What is Enterprise Architecture?

Gartner® defines Enterprise Architecture (EA) as:

 “… 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 as a discipline ensures business vision, strategies, plans and processes are aligned and optimized to investments in information technology, plant and people.

While the scope of EA is broader scope than Business Architecture (BA), EA uses BA as the foundation or anchor on which the rest is constructed. The Open Group, publishers of the most well known and widely used EA Framework, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), provide a content framework aligned to their Architecture Development Method (ADM) that illustrates the typical domain layers and indicative content of each layer.

EA provides the basis for driving many business initiatives, such as business transformation and innovation. EA also allow organizations to manage and adapt to any changes or disruptions caused by the market or external environment. This is because the EA will provide a better understanding of the organization and its operations along with its business capabilities. It focuses on operation level concerns while BA emphasizes on the strategic level of business. EA oversees investments, governance and assurance while facilitating organizational change.

Even basic events can trigger a need to refresh areas within the EA, having an EA allows your organization to quickly assess and adapt to any future disruption(s). The unexpected nature of change, best illustrated to unexpected economic and business disruptions caused by COVID-19, demonstrate the importance and necessity of having an EA in place for organizations to manage the complexity and unexpected nature of impacts and disruptions on the business and market environment.

Methodology

Enterprise Architecture provides a holistic view of the entire business ecosystem in which the organization operates. The EA is a set of blueprints showing domains or layers representing:

• The Business Architecture (BA) covering:
  • The organisation’s business motivation, in terms of its vision, goals, objectives and how they are to b delivered in terms of mission, strategies and tactics;
  • Organization structure, in terms of both the internal organization structure, roles and locations of operations, as well as the partners, suppliers and customers with which it interacts; and
  • Organization Behaviors, in terms of the business products and services and the business capabilities and processes (with embedded controls) required to deliver them.
• The Information Architecture (IA) covering:
  • The information required by the organisation to operate and support its business and meet any regulatory compliance obligations; together with
  • The mapping of the information to Applications that use it.
• The Application Architecture (AA) covering:
  • The application portfolio required to support the organisation in terms of delivering its business products and services;
  • How the individual application within the portfolio interacts with the employees and customers in delivering the business products and services;
  • The relationships between how the individual applications within the portfolio utilise the information contained within the Information Architecture; and finally
  • The relationships between the applications within the portfolio to the required technology components required to support them.
• The Technology Architecture (TA) covering:
  • The various technology components comprising of the platforms, services and hardware assets required to support the organization’s application portfolio, including desktop services, database services, integration services, system services, operating systems and hardware and any physical locations maintained together with required support services such as power and air-conditioning; together with
  • The relationships between the technology components and the applications showing what applications are supported by each of the technology components.

The EA documents not only today’s view ( or current state) of the organisation and each domain, but it also shows the expected future view (or target state) of the organisation and each domain based on planned enterprise strategies, capabilities, and initiatives. The EA also provides guiding principles to help shape business and technology investments and plans required to deliver the planned future business behavior.

In simple terms, the organization’s strategy drives changes to the EA, which in turn translates strategy into execution.

This is a continuous cycle resulting in continuous improvements to both the EA and the organization. The BA provides the foundation to assure consistent application design across all delivery projects, enabling quick and smooth decision making when necessary. It binds together different sectors, viewpoints, underlying principles, and systems, resulting in a repository of information that will improve decision making regarding business and technological changes.  This practice aims to help organizations understand the structure and the way they work.