 2001, 17 companies, with a combined market capitalization of $96 billion, have filed for bankruptcy protection. Now they are busily working to settle their debts. Unfortunately, many of these companies have not figured out how to become profitable. Bandwidth prices have fallen to such a low level that it is difficult for many companies to cover expenses. Supply still greatly exceeds demand. For example, nearly 75 million U.S. households are cable-modem ready, but only 11 million have chosen this route for high-speed Internet access, according to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Office of Technology Policy. Consolidation has not happened, supply has not decreased, and prices have not risen. This may be an indication that the telecom industry is changing from a highly integrated vertical business to a horizontal one with much smaller profit margins.
Network	Cable companies may soon control how consumers access the Internet, watch television, and even use their phones. Cable operators have a stable base of revenue-producing customers: 75 million homes. Cable operators, not the traditional phone companies or satellite TV providers, have the “fattest pipes” into the home and the ability to offer video, Internet, and telephone services. More importantly, the cable firms will have a platform to sell lucrative additional services like video on demand, home networking, and personal video recorders. Yankee Group expects the number of U.S. cable modem subscribers to top 13.9 million in 2003, nearly 66 percent of all broadband subscribers. Cable companies are poised to implement a new standard, Data over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS 1.1), that will allow operators to prioritize traffic on the network.
Network, Security	Spam is beginning to overwhelm many business networks. The average size of a spam message is about 8 KB, a figure that is expected to more than double in the next three years. According to a 2001 European Union study, the cost of spam to business now totals about $8.6 billion a year worldwide. The European Union has adopted an electronic communications and data privacy law that will prohibit companies from sending email messages without the prior consent of the recipient. The U.S. Senate's Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN SPAM) Act of 2001 would require unsolicited email to have a valid return address so recipients can request removal from the email spam list.
Network, Security	Wireless Networking and Wireless local area networks (WLANs), also known as “Wi-Fi” will continue to gain in popularity and availability. The requirement to secure wireless networks is a major issue that demands industry attention. Hotspots for the 802.11 family of wireless networking that allow computers, handhelds, and cell phones to connect to the Internet will continue to grow. Market analysts are predicting growth in the Wi-Fi hardware market of more than 70 percent next year. The number of public hot spots in major cities, currently a few thousand, is expected to double next year. In the short term, the rise of Wi-Fi will have a detrimental effect on the rollout of next-generation, or 3G, wireless technology, which is more expensive, slower, and less available. WLANs provide speeds of 11 Mbps, soon to get bumped up to 54 Mbps--approximately 20 times the speed that 3G could potentially offer. A typical hot spot costs less than $200, compared with the $500,000 to $1 million cost of a 3G base station. Competing 3G networks provided by the major carriers will compete for scarce infrastructure funding. Similar to the ISP market, the wireless service business is not a heavy-profit enterprise with competition driving prices lower. The gaps between 802.11's broadband hotspots can be filled with 3G narrowband. Widespread adoption of dual-mode wireless access is on the horizon. WLAN security products will emerge that provide authentication and provisioning services for wireless access nodes. The security-software-product market for personal Wi-Fi users will continue to increase.
Security, Software, Data/Info.	Widespread use of Internet technologies drive the redesign and redefinition of business processes, along with the need to increase security. Widespread access to the Internet as a dominant communication and information vehicle by citizens and agency business partners will increase the expectation and demand for interaction and support over the Internet. As these technologies mature and become more secure they will drive greater interaction with other states, federal and local government, and trading partners.
Network, Security, Platform	Networks and devices will become more secure as product manufacturers embed more security features into chip technology. Businesses have lost an estimated $1.7 billion to security breaches since the September 11 terrorist attacks. Software, by its very nature, is easier to change, damage, or destroy than hard silicon. Major manufacturers plan to include security features in the next generation of microprocessors that ensure that computers are secure the moment they are turned on. Security must not only get better, but it must also get faster. Software performing sophisticated encryption consumes precious computer cycles on devices like PDAs and laptops. By hardwiring the encryption accelerator process onto chips, encryption speeds can significantly increase. New technology is making firewalls smarter, analyzing the contents of each Internet packet causing firewall throughput to slow until many security aspects are migrated out of software and onto chips. Virtual Private Networks will also move toward chip-based security, at least for large-network applications, for increased speed and efficiency.
Network, Security	Instant Messaging (IM) expands into the enterprise. This expansion drives the need for designing more secure IM systems for enterprise networks. IM developers continue to make strides with text-to-speech and video over IM platforms. “Push” technology regains prominence as wireless networks and networked mobile devices deploy "push" to send information, photos, and video to IM clients on computers, handhelds, and the next generation of smart cell phones.
Network, Security, Platform	Different storage systems, servers, and network devices will begin to be managed through a central console, or "technology management system," based on virtualization, a partitioning technique that allows multiple and independent operating environments to use a single set of resources. The impetus for this trend is economic, computing resources are not being fully utilized, and IT budgets are tight. Industry data indicates that server utilization is approximately 40 percent of the total installed capacity. Virtualization reduces capital expenditures and the cost of managing IT equipment. According to a recent study, companies pay approximately $1 per megabyte to acquire hard disk storage and expend an additional $8 per megabyte each year to manage that storage. The concept of virtualization is not new. It has received more attention because of the rise of network computing and the ability to share resources easily. Virtualization enables the infrastructure to become “liquid,” able to react to unknown requirements. However, the reality of this concept requires additional development, requiring time, effort, and funding from product manufacturers.
Network, Security, Software	The Internet drives technical standards for applications and network computing. Internet technologies will be pervasively used by agencies, with the browser becoming the dominant interface for network-centric applications. As these technologies mature and become more secure, they will drive greater interaction with other states, federal and local government, and trading partners.
