Objectives
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
This lesson explores the value and typical use cases of enterprise architecture.
Lesson 2 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 is 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, postmerger integration requires the standardization and transformation of technologies without disrupting business operations.
2. Rationalization Of Applications
Mergers and acquisitions often fail or are resource-intensive due to a lack of integration and unrealized synergy effects. From an IT perspective, postmerger integration requires the standardization and transformation of technologies without disrupting business operations.
3. Integration Architectures
Integrating different types of applications into IT environments is critical, but 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 roadmap.
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.
This methodology provides a structured approach to developing and implementing an enterprise architecture using SAP tools and technologies.
The SAP Enterprise Architecture Framework consists of four building blocks.
These four building blocks are:
Proven Enterprise Architecture Methodology based on TOGAF and industry standards, largely adopted by SAP.
SAP reference business and solution architecture that maps business and SAP IT solutions.
A set of SAP internal and customer-oriented architecture tools.
Standardized SAP EA services to support customer transformation.
The SAP Enterprise Architecture Methodology supports a subset of the phases of the TOGAF® Version 10 Architecture Development Method (ADM). In addition to requirements management and the preliminary phase, the focus is on:
For each phase, there are various recommended artifacts that have proven themselves many times over in architecture projects. These recommended artifacts are supplemented by extra artifacts that can be used in a specific architectural context as required. At the same time, the framework is open for extensions.
The following diagram outlines the SAP enterprise architecture development process for customers (SAP Presales and SAP Consulting) based on TOGAF® ADM with the artifacts recommended by SAP. Although it visually looks like a waterfall model, it is highly iterative.
The overview of the recommended and optional artifacts is visualized in the form of a metro map, as shown in the next figure. This shows the phases of architecture development in conjunction with the artifacts shown as stops on the metro map.
Note that the arrows in the figure represent a natural flow rather than a strict sequence of artifacts. The majority of artifacts are based on the TOGAF Version 10 standard.
In addition to the TOGA../../images/f-based artifacts, SAP has supplemented its framework with additional artifacts that have proven themselves in interaction with stakeholders, such as the Business Model Canvas (now in its latest version as the Sustainable Business Model Canvas) or the Application Use-Case Diagram, which supports a design thinking-centric and use-case-driven approach.
From the perspective of a solution architect, the IT architecture domain is of the greatest importance for his work. This is where the solution architect starts with the implementation.
Standard architectures and contents are presented that can serve as a starting point for your own architecture projects.
The Business and IT & Solution Architecture area comprises various views for a holistic description of the overall architecture. Each view has a business model and a solution model. The views are:
While the business models make it possible to focus only on the business requirements, the solution models form the bridge to the solution components that are required to realize the business architecture.
A consistent repository of artifacts is defined for these two areas, which is explained in more detail in the following text. Based on these artifacts, SAP has developed standardized content that reflects the business architecture of each company, including the recommended mapping to SAP's product portfolio.
The following figure shows the most important entities used to describe the business and solution architecture. The focus is currently on process and capability models. Business Data Model and Business Organization Model are not considered further here. The business architecture is mapped to the solution architecture.
The complete meta model of the Enterprise Architecture Methodology - March'22 version is available in the Enterprise Architecture Designer (EAD).
There are four different models in both the business architecture and the solution architecture:
The content of each model is described by specific artifacts that are reflected in defined diagram types representing the relevant entities.
All models are interconnected and enable consistent navigation between the different views by using the central entities and their relationships as shown in the preceding diagram.
The individual models in the business architecture domain have special diagrams that are considered in more detail in the following lesson.
The individual models in the Solution architecture domain have special diagrams, which are considered in more detail in the following lesson.
The SAP Reference Business Architecture provides a standardized business process architecture that supports companies in optimizing their business processes.
The SAP Reference Business Architecture is based on SAP's 50 years of industry experience and is oriented towards best practices and standards such as APOC. It offers a functional and a process-oriented view.
The color coding assigns the Business Process Model and the Business Capability Model to the Enterprise Domains.
From a functional perspective, the SAP Reference Business Architecture describes a company using four enterprise domains:
Development and management of products and services.
Satisfying the demand for products and services.
Generating demand for products and services.
Planning and management of the company.
These divisions can be subdivided into business units and business areas, which in turn group business capabilities. A business capability defines what the company does and represents a specific capability that a company can possess and that is required to deliver value or achieve a specific result.
A Business Capability Model (BCM) describes the totality of capabilities that a company must fulfill its mission. It is a segmentation of business capabilities at different levels and describes what an organization must deliver business value and be successful.
