Naïveté of System Architecture

It was a fine morning and I was in Somnus' lap having the most wonderful dream of my entrepreneurial venture. Suddenly my mobile alarm rang Memory Remains to wake me up.

At breakfast table my mom reminded me that its Rakhi day and I have to go to my sister/didi's house to honour the occasion.

After the threading ceremony, following is the conversation which takes place at didi's house.

Me: Hello

Didi: Hello, meet my brother-in-law Morpheus.

Me: Hi Morpheus, how are you?

Morpheus: Hi Gaurav, am good, heard a lot about you, how are you?

Me: Am good, thanks. So where are you working right now?

Morpheus: I am working as IB in Lehman brothers.

Me: Good man. IB is tough, how’s work?

Morpheus: Thanks man. Yes IB is challenging, and now they have some Information drive where each one of us has to present on some IT related topic and I have to present on 'Systems Architecture', it is supposed to improve our operational skills.

Me: Its good man.  

Morpheus: What good man? You know I am an IT ignorant person somehow surviving in this tech savvy world. Don't know how to give this presentation today evening. I plan to talk straight letting my manager know of my IT ignorance.

Me: Hold on mate. You might not be aware; I have certain level of exposure to Systems Architecture.

Morpheus: That’s great Gaurav, it would be of great help if you can take some time and teach me some fundamentals.

Me: Okay with me dude. Let’s go out somewhere and have discussion over a cup of coffee.

Morpheus: Yeah sure as a lot can be understood over a cup of coffee.

Me: Ha ha. Sure.

Didi: Where are you guys going?

Me: Somewhere out, need to explain Morpheus about Systems Architecture model.

Didi: Ok go on. But remember to bring the gift for me.

Me: What gift?

Didi: Idiot, the Rakhi gift.

Me: Oh, sorry. I will get it for sure. But it won’t be surprise then.

Didi: Rakhi gift is not a surprise.

Me: Forgive me elder sister, I will get something nice. Morpheus, let us go.

At the coffee shop, Morpheus and me discussed the below.

Me: You have used PC, right?

Morpheus: Yes, many a times.

Me: See, there are two parts of a PC; the screen and the processor.

Morpheus: What is a processor?

Me: Whenever you do certain calculations, example in spreadsheet you use certain formulas and the subsequent result is obtained, the processor of the PC acts upon the entered data to compute the desired result based on the formulas.

Morpheus: Yes I got it. Sometimes in older PCs it takes quite long when the spreadsheet has loads of data.

Me: Exactly, when the processor is slow or computation is huge it takes long to process data.

Morpheus: Okay.

Me: So in systems where huge amount of data is to be processed, specific memory allocations are done to separate the user look and feel i.e. the screen and the processing part.

Morpheus: Okay. But how will it help?

Me: More memory means more resources are allocated to solve the specific requirement.

Morpheus: But why the screen, it doesn’t look to utilize many resources.

Me: In the spreadsheet the screens are simple, but think of the on-line Pizza order page, which contains lot of pictures and on screen computations to satisfy customers’ needs. Such user interfaces are very heavy and use a lot of resources i.e. memory.­

Morpheus: Hmmm.

Me: Think of it that in today’s intensely competitive market, companies need to attract customers. So lot of resources would be dedicated to the Graphical User Interface (GUI) so as to make it more effective and of more utility.

Morpheus: So by GUI, you refer to the screen.

Me: Yes.

Morpheus: Okay, carry on.

Me: Also remember as data also contains a lot of space memory allocated to processing is shared for data storage.

Morpheus: Okay.

Me: So this system where GUI and memory plus processing are done separately is called Two-Tier Architecture.

Morpheus: Okay, then what is systems architecture.

Me: Hold on, we are coming to that. Now consider the big companies where huge amount of processing is done on huge amount of data.

Morpheus: Just a sec, how huge data are you talking about? Can data really be huge?

Me: It is, consider the fact that there are over a million operational servers of google. And big companies need to have efficient systems to manage huge chunks of data.

 Morpheus: Why would they manage data?

Me: Data need to be managed to get information from it and decisions can only be taken on meaningful information. For example your company Lehman Brothers would be having Financials as the core module and would also have Operations, Customer Relationship Management, Human Resources, Procurement etc.

Morpheus: Yes we have all of them, but I never thought of them from data management perspective.

Me: So data from all the modules need to be brought together, mapped wherever necessary and presented in a logical format. On top of it think that the GUI, which we earlier talked about, need to be very attractive and user friendly as it is the face of the company.

Morpheus: This looks to be too much complicated even for the two-tier model we talked about.

Me: Exactly so here we would follow, three-tier or multi-tier architecture model. In which the data base, GUI, processing for data base and processing for GUI would be done on separate engines.

Morpheus: Correct me if I am wrong database refers to resource allocation for data, and the engines you are referring to are servers.

Me: You are right, and here comes our coffee. Let us cheer this for Systems Architecture.

Morpheus and Me: Cheers!!

Morpheus: So this is systems architecture all about.

Me: It goes a bit more complex. Consider that the client end machines use internet. And presenting data on web browsers requires web servers. So you can imagine a layer of web servers before the data interacts with the end users system.

Morpheus: And by end user/client end machine you are referring to GUI.

Me: Correct man! That was all systems architecture. This is the biggest business in software industry with giant players competing for the huge market.

Morpheus: What all companies are you talking about?

Me: SAP, Oracle and Oracle acquired companies like iFlex, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, Prima Vera.

Morpheus: I had done consulting for some of these companies; they call this system architecture as ERP. I never thought from this data management perspective.

Me: Right, ERP is Enterprise Resource Planning which is the umbrella term for all the processes of Systems Architecture being carried out in a structured way.

Morpheus: Good to know all this over a cup of coffee, indeed a lot can over a cup of coffee.

Me: Yeah. True. Let me grab some gift for Didi.

Morpheus: Hey I recently got this iPad 3 from LA. Why don’t you have it as a token of my gratitude?

Me: Thanks Morpheus, but I already have one. I have an idea i’ll gift this one to Didi.

Morpheus: Even better.

Morpheus left for his presentation at Lehman Brothers.

I went to Didi’s house to present her my first earning from my first client.

At last the dream came true.