Does 'Being Vendor/Technology Agnostic Architect make Any sense or No sense'?

[Anjana]

Hi All,

We keep hearing about Being Vendor Agnostic or Technology Agnostic
Architect.

For people who are hearing this first time, let me brief them...

Vendor Agnostic and Technology Agnosm means not being biased towards
any technology or any technology vendor like Microsoft, IBM,SUN etc
when providing a solution.
Rather provide architectural solution first which is very generic
without having the vendor in mind. And bring the vendor into the
picture only after your Architectural blueprint is completely ready.

How many of you agree to thinking? And how much do you think this is
being practically implemented and where are the bottlenecks, if any?

Regards,
Anjana

[Sudhakar S]

While I agree to the technology-agnostic behavior/freedom is required for any software architect, I still have few brownie points for vendor/technology in some cases. In few cases, we tend to think technology centric architecture right from inception to gain more control over ROI, and Customer's existing stuff. Most of the IT software architects are forced to do this as part of thier job irrespective of the "agnostic" thought process they live with in.

 

This is due to highly invested IT infrastructure which is becoming rigid down the line and leaves no choice for fresh ideas everytime. SOA seems to be giving some around this, but I am not sure how much it can penetrate in to IT world of software.

 

In such cases, If I were a customer, I prefer my architect to be technology centric and business centric. Becoz for a customer, there are several business requirements to be sorted out rather than devising a technical/vendor agnostic architecture for his software. IT systems are supposed to be enhanced in time, rather than be replaced with another technology (Ideally).

 

Where as for a Product Architect, the path looks cool. He can be technology/vendor agnostic in many many cases unless he is architecting something on his own organization's platform.

 

 

-Sudhakar

 

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