Enterprise Architecture & Solution Design
A design is the cheapest place to find a problem. LABUSA produces enterprise and solution architecture that is specific enough to build from, and honest about what it commits you to.
Architecture work earns its keep when it prevents an expensive mistake: an integration that will not scale, a platform choice that locks you in, a security control added so late that it has to be bolted on. We design for organizations that have to live with the result for a decade.
What goes wrong without a design
Most of the failures we are asked to repair were decided long before anyone noticed, usually at the point where a system was procured without a view of what it would have to connect to.
- Integration was assumed. Two systems that were each fine in isolation turn out to exchange data only through a nightly file, and the business process needs it in minutes.
- Security arrived last. Identity, logging and segmentation were treated as a deployment task rather than a design input, so the controls are partial and the audit finds them.
- The environment is neither one thing nor the other. Some workloads on premises, some in public cloud, with no agreed rule for which goes where and no shared operating model.
- Every project invents its own standards. There is no reference to build against, so the estate grows less consistent with each successful delivery.
- The design exists only in one person's head. It is accurate, and it leaves when they do.
A design your teams can build from
Specific enough to implement and to estimate against, rather than a diagram that has to be reinterpreted by everyone who reads it.
Decisions recorded with their reasons
What was chosen, what was rejected and why. The reasoning survives staff changes and answers the same question the next time it is asked.
Security designed in
Identity, access, segmentation, logging and data protection treated as design inputs, so the control exists before the auditor asks for it.
A hybrid estate with a rule
An agreed basis for deciding where a workload runs, so the environment stops drifting one project at a time.
Enterprise architecture
The shape of the whole estate: applications, data, infrastructure and security, and how a proposed change affects each.
Solution architecture
Design for a specific system or programme, taken to the level of detail an implementation team can build and cost from.
Hybrid cloud design
Private infrastructure combined with leading public cloud platforms, with placement decided by operational, security and compliance requirements rather than by preference.
Systems integration
How systems exchange data: interfaces, timing, failure behavior and who owns the record. Integration is where most estates actually break.
Security architecture
Identity and access, network segmentation, logging and monitoring, and data protection, designed alongside the system rather than after it.
Technology standards and modernization design
Reference patterns that later projects can build against, and target designs for systems being modernized or replaced.
How LABUSA delivers it
We design against constraints rather than against an ideal, because the constraints are what the organization is actually going to have to live inside.
- Establish what exists. The current estate, its interfaces, its contracts and the parts nobody wants to touch.
- Establish what governs it. Compliance obligations, data handling requirements, procurement route and the internal capability available to run the result.
- Produce the target design. Components, interfaces, data flows, identity and access, and the security controls, with the choices recorded alongside their alternatives.
- Produce the path to it. Rarely a single migration. Usually a sequence of changes that each leave the estate working.
- Support the build. The design is reviewed against what is actually implemented, because a design nobody checks is a document rather than an architecture.
Where LABUSA also operates the resulting environment, the same team carries the design into managed operations, which removes the handover that usually loses the reasoning.
25 years of delivery, not slideware
LABUSA has spent more than 25 years building and running the systems it advises on. Recommendations come from teams who will still be here when the work has to be delivered.
Vendor neutral by design
We are not a reseller working backwards from a product. Where a platform is the right answer we will say so, and where the honest answer is that a project should wait, we will say that too.
Certified and accountable
LABUSA holds ISO 9001 for quality management and ISO/IEC 27001 for information security. Several LABUSA services are TX-RAMP authorized, and LABUSA is an MBE and HUB certified firm.
Public and private sector fluency
We work with state agencies, school systems, healthcare organizations, nonprofits and commercial businesses, so a recommendation arrives already aware of the procurement and compliance route it has to travel.
Managed Cloud & Infrastructure
When the design has to be run as well as built. See Managed Cloud & Infrastructure
AI Infrastructure & Platform Hosting
Designs that have to carry AI workloads have their own constraints around capacity, isolation and cost. See AI Infrastructure & Platform Hosting
Cybersecurity & Risk Management
Where the architecture has to satisfy a specific security or compliance obligation. See Cybersecurity & Risk Management
Mobile Solutions
Application design and delivery for mobile and field use. See Mobile Solutions
Further reading
Talk to LABUSA
Get the design right before it is expensive
Bring us the decision you are about to make. We will tell you what we would want to establish before you make it.
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