For this week’s “In the News”, research and article that discusses today’s approach to Enterprise Architecture. Specifically, how has a recent organization modified their architecture to meet an acquisition, divesture, or change in business?
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Microsoft Announces Acquisition of Artificial Intelligence Company Nuance
In April 2021, Microsoft unveiled its biggest acquisition, since 2016’s $26 billion dollar purchase of LinkedIn, with the purchase of Nuance for $19.7 billion. Get this! It was an ALL cash deal.
Nuance’s area of expertise is conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and speech recognition technology. This greatly helps healthcare workers streamline the capture and examination of clinical data. Its capabilities will complement the “Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare” in a growing industry of focused cloud suites. Nuance is a pioneer in the real-world application of enterprise AI.
Enterprise Architecture achieves flexibility and consistency in a Merger and Acquisition strategy with multiple tiers:
• Business Tier – EA strategy helps align with the organization’s operating model, strategy, and IT objectives, guiding IT transformations by providing a business-centric view of the enterprise from a functional perspective.
• Information Tier – EA strategy defines information models that accommodate new and existing business processes. Everything interrelates to support the overall data processing needs of the enterprise via well-defined master data management (MDM) techniques.
• Application Tier – EA strategy ensures a minimal amount of overlap among information systems, laying the groundwork for a comprehensive set of applications that work well together, are easily integrated and don’t duplicate efforts. (Oracle, 2011)
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/microsoft-agrees-deal-nunace-communications
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/why-microsoft-s-19-7b-deal-to-acquire-nuance-is-a-perfect-fit-and-trophy-for-redmond-tech-giant/ar-BB1fzCld
https://www.oracle.com/technical-resources/articles/enterprise-architecture/oeea-mergers.html
LeanIX, an enterprise architecture company, recently announced that they would be combining EA technology of Application Portfolio Management with SaaS Management. According to LeanIX, 50% of software in enterprises is SaaS based, which will only increase as a result of working in a remote-first world. With Zoom, Slack, and HubSpot, the SaaS market is estimated to be around 15,000 providers, as these services are currently freemium. The challenge becomes that these apps will at some point not be freemium and moved to a paid model, which would be an arduous task to come up with licensing costs for everything after the base has been created with users and employees. LeanIX hopes to alleviate that by using machine learning to determine what applications are installed on an enterprise to remove and organize all the licenses and subscriptions to prevent an organization from paying too much. While LeanIX changed their model, it is probably true that many organizations changed or is in the process of changing their enterprise architecture to fit in to the new landscape created in March 2020. Hopefully, other organizations take a page from LeanIX to ensure moving to entirely SaaS is as affordable and painless as possible.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/leanix-combines-saas-management-and-enterprise-architecture-to-help-drive-continuous-transformation-301293313.html
Hi Krish, interesting article you selected. I never heard of the company but I can agree with their concerns. Due to Covid, we’re all working remote and may still remain remote after lockdown is over.
Many organizations will have to switch to primary SaaS-based models to facilitate consistent and effective communication, commerce, and etc. If the costs of these tools are too high, they will either find another vendor or cut back on their licensing. Using machine learning as a way to only keep what you’re using is a cool concept, I can see it being expanded and used in different business areas.
This makes sense! In my experience, most companies offer so many tools that most employees don’t even know about all of them.
The threat group behind the SolarWinds and Microsoft attacks has changed gears and launched a massive new phishing campaign targeting governments, NGOs, and think tanks. This APT group previously exploited Microsoft and Solarwinds programs causing large supply-chain attacks using business updates to distribute malware.
The Nobelium group was behind those attacks and also started running a phishing campaign that has targeted thousands of emails around the world. The most recent wave has targeted 3,000 emails and more than 150 organizations. At least 24 countries have been impacted, a large number of attacks targeted organizations working in international development, humanitarian, and human rights work. It’s speculated Nobelium purposely targets organizations involved in foreign policy and is doing it as part of intelligence gathering efforts.
This new large-scale phishing attempt is another testament to the group’s core objective to collect sensitive and highly valuable information from western organizations operating in government and external affairs.
