Abstract

This paper presents a case study of a major international bank where competitive pressure has encouraged the development and deployment of information technology. Three key conflicting forces were found to have significant impact on the technical strategies: autonomy, integration, and evolution. A conceptual system architecture was developed to respond to these needs by integrating only those elements critical to integration and allowing complete autonomy of the vast amount of application specification, development, and operation. The architecture was used in the development of two complex application groups. One application group was a high-volume transaction ensemble involving 20 gigabytes of data, the other application group was a sophisticated management reporting system involving over 1.5 gigabytes of data. The architecture is designed to be an evolutionary blueprint since the migration from autonomy to integration is slow, and may not even be desirable. The approach of separating the external interfaces, message control, data control, and database components from the application processing components has provided a high degree of integration while preserving significant autonomy -- and the capacity to evolve further in both directions. *Work reported herein has been supported, in part, by the Department of Transportation's Transportation System Center, the United States Air Force, the United States Space and Naval Warfare System Command, the Center for Management of Information at the University of Arizona, and Citibank.

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