Systems architecture

IT systems can vary dramatically in their scale, the number of business domains they span, the number of platforms they include, and the number of geographical locations they serve. Some parts of the system may need to communicate with each other; some parts are entirely self-sufficient and need no interaction with other systems. When working on a larger system, we are likely to be integrating existing legacy systems into a new system or integrating new systems into a legacy system.

The complexity and size of many systems can reflect the level of automation versus a manual process within a business. Commonly, larger organizations will have the capital to invest in automated systems, which relieve the requirement for a number of manual processes, but will introduce some more specialized administrative overhead.

A large system may look very complicated as a whole, but we can break down any system into smaller subsystems, making it easier to design and helping to create a...