Objectives
This lesson explores the value and typical use cases of enterprise architecture.
This lesson contains the following topics:
An enterprise architecture provides a framework for aligning IT strategy with business objectives and improving the agility and efficiency of an organization.
Enterprise architecture is like a blueprint for a large organization. It shows how all the different parts, such as people, tasks, tools, and information, fit together. It helps the organization to function smoothly and achieve its goals. It's like a map that everyone in the organization uses as a guide to know what needs to be done and how everything fits together to be successful.
Enterprise architecture is a strategic framework that aligns an organization's business strategy, processes, information, and technology to achieve its goals. It provides a holistic view of the business and enables effective decision-making, optimization of resources, and adaptation to changes in the business environment.
It's a combination of several underlying disciplines, such as:
As a discipline equally dedicated to the IT and business worlds, it introduces practical standards for all departments and teams to rationalize work through intelligent sharing of resources.
The consistent use of an Enterprise Architecture enables IT to become a driver of innovation and support business requirements for short or long-term change projects.
Enterprise architecture aims to create a framework that outlines the structure and processes of an organization, often through the creation of a business capability map or blueprint. This framework should provide a comprehensive overview of the organization, including its IT resources and business processes.
In addition, enterprise architecture also aims to promote alignment and standardization of teams by harmonizing environments across different teams and organizations. The guidelines provided are usually based on an organization's individual business requirements.
Nine use cases are described in which an enterprise architecture is useful, such as IT standardization and promoting innovation.
The nine typical use cases are defined according to the previously identified three central core concerns of an organization. As a reminder, those core concerns are:
The associated use cases are:
1. Post merger Integration
Mergers and acquisitions often fail or are resource-intensive due to a lack of integration and unrealized synergy effects. From an IT perspective, post merger integration requires the standardization and transformation of technologies without disrupting business operations.
2. Rationalization of Applications
Applications are how end users get their tasks and work done. They are a necessary and important part of IT architectures, but they can also be expensive to provision and maintain. As a result, every application should be validated against a clear and compelling use case to help the organization achieve its objectives.
3. Integration Architectures
Integrating different types of applications into IT environments is critical, but it's is a major challenge due to complexity and constant change, with industry data indicating that 70% of all integration projects fail. The added value for organizations comes when applications work together and are seamlessly integrated, although this varies depending on the business capability and the associated application landscape requirements.
4. Technology Risk Management
Organizations rely heavily on technology, but cyber risks, often caused by IT failures and outdated systems, can cause significant financial and reputational damage from which companies can struggle to recover. According to a study by the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of an IT security incident amounts from anywhere between 3.92 million to 8.19 million USD.
5. Data Compliance
Although compliance costs money, noncompliance, as in the example of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR), can be even more expensive for companies. This regulation represents a drastic change in data management for many companies.
6. Governance Standards
The use of standardized IT in large companies offers advantages such as cost savings and improved communication but can also pose challenges due to rapidly changing technologies. Alternative concepts such as radical agility allow for autonomy and adaptability, with a standardization strategy tailored to the business being crucial to ensure sustainability and agility.
7. From Monoliths to Microservices
Digitalization is forcing companies to rethink their monolith architectures and turn to microservices instead to enable faster software release cycles. However, despite the benefits of microservices, challenges such as problems with legacy systems and missing information remain.
8. Cloud Transformation
Cloud technology offers companies numerous benefits such as cost savings and efficiency gains, but requires extensive organizational, operational, and technical changes for a successful transformation. Despite challenges such as limited budgets and complex policies, enterprise architects must implement an effective cloud migration road map.
9. IoT Architectures
The internet of things (IoT) offers organizations benefits such as faster time-to-market, real-time insights into big data, new services and business models, and cost savings. However, it also brings challenges such as security and privacy issues, lack of standards enforcement and complex integrations.
Various frameworks that can be used to structure and implement an enterprise architecture are presented.
This unit provides an overview of various frameworks that can be used to develop and implement an enterprise architecture, such as TOGAF and Zachman Framework.
Enterprise architecture became very popular in the 1980s after John Zachmann published his work A Framework for Information Systems Architecture. Zachmann recognized that information systems have a complexity that needs to be simplified with clearer classifications and interfaces. Therefore, a blueprint or architecture of IT components within an enterprise was needed with the following objectives:
TOGAF® is a method for designing, implementing, controlling, and managing the development of an organization using controlled phases – the so-called Architectural Development Method (ADM). Since the publication of the first version in December 1995, TOGAF® has been continuously developed by The Open Group.
Originally designed for the U.S. government to network its federal agencies, FEAF has developed into a popular enterprise architecture model for private companies as a collaborative planning methodology model for private companies.
Gartner, a global leader in IT research and market analysis, produced so many best practices for enterprise architecture solutions in the course of its consulting activities that it developed its own methodology. This methodology focuses more on business outcomes than abstract phases.
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