The Scio Azure Architecture Design Session (ADS) is a collaborative workshop designed to address the key elements of building and operating a Cloud application or service that successfully leverages Windows Azure. The main goal of the ADS is accelerating decisions and minimizing risks when specifying the architecture of an application and its operational support functions. At the end of an Azure ADS, a custom architecture is outlined in accordance with the specific requirements of the Cloud application or service. This provides architectural guidance, preferred practices recommendations, and risk analysis to help you achieve the desired implementation efficiently.

What can you expect?

The Azure ADS is an interactive planning session, typically aimed at designing a new solution architecture, but it can also used to validate existing approaches, or to address specific technical, business or operational issues, depending on your particular situation.

There are three phases to an Azure ADS:

1. Discovery – Here the objective is to understand the key drivers and business context of the proposed Cloud application or service, as well as its current state. To accomplish this, there are surveys, documentation review and conference calls before the workshop. Then, during the workshop, we collaboratively validate the context and objectives with your team, and discuss in greater detail the solution requirements and existing plans, as well as any technical assets, integration points and other constraints and risks that need to be considered.
2. Envisioning – During this phase, we synthesize and clearly define the solution requirements, the business issues and the overall application use cases to extract “key scenarios” that can be described and built, and then evaluate the technology and approach for these scenarios. This involves a series of architecture whiteboard sessions where we dive deeply into the Windows Azure Platform Services to come up with a custom approach based on best practices and design patterns. Finally, we analyze the proposed design to identify design gaps and potential solutions.
3. Planning & Recommendations – In this phase, we translate the discoveries and conclusions of the Azure ADS into a roadmap for next steps – who, what, and when. In this way, by the end of the engagement, the path from 'what we want' to 'what we are going to do' is clear and well understood.

What is required?

To make the engagement successful it will be necessary that you provide the following:

• Executive project leader & point of contact
• Background information detailing current situation and plans, both technical and business 
• Key executives & stakeholders for Operations, Technical & Application/Product Management 
• Participation in workshops, review and feedback 
• One-week elapsed time – 16 to 20 hours for key participants over the period.
  

Deliverables

The deliverable from the Azure ADS is a report that summarizes key findings and prioritized recommendations that resulted from the various discussions.

The report typically includes:

• Conceptual Design
• Business Goals
• Solution Requirements
• Recommended Architecture Approach
• Applicable Azure Design Patterns
• Solution Development Roadmap
• Gap Analysis
• Summary of any business or technical requirements not met directly by Windows Azure platform services, and their potential solutions
• Recommendations for next steps 
• Summary of key recommendations for moving forward
• Proof-of-Concept Plan – In some circumstances, an Azure ADS will result in the recommendation to evaluate a Proof-of-Concept Lab, which is an engagement to construct, integrate and/or validate the concepts from the ADS

Engagement Duration

The ADS is designed for delivery over a period of one to two weeks depending on your team availability.

Value

The Scio Azure ADS accelerates business and technical decisions by leveraging our real world Azure expertise. It also minimizes risk by identifying potential roadblocks and challenges, and developing proactive strategies to ensure the implementation of a sound technical foundation. Additionally, the Azure ADS can focus on the toughest issues of a concept, and with those solved and the approach understood, significant risk can be removed from the overall initiative.