The following artifacts are used to describe it: Business Capability Map
A business capability map in the SAP reference content structures the business capabilities along four hierarchy levels: The lowest level represents the Business Capabilities. These are grouped into Business Areas, then Business Domains and Enterprise Domains.
The hierarchy is strictly linear, whereby each business capability is only assigned to one business area (no multiple assignments).
From a process perspective, the SAP Reference Business Architecture describes a company based on eight generic end-to-end business processes:
Management of the comprehensive procurement of products and services, for example, procurement planning and spend management, sourcing and supplier selection, negotiation and management of supplier contracts, and preparation and execution of operational procurement.
Planning, production, delivery and fulfillment of products or services as well as tracking and tracing, data management, and sustainable production processes.
Marketing and selling products and services, managing customer orders and their fulfillment, providing customer services, invoicing customers, managing accounts receivable, and collecting payments.
Managing the entire employee lifecycle, including HR strategy, planning and budgeting.
Manage the full lifecycle, including asset strategy and investment planning, asset maintenance strategy setting, asset acquisition or construction, asset acquisition, asset maintenance planning and execution, and asset outsourcing and decommissioning.
Includes all business activities related to internal operations, such as developing and managing corporate strategies and plans, managing portfolios and projects, managing global trade and tax, and managing risk and compliance.
Includes all business activities related to financial operations, such as optimizing financial data, managing receivables and payables, accounting and financial close, and managing finance.
The generic end-to-end business processes are basic templates that contain all the business activities required in a specific context. The generic business process can have different variations that contain the actual executable business process for specific use cases, industries, and other contexts.
At a more detailed level, a business process can then be broken down into different business activities that describe how value is created through the use of specific business capabilities.
A Business Value Flow (BVF) defines the sequence of business activities and groups them into higher process levels. There are four types of processes with different levels of granularity. These are:
These processes can also be nested within each other, resulting in process hierarchies with more than four levels.
The business activities are presented in a logical order, which supports the simple explanation of the business process. The actual order of execution may differ from the order shown, and business activities may also be optional.
Business activities are consistently mapped to business capabilities and value flows can be enriched with this information.
The SAP Reference Solution Architecture provides a template for the technical implementation of business processes and solutions.
The SAP Reference Solution Architecture is the description of a discrete and focused business process or activity and how IT supports this process with the help of products and their interaction. It is described by the following models:
A Solution Capability or Solution Component Map represents all Solution Capabilities and Solution Components required to implement a Business Capability. A business capability can be supported by one, none, or many solution capabilities.
A solution capability can be described as the functional capability of a single or multiple software components.
These diagrams are structured along the business capability map and provide either a solution capability or a solution component focus. Aggregated views are possible, for example, the visualization of solution components at the business area level.
A solution process model describes how business activities are mapped to the capabilities of the solution components and how the components are integrated. It also describes the flow of activities in the system.
There are three types of diagrams to visualize this information:
A Solution Value Flow takes the business process and visualizes the business activities implemented in a solution process.
A solution component diagram shows the solution components and their communication channels that are required for data exchange.
A solution process flow represents a specific, exemplary process flow of solution activities within a series of relevant solution components. It is also known as a BPMN collaboration diagram.
In the SAP Business Accelerator Hub underExplore → Business Processes, you find suitable solution architectures for all seven leading business process models, including navigation support.
Below are the solution architecture artifacts for the Lead-to-Cash business process model in the Solution Business for Cloud Deployment variant.
Various tools that can be used to support enterprise architecture are described.
The SAP Enterprise Architecture Framework is supported by various internal and external SAP tools, including:
Below is a comparison of selected artifacts in two different tools. One is SAP Signavio and the other is the new EAM metamodel solution SAP LeanIX.
The following screenshot shows how the reference business capabilities are mapped in the SAP Signavio Process Explorer and SAP LeanIX EAM.
The generic E2E business processes look like this:
SAP services are presented that support companies in the development and implementation of their enterprise architecture.
The SAP Enterprise Architecture Framework is delivered with a range of predefined consulting services for enterprise architectures. The following is an excerpt from the service catalog including the most important service offerings:
Architecture Point of View ( APoV) With the Architecture Point of View (APoV), customers can receive support at an early stage of their project on how to approach their long-term transformation requirements. The service contains components for various topics such as:
The architecture governance service helps customers in the early stages or even before the start of their transformation to create a suitable framework for the creation or further development of their enterprise architecture. It focuses on enterprise architecture governance and provides planning guidance to make the transformation a success and build the intelligent enterprise in small steps.
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