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Ashton Architect™

Ashton Architect ™ is an architectural tool which supports information technology planning and architecture of large distributed environments. An effective repository and tool-set is critical, if not prerequisite, to achieving successful planning. To this end, Ashton Architect provides multi-user support in the areas of:

Application Project Planning: including business requirements modeling, conceptual systems design, identification of server and network workloads and costs. Ashton Architect is readily adaptable to all systems development methodologies.
Tactical Systems and Network Planning: ongoing infrastructure planning and management activities including analysis of workload trends, impact analysis and change management, capacity planning, and financial management.
Enterprise Architecture Planning: support for all phases of the Enterprise Architecture Planning projects including establishment of the Information Resource Catalog (IRC), application and data architecture, technology architecture, and implementation / migration planning.

Using Ashton Architect, planners can now employ a business-driven, tool-based method for developing systems plans and technology architecture. Key questions and issues which can be addressed using this product are:

	What are the information needs and data access patterns and trends associated with business functions?
	Should data be distributed, and if so, where should these databases be located and how should they be managed?
	How should applications be defined and implemented to ensure that data access needs are met in a cost-effective, low-risk manner?
	How should the technology infrastructure be designed? Where should server configurations be deployed? How should the communications network be designed? How much capacity will be required to meet current and future demands?
	What are the life-cycle costs associated with acquisition, deployment, operation and maintenance of equipment and network connections to meet business demands?
	What if ....?

Business and Application Architecture

Ashton Architect provides a comprehensive multi-user repository for recording and analyzing business organization, function, information, and geographical planning elements and relationships. Ashton Architect assists architects with the establishing effective, business driven application architecture and implementation strategy.

Systems and Network Planning

Ashton Architect fully supports the systems and network planning process beginning with the gathering, collection, and recording of relevant planning data. Information is captured on business requirements and characteristics; application system and database characteristics; and technology configurations, unit capacities, and costs. Ashton Architect assists the systems planner in determining what types and sizes of configurations and communications connections should be deployed to effectively meet business requirements. Ashton Architect supports evolutionary (not just revolutionary) planning using multi-year planning scenarios.

Workload Characterization

Ashton Architect provides facilities to record relevant characteristics and inter-relationships of application processing, databases, users, and locations. Based on the information recorded in these views, the resulting facilities workload (data server and network) is calculated and presented in a visual manner. Bottlenecks and issues can be readily identified and resolved thereby providing a means of verifying that proposed architectures and plans can be implemented with minimum risk.

Evaluation of Data Distribution Strategies

Ashton Architect is ideal for establishing optimal data distribution strategies based on characteristics of the data, the way in which it is accessed, and other constraints which may be imposed. Ashton Architect supports visual evaluation and adjustment of data distribution strategies including the location of data "masters" and copies and the resulting impacts on server and network workload.

Life-cycle Costing

Ashton Architect maintains an investment status by location for all configurations and network connections established. Acquisition and ongoing cost items can be defined and tracked over the full systems life-cycle.

Impact Analysis

Ashton Architect enables the systems planner to analyze the impact of change quickly and easily. The ability to "clone and modify" any aspect of the business and facility views in support sensitivity or "what-if" analysis is provided.

EAP Toolset Template

The EAP Toolset Template is an application that provides the knowledge repository and the ability to capture, analyze and report on information for all phases of Enterprise Architecture Planning projects. The EAP Toolset main menu incorporates the EAP "wedding cake" design of command buttons that accesses sub-menus for each EAP phase and task. The design makes liberal use of pull-downs and cross-tab relationships to make the analysis and quality assurance of EAP data as easy as possible. The Toolset Templates contain over 75 forms that are used to collect information for all of the major EAP planning elements and their interrelationships. There are more than 150 reports and queries supporting analysis and reporting of EAP planning information. All reports and queries can be exported to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or can be saved in HTML format.