Working on applications that use data? — Read about standardisation of data stores at ABN AMRO

By Reijer Klopman

When developing or changing an application, it is very likely you will have to store and manage data. At this point, a database management system or another type of data store comes into play. There is a wide range of options, so which one is the best? Making the wrong choice can affect the quality of the application, harm agility, increase operations effort and costs. Therefore, this is an issue that really matters. This article provides insight in how we approach this at ABN AMRO.

A two fold approach

ABN AMRO uses a twofold approach when it comes to choosing the right data store for an application:

• An architecture standard: Next to ‘future state architectures’, a standard provides additional important guidance from enterprise architecture for the evolution of the IT landscape of ABN AMRO. It is a document that defines a mandatory way of working to ensure uniform application of one or more specific policies. In case of the standard for data stores, it lists preferred products and services and tells how to use them in a controlled and secure way.
• A decision support tool: We are developing a tool that will help in selecting the right data store product or service, given the characteristics of your application.

This article goes into detail on the first element, the standard for data stores.

Status of our standard for data stores

We already had a standard for database management systems at ABN AMRO. However, this standard did not address cloud services and pretty much only allowed relational database management systems. So, we improved the standard. Now it also covers other date store types. In particular NoSQL databases, search data stores and unstructured data stores. Moreover, cloud services for all the data stores are mentioned.

Meaning of a standard for product or services within the ABN AMRO

ABN AMRO has Architecture Review Boards in order to check if IT initiatives adhere to the guidance provided by enterprise architecture. There are sometimes valid reasons for using a product or service that is not in the standard. A deviation from the standard requires approval by the Architecture Review Board. Some products are flagged as ‘not allowed’ in the standard, and should not be used at all by ABN AMRO.

Reasons for having a standard

At ABN AMRO, agility and fast innovation are important. DevOps teams work fast and are empowered to make their own choices. So, one could argue that a standard could limit this. In contrary: if applied in the right way, standards will actually enable agility and innovation:

• Faster decisions: A standard enables teams to make a decision faster as they are often overwhelmed by the huge amount of options to choose from. The standard narrows this down.
• Ease: A standard product or service is easy to order, has built-in security and other controls. This reduces time and increases safety.
• Avoidance of scattered data: A standard helps to avoid data from being scattered over a multitude of data stores, improving data availability and making data governance easier.
• Harmonious IT landscape: A standard helps to harmonise the IT landscape, which makes reuse of and integration with components easier.
• Rationalised IT landscape: A standard helps to rationalise the IT landscape, resulting in lower procurement and operational costs. Moreover, a rationalised IT landscape requires less variety of skills which make them better to maintain.

Development and ownership of a standard

In ABN AMRO, standards are typically developed by enterprise architects. To make sure that standards have sufficient relevance and support, there is a close alignment and collaboration with many stakeholders.

For the same reason, standards are not owned by enterprise architects but by the owner of the products and services that are subject of the standard. Data stores are middleware components and the standard ones are internally provided by the IT services department. Therefore, the ownership of the standard for data stores resides in this department. In contrast, a standard for software components on top of middleware would be owned by an IT development department in most cases.

To enable ABN AMRO to use state-of-the-art technology and to innovate, proposals for new standard products and services can emerge in many ways. This may be, for example, because of findings of a proof of concept or because of a particular need of a department.

Selection criteria for products and services

The criteria below are considered in the selection for the data store standard:

• Popularity within ABN AMRO in particular and in other organisations in general.
• Availability as open source product or as native service provided by the preferred public cloud service providers of ABN AMRO.
• Cross-environment availability on premises and in preferred public clouds.
• Availability as PaaS components.
• Best practices of vendors and cloud service providers, and fit in IT Strategy.
• Features, added value.
• Support of security and other controls.
• Ease of use and maintenance.
• Costs.

As mentioned before, some services are mentioned in the standard but require approval of the Architecture Review Board: NoSQL databases, search data stores and Hadoop. The reason for this is that these services have pro’s however also serious cons. They can be very beneficial in some cases, but are harder to use and run. Their use could also become quite expensive. So it is important to weigh their use per situation.

Conclusion

This blog gave you a short introduction to standardisation of data stores at ABN AMRO. Standardisation in general is used as a tool for architecture control and for enabling agility. The standard for data stores in particular is intended to make life easier when to select a product or service for storing, using and managing data. Do you agree? We are curious. Let us know in the comments below!

About the author:

Reijer Klopman, Big Data Architect
After having done a lot of work as an information analyst and some development work, Reijer Klopman is now Big Data Architect at ABN AMRO. Within his job he is working on the infrastructure architecture for hosting Big Data solutions as middleware.