Network, Security, Platform, Software	Wireless application development will spur demand for integration technologies. Significant challenges and opportunities lie ahead in the adoption and adaptation of wireless technologies.
Network, Security, Platform	Bandwidth needs increase more rapidly than Moore’s law predicts as data, voice, and video converge to everything over IP (EoIP). Bandwidth needs will continue to exceed availability, on average, thus driving the need for improved, end-to-end quality of service in network communications, whether cabled or wireless. The convergence of voice, data, and video has already begun and is now accelerating.
Network, Security, Software, Data/Info.	Enterprise LDAP-based, meta-directory services are emerging as a preferred open- standards-based method of integrating disparate sources of directory information into a single repository. Meta directory services allow organizations to continue to use special purpose directories (Network Operating Systems, application directories, etc.) and to build a directory infrastructure that takes advantage of the special information in those directories, while also creating the basis for an enterprise directory for current and future needs.
Network, Security, Platform, Software	New ways to connect to the computing environment are appearing. PDAs, hand-held computers, and multi-function mobile devices are emerging productivity tools. Before these devices migrate from information retrieval only to full-fledged productivity tools, security mechanisms need to be established to protect and secure the State's information resources in order to provide an environment in which the State's e-government business can be safely transacted.
Security	Biometrics as an identification tool is relatively new and expensive; therefore, agencies considering biometric identification should use risk management techniques. Biometric techniques vary in success in real environments. Testing under actual conditions is necessary to determine effectiveness. Application integration with biometrics is hampered by a lack of standard APIs. Some states have incorporated emerging biometric standards into their Security Architecture. Arizona’s Security Architecture should consider the following biometric APIs for future standardization as the technology matures. Care must be taken to distinguish between uses of these tools solely for identification and authentication, and for uses where some legal intent is captured. When the API is part of an electronic signing process (creating a signature to memorialize such legal intent), then the parties will need to work with the Secretary of State to assure the use meets state electronic signature policies and practices and with State Library, Archives, and Public Records that the use meets state signed electronic records management policies and practices. Ø The Human Authentication API (HA-API) version 2.0 is a generic API designed to allow a common set of instructions to integrate biometrics into applications requiring identification. The HA-API specification was prepared for the US DOD by the National Registry, Inc. Currently the Open Group is considering adopting the HA-API as part of a common data security architecture. HA-API is defined for the Win-32 environment. Future versions will support other environments. The current HA-API only supports matching a user to a known template. Future releases will incorporate one-to-many identification. The HA-API is supported by a number of biometric vendors. The API supports multiple biometric template types and multiple vendor technologies for each biometric type in one database. This permits an enterprise wide approach to biometric identification while allowing different application-specific biometrics to be used. A single database also facilitates the use of multiple biometrics in a single application. The API permits changing the biometric used without requiring application code changes. It supports the enrollment sampling, processing, and verification of biometrics. Ø Speaker Verification API (SVAPI) is an API used for incorporating speaker-recognition technology into desktop and network applications. A consortium of vendors, technology developers, researchers VARs and end-users developed the SVAPI. The SVAPI offers interoperability over distributed environments with related APIs. They include SAPI, the telecom industry's S100, a standard architecture for developing computer-telephony applications, and JavaSpeech, a standard for speech recognition using Java. Ø Risk management techniques should be used when considering smart cards. Smart cards require well-developed management procedures. The cost of the technology combined with the cost of managing smart cards dictates that they is used in situations where less expensive identification technologies are inadequate. Smart cards are most often used when there is a need to support multiple applications, or there is a need for additional storage capacity on the cards as opposed to tokens, and there is a need for a high level of security.
Platform, Software	Open Source continues to gain enterprise wide acceptance. With the Linux open source operating system gaining in use among large enterprise systems (especially among financial services firms), and prominent technology companies behind the concept, anticipate an acceleration of open source in corporations. There is also a major trend among open source advocates to position their respective software beyond the open source community and on to the enterprise market.
Platform	Technologies for next-generation I/O systems are providing an architectural roadmap to improve communication between servers and peripheral devices. Inifiniband is an industry association as well as an architectural roadmap that is being designed to eliminate the bottlenecks in today’s networks. It will provide high-speed, channel-based, switched-fabric, I/O transport between servers and peripheral devices. Direct Access File System (DAFS) is a very quick method of achieving low latency as well as high performance file access to storage in data center environments. DAFS utilizes Virtual Interface (VI) architecture to reduce the number of CPU instructions to move packets through the protocol stack.
Platform	Trusted Platform specifications will improve the basis under which a computing environment may be trusted. Trusted platforms will provide increased confidence and will enable enhancements of existing services and the provision of new services. Trusted platforms can support new mechanisms such as enhanced auditing and logging of software processes, platform boot integrity, file integrity, and software licensing. Trusted platforms provide a protected information store for the platform and can attest to the integrity of the platform.
Software	Component-based systems allowing applications to be "assembled" from re-usable parts will drive software application development. The emerging use of federated meta-data will necessitate requirements for uniform, consistent treatment and manipulation of the information based on rules-based logic across all software applications the access the data.
Software	Middleware products are an evolving technology encompassing a wide range of capabilities from database access to very sophisticated integration engines. Middleware facilitates interchange of information in a distributed, multi-vendor, and heterogeneous systems environment while providing the same levels of security, reliability, and manageability traditionally associated with a monolithic, mainframe-based architecture where all products are supplied by a single vendor.
Software	The desire among most companies to move toward a single integration platform, combining application-to-application integration, business-to-business integration, and business process management; middleware provides the glue to tie disparate applications together at a deep level.