What is Enterprise Architecture?

Today, many organizations that want to improve business management implement change projects related to one or more parts of the enterprise architecture. It is very difficult to find the optimal solution that meets the strategic interests of the company and correctly formulate the requirements for the necessary changes. The main reason for this is that all parts of the corporate architecture are closely interrelated. Enterprise Architecture is about how organizations align with their business goals and objectives and how it disrupts them in most organizations.

Enterprise Architecture is the practice of analyzing and applying IT projects and policies to achieve desired business results by using architectural principles and practices to develop a tightly interconnected IT environment. It helps organizations configure to follow industry trends and disruptions.

What is Enterprise Architecture?

Enterprise Architecture (EA), which reduces the redundancy, complexity and information silos associated with IT investments; is a business application that helps to design, plan and implement enterprise analysis to successfully execute business strategies. Enterprise Architecture helps configure the Enterprise Architecture Planning process and architectural principles and practices to develop an effective IT strategy to achieve targeted business results and follow industry trends and disruptions.

Enterprise Architecture encourages the reuse of existing IT assets and the sharing of common methods for project management and software development across the enterprise. In theory, Enterprise Architecture makes IT more strategic and more responsive. Enterprise Architecture practitioners, on the other hand, perform analysis of the business structure's processes and often try to draw conclusions from the information gathered to address the objectives of the enterprise architecture.

What is the Role of Enterprise Architecture in Digital Transformation?

What are Enterprise Architecture Domains?

Enterprise Architecture differs according to each organization's business processes, business needs and goals and is organization-specific, but contains some common elements for every organization. It has been normalized by considering the corporate architecture in 4 main domains since the Institutional Architecture Planning written by Stephen Spewak in 1993.

Business Architecture Domain

Business Architecture Domain explains how to structure a business as an organization and what functional capabilities are required to deliver the business vision. "What?" and “Who?” It tries to answer the question of what the organization's business vision, strategy and goals are.

Application Architecture Domain

Application Architecture Domain explains individual practices and their interactions and relationships with the organization's core business processes and asks “How?” addresses the question. It helps answer questions such as how to implement previously defined business services and capabilities.

Data Architecture Domain

Data Architecture Domain explains the structure of organizations' logical and physical data assets and data management resources, allowing to stay informed about data analytics and customers and to continuously improve business processes.

Technology Architecture Domain

The Technology Architecture Domain helps explain the IT assets needed to implement business, data, and application services. The domain has all well-known artifacts, diagrams and applications.

What is the Purpose of Enterprise Architecture?

The goal of Enterprise Architecture is to create unified standardized hardware and software systems across all business units with tight joint connections to the business side of organizations. The purpose of enterprise architecture is to ensure that your organization has a strategic plan for its systems, technology, and infrastructure.

Enterprise architecture is often confused with Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) which addresses only IT infrastructure issues. Enterprise architecture takes into account not just IT but also people, processes, technology, and organizational structure and culture.

The main objective of enterprise architecture is to define the organization's future direction in terms of what it wants to achieve, how it will do so, what resources will be needed and how they will be used. It also includes how the organization wants to change over time as well as how its current situation needs to be analyzed.

What are Enterprise Architecture Planning Methodologies?

Enterprise Architecture as a framework can be ambiguous because it addresses the entire organization rather than individual needs, issues, or departments. That's why organizations have a variety of frameworks to help implement and monitor the plan to effectively carry out Enterprise Architecture Planning. According to CompTIA, it is possible to examine Enterprise Architecture Planning under four leading methodologies.

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF)

The Open Group Architecture Framework provides principles for designing, planning, implementing, and managing enterprise IT architecture and helps businesses establish a standardized approach to Enterprise Architecture to define recommended standards, compliance methods, recommended tools and software, and best practices.

Zachman Enterprise Architecture Framework

The Zachman Framework spans six architectural focal points and six primary stakeholders to help standardize and define IT architecture components and deliverables.

Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF)

The Federal Enterprise Architecture was introduced in 1996 as a response to the Clinger-Cohen Act, which introduced powers for IT activity in federal agencies. The architectural framework was designed for the US government but can be applied to private companies that want to use the framework.

Gartner

Gartner does not basically establish an individual framework but accepts it as a practical methodology focused on business outcomes with few clear steps or components by CompTIA.

Efficient Risk Management with Enterprise Architecture

What are the Benefits of Enterprise Architecture?

Enterprise architecture encompasses organizations' people, business processes, information and technology, and their relationships with each other and with the external environment, and as a result, Enterprise Architecture defines changes by providing business and technology alignment, consistency, interoperability and knowledge sharing, return on investment, flexibility and agility in a federated environment. It motivates the organization and involves using various aspects of a business to succeed.

Enterprise Architecture can offer support for redesigns and reorganizations, especially during major organizational changes, mergers or acquisitions, while also helping to bring more discipline to the organization by standardizing and unifying processes for greater consistency.

The Enterprise Architecture can use it to eliminate errors, system errors, and security breaches in system development, IT management and decision making, and IT risk management.

• EA allows for more open collaboration between IT and employees.
• EA gives businesses the ability to prioritize investments.
• EA makes it easy to evaluate existing architecture against long-term goals.
• EA establishes processes for evaluating and procuring technology.
• EA provides a comprehensive view of the IT architecture to all non-IT business units.
• EA provides a benchmarking framework for comparing results with other organizations or standards.

6 Steps of Enterprise Architecture Management