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/solarwinds-hackers-go-phishing/
Wow, this certainly seems like quite the definition of a phishing attack – sending many emails and hoping that statistically a few may click on the malicious link. It’s also interesting how broad they’re targeting, with 24 countries being affected in all sorts of different organizations. Hopefully, employees working in these organizations have experience in security awareness training to mitigate the risk of attack.
Good stuff Mei,
Based on this article,I think we may be under estimating the magnitude of attacks. i think the APT group has hacked more companies and government infrastructures than reported, some of them just don’t know it yet.
There is possibly no more “up front and center” cybersecurity breach related effort to improve Enterprise Architecture than the one currently taking place in our own governments cybsec infrastructure. On May 12, 2021 President Biden has issued an executive order on improving the nation’s cybersecurity. The order comes as a response to recent cyber incidents, such as the Colonial Pipeline ransomware, SolarWinds attack, and the exploitation of Microsoft Exchange zero-day vulnerabilities. The order calls for a complete analysis of the infrastructure and the risk assessment of almost every aspect of the network. This impacts not just the federal government but also contractors and the supply chain.
Notable changes to architecture outlined in the Order are:
– Adopting security best practices
– Implementing a Zero Trust Architecture
– Adopt secure cloud services (SaaS, IasS and PaaS)
– Streamlining of cybsec data for analytics and managing cyber risk
– Implementation of MFA and encryption
– Implementation of Endpoint Detection Response security
– Require the collection of logs and the reporting of their contents against all Federal Information Systems
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/05/12/executive-order-on-improving-the-nations-cybersecurity/
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3a6825fa-1e24-4a98-8ade-ee593c4d500a
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=233f8b5e-b0af-4da7-9c8e-83ca62b01df1
Hi Vanessa,
Thank you for the informative post!
I am excited and hopeful that this country is taking its stance on cybersecurity more seriously. Under Biden, this will be a reality. He is a president that is actually acting like a president. But I am not political. LOL
With the recent Ransomware incidents, we have to be vigilant. We are in dangerous territory.
AT&T is combining its WarnerMedia division with Discovery Inc.
The deal is being structured as a “Reverse Morris Trust” transaction that will give AT&T $43 billion in a combination of cash, debt securities and WarnerMedia’s retention of certain debt. The deal will see AT&T shareholders receive stock representing 71% of the new company, while Discovery shareholders will have 21%, the companies said in an announcement.
When acquisitions happen a due diligence process must commence.
Implementing a Zero Trust Architecture
identifying all registrations, issuances and applications for assets owned by the target and confirming the status, lien status, chain-of-title, scope of protection, and ownership.
identifying all other assets owned or used by the target and confirming the ownership
reviewing and analysing the target’s agreements with past and present employees, contractors and consultants with respect to the creation and ownership of assets and the use and disclosure of trade secrets and other confidential information.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/17/att-confirms-deal-to-combine-its-warnermedia-subsidiary-with-discovery-inc-in-pure-play-43b-deal/
COVID-19 has forced most organizations to re-think and in some cases, drastically change their enterprise architecture. With most employees working remotely, organizations had to quickly switch to more cloud-based models for data storage/access and collaboration tools. Security concerns may have been a barrier for many organizations in adopting the cloud and acceptance of remote connections before but COVID-19 meant that these organizations would not function without this change. Many organizations have found that working from home or a hybrid work environment will be the future but they now need to address the security concerns that were overlooked in the quick changes made to withstand the pandemic.
On the side of providing to customers, many companies moved to an online sales model as in-person sales slowed or stopped completely. Gautam Saghal, CEO of Perkbox says “it’s important to focus first on what the customer’s needs are, and then shape the solution and response through tech innovation, not the other way round.”. Again, in these cases, security may not have been thoroughly addressed as these changes were made quickly to ensure the survival of businesses.
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/opinions/enterprise-security-look-after/
https://www.silicon.co.uk/workspace/your-covid-pivot-how-businesses-have-changed-to-survive-the-pandemic-400719
https://www.itproportal.com/features/the-role-of-enterprise-architecture-as-a-driving-force-to-business-recovery/