ABC Provisioning Paradigm

Archetype Build & Configuration (ABC) provisioning is an environment provisioning paradigm which focuses on the initial stages of the provisioning process: the creation of architecture, design and specifications, and their implementation in application configurations.

There are four steps in ABC provisioning:

a) Product evaluation: the product vendor, IT architect and infrastructure engineer evaluate the product and determine the required configuration for deployment into a production environment.

b) Standard Build document: the IT architect and infrastructure service engineer write a Standard Build document for the application and issue for review and approval.

c) Application archetype: using Genesis, a build engineer creates an application archetype based on the Standard Build document. The process reviews design decisions taken whilst creating the Standard Build, highlighting gaps and making assumptions explicit. This is a one-off process and the most time consuming activity in provisioning however once the archetype is complete it is reused for all environments across all programmes.

d) Application packages: the application deployer populates the remaining configuration data for the different environments and builds the application packages using Genesis. The application packages are deployed to the target environment.