The term enterprise architecture is used in many complimentary ways. It is used to describe both a unique business practice and the aspects of a business that are being described. The Enterprise Architecture Research Forum defines the practice of enterprise architecture as follows:
In simple terms, Enterprise Architecture is a self-improvement business function that examines the structure and behavior of the various parts of an 'enterprise' and focuses on opportunities to improve it.
The MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) defines enterprise architecture as the specific aspects of a business that are under examination:
Simply put, the enterprise architecture is an intentional vision that defines how business processes should be integrated and where process standardization should be used.
The United States Government describes enterprise architecture as an Information Technology function. Instead of describing enterprise architecture in relation to the practice of examining an enterprise, the U.S. Government defines the term to refer to the documented results of that examination. Specifically, US Code Title 44, Chapter 36, defines enterprise architecture as a 'strategic information base' that defines the mission of an agency and describes the technology and information needed to perform that mission, along with descriptions of how the architecture of the organization should be changed in order to respond to changes in the mission.[3]
Practitioners of EA call themselves enterprise architects. An enterprise architect is a person responsible for performing this complex analysis of business structure and processes and is often called upon to draw conclusions from the information collected. By producing this understanding, architects are attempting to address the goals of Enterprise Architecture: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Agility, and Durability. [4]
The term enterprise is used because it is generally applicable in many circumstances, including
The term enterprise includes the whole complex, socio-technical system,[5] including:
Defining the boundary or scope of the enterprise to be described is an important first step in creating the enterprise architecture. Enterprise as used in enterprise architecture generally means more than the information systems employed by an organization.[6]
Enterprise architects use various methods and tools to capture the structure and dynamics of an enterprise. In doing so, they produce taxonomies, diagrams, documents and models, together called artifacts. These artifacts describe the logical organization of business functions, business capabilities, business processes, people organization, information resources, business systems, software applications, computing capabilities, information exchange and communications infrastructure within the enterprise.
A collection of these artifacts, sufficiently complete to describe the enterprise in useful ways, is considered by EA practitioners an 'enterprise' level architectural description, or enterprise architecture, for short. The UK National Computing Centre EA best practice guidance[7] states
Normally an EA takes the form of a comprehensive set of cohesive models that describe the structure and functions of an enterprise.
The individual models in an EA are arranged in a logical manner that provides an ever-increasing level of detail about the enterprise: its objectives and goals; its processes and organization; its systems and data; the technology used and any other relevant spheres of interest.
This is the definition of enterprise architecture implicit in several EA frameworks including the popular TOGAF architectural framework.
An enterprise architecture framework bundles tools, techniques, artifact descriptions, process models, reference models and guidance used by architects in the production of enterprise-specific architectural description. Several enterprise architecture frameworks break down the practice of enterprise architecture into a number of practice areas or domains.
See the related articles on enterprise architecture frameworks and domains for further information.
In 1992, Steven Spewak described a process for creating an enterprise architecture that is widely used in educational courses.[8]
Describing the architecture of an enterprise aims primarily to improve the effectiveness or efficiency of the business itself. This includes innovations in the structure of an organization, the centralization or federation of business processes, the quality and timeliness of business information, or ensuring that money spent on information technology (IT) can be justified. [4]
One method of using this information to improve the functioning of a business, as described in the TOGAF architectural framework, involves developing an "architectural vision": a description of the business that represents a "target" or "future state" goal. Once this vision is well understood, a set of intermediate steps are created that illustrate the process of changing from the present situation to the target. These intermediate steps are called "transitional architectures" by TOGAF. Similar methods have been described in other enterprise architecture frameworks.
Documenting the architecture of enterprises is done within the U.S. Federal Government[9] in the context of the Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC) process. The Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) reference models serve as a framework to guide Federal agencies in the development of their architectures.[10] Companies such as Independence Blue Cross, Intel, Volkswagen AG[11] and InterContinental Hotels Group[12] have also applied enterprise architecture to improve their business architectures as well as to improve business performance and productivity.
Enterprise architecture is a key component of the information technology governance process in organizations such as Dubai Customs and AGL Energy who have implemented a formal enterprise architecture process as part of their IT management strategy. While this may imply that enterprise architecture is closely tied to IT, this 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. Depending on the organization, enterprise architecture teams may also be responsible for some aspects of performance engineering, IT portfolio management and metadata management. Recently, protagonists like Gartner and Forrester have stressed the important relationship of Enterprise Architecture with emerging holistic design practices such as Design Thinking and User Experience Design.[13]
The following image from the 2006 FEA Practice Guidance of US OMB sheds light on the relationship between enterprise architecture and segment(BPR) or Solution architectures. (This figure demonstrates that software architecture is truly a solution architecture discipline, for example.)
Activities such as software architecture, network architecture, and database architecture are partial contributions to a solution architecture.
It is uncommon for a commercial organization to publish rich detail from their enterprise architecture descriptions. Doing so can provide competitors information on weaknesses and organizational flaws that could hinder the company's market position. However, many government agencies around the world have begun to publish the architectural descriptions that they have developed. Good examples include the US Department of the Interior, US Department of Defense Business Enterprise Architecture, or the 2008 BEAv5.0 version.
Enterprise Architecture was included in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Association for Information Systems (AIS)’s Curriculum for Information Systems as one of the 6 core courses.[14] There are several universities that offers enterprise architecture as a fourth year level course or part of a master's syllabus. The Center for Enterprise Architecture [15] at the Penn State University is one of these institutions that offer EA courses. It is also offered within the Masters program in Computer Science at The University of Chicago. In 2010 resarchers at the Meraka Institute, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, in South Africa organized a workshop and invited staff from computing departments in South African higher education institutions. The purpose was to investigate the current status of EA offerings in South Africa. A report was compiled and is available for download at the Meraka Institute.[16]
Several reputable programs in enterprise architecture are available from universities and colleges:
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