Architecture Drives The Roadmap

Your future state architecture really drives the roadmap to Fusion Applications. Gardner McKay once said "If you don't know where you're headed, how will you know when you get there?" A future state architecture is simply a depiction of where you're headed.

The picture above depicts the logical future state architecture JPL's New Business Systems' ("NBS") implementation of Fusion Applications. For clarification, NBS currently consists of the Oracle E-Business Applications used at JPL plus a number of custom applications. In our future state, the E-Business Applications will be replaced by Fusion Applications. This may not be how things finally work out, but it's my best attempt based on the information I have today.

Take a minute to consider the picture. One point should be readily apparent: this is pretty complex stuff we're dealing with, if only because the architecture consists of many layers. Each of those layers has many "moving parts".

One of the significant purposes in depicting an architecture is to share ideas with others. In sharing complex messages, it's my opinion (and just my opinion) that complex messages are best communicated by breaking the architecture down into digestible chunks. So, in order to get the message across to my audience, I've broken down the roadmap effort into layers - in essence, I've created a roadmap for each architectural layer depicted above. That layer-by-layer roadmap is what we'll be diving into for most of the remainder of this series.

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