Enterprise architecture (EA) is a business function concerned with the structures and behaviors of a business, especially business roles and processes that create and use business data. An Enterprise Architect is at the top level of the architect hierarchy. This means they have more responsibilities than solutions architects. While solutions architects focus on their solution, an enterprise architect focuses on the overview of the whole organization. An enterprise architect leads over many solutions architects and business functions. By international consensus, Enterprise Architecture has been defined as "a well-defined practice for conducting enterprise analysis, design, planning, and implementation, using a comprehensive approach at all times, for the successful development and execution of strategy. Enterprise architecture applies architecture principles and practices to guide organizations through the business, information, process, and technology changes necessary to execute their strategies. These practices utilize the various aspects of an enterprise to identify, motivate, and achieve these changes."[1]
Enterprise architecture (EA) is a discipline for proactively and holistically leading enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing the execution of change toward desired business vision and outcomes. EA delivers value by presenting business and IT leaders with signature-ready recommendations for adjusting policies and projects to achieve target business outcomes that capitalize on relevant business disruptions. EA is used to steer decision making toward the evolution of the future state architecture.[3]
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Perspectives, or beliefs, held by enterprise architecture practitioners and scholars, with regards to the meaning of the enterprise architecture, typically gravitate towards one or a hybrid of three schools of thought:[7]
According to the standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010,[6] the product used to describe the architecture of a system is called an architectural description. In practice, an architectural description contains a variety of lists, tables, and diagrams. These are models known as views. In the case of enterprise architecture, these models describe the logical business functions or capabilities, business processes, human roles and actors, the physical organization structure, data flows and data stores, business applications and platform applications, hardware, and communications infrastructure.[8]
Paramount to changing the enterprise architecture is the identification of a sponsor. His/her mission, vision, and strategy, and the governance framework define all roles, responsibilities, and relationships involved in the anticipated transformation. Changes considered by enterprise architects typically include:
A methodology for developing and using architecture to guide the transformation of a business from a baseline state to a target state, sometimes through several transition states, is usually known as an enterprise architecture framework. A framework provides a structured collection of processes, techniques, artifact descriptions, reference models, and guidance for the production and use of an enterprise-specific architecture description.
The benefits of enterprise architecture are achieved through its direct and indirect contributions to organizational goals. It has been found that the most notable benefits of enterprise architecture can be observed in the following areas:[10]
Companies such as Independence Blue Cross, Intel, Volkswagen AG[24] and InterContinental Hotels Group use enterprise architecture to improve their business architectures as well as to improve business performance and productivity.
For various understandable reasons, commercial organizations rarely publish substantial enterprise architecture descriptions. However, government agencies have begun to publish architectural descriptions they have developed. Examples include:
Establishing enterprise architecture, as accepted, recognized, functionally integrated and fully involved concept at operational and tactical levels is identified as one of the biggest challenges facing Enterprise Architects today and one of the main reasons why many EA-Initiatives fail.[26]
Despite the benefits that enterprise architecture claims to provide, for more than a decade, writers and organizations raised concerns about enterprise architecture as an effective practice. Here is a partial list of those objections:
According to the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations (FEAPO), enterprise architecture interacts with a wide array of other disciplines commonly found in business settings. According to FEAPO:
As enterprise architecture has emerged in various organizations, the broad reach has resulted in this business role being included in the information technology governance processes of many organizations. While this may imply that enterprise architecture is closely tied to IT, it should be viewed in the broader context of business optimization in that it addresses business architecture, performance management, and process architecture, as well as more technical subjects.
Discussions of the intersection of enterprise architecture and various IT practices have been published by various IT analysis firms. Gartner and Forrester have stressed the important relationship of enterprise architecture with emerging holistic design practices such as Design Thinking and User Experience Design.[34][35][36] Analyst firm Real Story Group suggested that enterprise architecture and the emerging concept of the digital workplace were "two sides to the same coin."[37] The Cutter Consortium describes enterprise architecture as an information and knowledge-based discipline.[38]
The enterprise architecture of an organization is too complex and extensive to document in its entirety, so knowledge management techniques provide a way to explore and analyze these hidden, tacit, or implicit areas. In return, enterprise architecture provides a way of documenting the components of an organization and their interaction, in a systemic and holistic way that complements knowledge management.[39]
In various venues,[40] enterprise architecture has been discussed as having a relationship with Service Oriented Architecture, a particular style of application integration. Research points to enterprise architecture promoting the use of SOA as an enterprise-wide integration pattern.[41][42]
The first publication to use the exact term enterprise architecture was a National Institute of Standards Special Publication[43] on the challenges of information system integration. The overview states "This panel addressed the role of architectures and standards in support of management throughout an enterprise."
This original use is often incorrectly attributed to John Zachman's 1987 paper,[44] which did not use the term "Enterprise Architecture". The scope of the report by the NIST "enterprise architecture" panel may be directly compared to Zachman's current thinking presented in the 1987 article which is as follows: "With increasing size and complexity of the Implementations of Information systems it Is necessary to use some logical construct (or architecture) for defining and controlling the interfaces and the Integration of all of the components of the system. The discussion is limited to architecture and does not include a strategic planning methodology."
In the 1989 NIST article, enterprise architecture is described as consisting of several levels. The top-level is "Business Unit Architecture". The document describes this as follows: "A Business Unit may portray either a total corporate entity or a corporate sub-unit. Architecture at this level establishes a framework for satisfying both internal information needs and the information and data needs to be imposed by external organizations. These external organizations include cooperating organizations, customers, and federal agencies. The information and data needs at this level impose requirements to be satisfied at lower levels of the architecture, with increasing attention to technical considerations."
The 1989 NIST document continues: "The representation of the Business Unit architecture shows organizational units and their relationships, as well as specific standards, policies, and procedures that enable or constrain the accomplishment of the overall enterprise mission."
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