Enterprise Architecture is the description of the current and/or future structure and behavior of an organization's processes, information systems, personnel and organizational sub-units, aligned with the organization's core goals and strategic direction. Although often associated strictly with information technology, it relates more broadly to the practice of business optimization in that it addresses business architecture, performance management, organizational structure and process architecture as well. Enterprise Architect (EA) is a Unified Modeling Language modeling tool produced by Sparx Systems. ... Information and communication technology spending in 2005 Information technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware. ... In mathematics, the term optimization, or mathematical programming, refers to the study of problems in which one seeks to minimize or maximize a real function by systematically choosing the values of real or integer variables from within an allowed set. ...

Modelling the Enterprise Architecture is becoming a common practice within the U.S. Federal Government to inform 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. The primary purpose of creating an enterprise architecture is to ensure that business strategy and IT investments are aligned. As such, enterprise architecture allows traceability from the business strategy down to the underlying technology. Motto: (Out Of Many, One) (traditional) In God We Trust (1956 to date) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington D.C. Largest city New York City None at federal level (English de facto) Government Federal constitutional republic  - President George Walker Bush (R)  - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence from... The government of the United States, established by the United States Constitution, is a federal republic of 50 states, a few territories and some protectorates. ... The Federal Enterprise Architecture is an Office of Management and Budget initiative to comply with the Clinger-Cohen Act and provide a common methodology for information technology acquisition in the U. S. federal government. ... Information and communication technology spending in 2005 Information technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware. ...

Companies such as BP, Intel and Volkswagen AG also have applied enterprise architecture to improve their business architectures as well as to improve business performance and productivity. This article is about the corporation known as BP. See also BP (disambiguation) BP (formerly British Petroleum and briefly known as BP Amoco) (NYSE: BP) is a petroleum company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. ... Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC, SEHK: 4335), founded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation, is an American multinational corporation that is best known for designing and manufacturing microprocessors and specialized integrated circuits. ... Volkswagen Group (ISIN: DE0007664005, TYO: 7659 ) is a German automobile manufacturer and one of the largest automotive companies worldwide. ...

Enterprise Architecture methodology

The Practice of Enterprise Architecture involves developing an architecture framework to describe a series of "current", "intermediate" and "target" reference architectures and applying them to align change within the enterprise. Another set of terms for these are "as-is", "to-be" and the "migration plan". An Architecture Framework is a specification of how to organize and present an Enterprise Architecture. ...

These frameworks detail all relevant structure within the organization including business, applications, technology and data. This framework will provide a rigorous taxonomy and ontology that clearly identifies what processes a business performs and detailed information about how those processes are executed. The end product is a set of artifacts that describe in varying degrees of detail exactly what and how a business operates and what resources are required. These artifacts are often graphical. Look up taxonomy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In both computer science and information science, an ontology is a data model that represents a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. ... The term artifact in connection with software development is largely associated with specific development methods or processes e. ... Graphic design is the applied art of arranging image and text to communicate a message. ...

Given these descriptions whose levels of detail will vary according to affordability and other practical considerations, decision makers can make informed decisions about where to invest resources, where to realign organizational goals and processes and what policies and procedures will support core missions or business functions.

A strong enterprise architecture process helps to answer basic questions like:

• Is the current architecture supporting and adding value to the organization?
• How might an architecture be modified so that it adds more value to the organization?
• Based on what we know about what the organization wants to accomplish in the future, will the current architecture support or hinder that?

A value-based approach to implementing an enterprise architecture is recommended in order to realize quick wins, most notably when the team is first being formed. An analysis of key questions as listed above that provide the most value in an organization should lead the enterprise architecture team towards their highest priority tasks. Teams that spend too much time documenting the plan, without providing real value to decision makers, will be at risk of being disbanded.

Implementing Enterprise Architecture generally starts with documenting the organization's strategy and goals. One part of this work is the company's Operating Model, which describes how the company wants to operate. What are the requirements for Business Process Standardization and Integration. Operating Model is a term that is used in many contexts. ...

The architecture process addresses documenting and understanding the discrete enterprise structural components, typically within the following four categories:

1. Business:
   1. Strategy maps, goals, corporate policies, Operating Model
   2. Functional decompositions (e.g. IDEF0, SADT), capabilities and organizational models
   3. Business processes
   4. Organization cycles, periods and timing
   5. Suppliers of hardware, software, and services
2. Applications:
   1. Application software inventories and diagrams
   2. Interfaces between applications - that is: events, messages and data flows
   3. Intranet, Extranet, Internet, eCommerce, EDI links with parties within and outside of the organization
3. Information:
   1. Metadata
   2. Data models: conceptual, logical, and physical
4. Technical:
   1. Hardware, platforms, and hosting: servers, and where they are kept
   2. Local and wide area networks, Internet connectivity diagrams
   3. Operating System
   4. Infrastructure software: Application servers, DBMS, etc..

Wherever possible, all of the above should be related explicitly to the organization's strategy, goals, and operations for planning and decision-making needs. The enterprise architecture is most useful when documenting the current state of the technical components listed above, as well as an ideal-world desired future state (Reference Architecture) and finally a "Target" future state which is the result of tradeoffs and compromises vs. the ideal state. Special software is available and becoming increasingly mature to handle the complex task of mapping the enterprise structure. Operating Model is a term that is used in many contexts. ... Related in IDEF pattern ... SADT (Structured Analysis and Design Technique) is a Software Engineering technique for describing systems as a hierarchy of functions SADT uses two types of diagrams: activity models and data models. ... A Business Process is a collection of interrelated tasks, which solve a particular issue. ... Computer hardware is the physical part of a computer, including the digital circuitry, as distinguished from the computer software that executes within the hardware. ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... API and Api redirect here. ... An intranet is a private computer network that uses Internet protocols, network connectivity to securely share part of an organizations information or operations with its employees. ... An extranet is a private network that uses Internet protocols, network connectivity, and possibly the public telecommunication system to securely share part of an organizations information or operations with suppliers, vendors, partners, customers or other businesses. ... Electronic commerce or e-commerce consists of the buying, selling, marketing, and servicing of products or services over computer networks. ... An inter-company, application-to-application communication of data in standard format for business transactions Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a set of standards for structuring information that is to be electronically exchanged between and within businesses, organizations, government entities and other groups. ... Metadata is data about data. ... A data model is a model that describes how data are represented and used in an abstract way. ... In information technology, a server is an application or device that performs services for connected clients as part of a client-server architecture. ... “LAN” redirects here. ... Wide Area Network (WAN) is a computer network that covers a broad area (i. ... An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. ... An application server is a software engine that delivers applications to client computers or devices. ... A database management system (DBMS) is computer software designed for the purpose of managing databases. ...

Such exhaustive mapping of IT dependencies has notable overlaps with both Metadata in the general IT sense, and with the ITIL concept of the Configuration Management Database. Maintaining the accuracy of such data can be a significant challenge. CMDBs are for managing the current state effectively, while EA repositories are employed for corporate project and strategic planning exercises. Metadata is data about data. ... Atil, also spelled Itil (Turkic for Big River), was a name of the Volga River and of the capital of Khazaria from the middle of the 8th century until towards the end of the 10th century. ... A configuration management database (CMDB) is a repository of information related to all the components of an information system. ...

Governance is the key process to keep organizational changes on target for meeting articulated goals and strategies defining the future state of the enterprise. Governance can be applied in various strengths from strongly enforced policies, to more subtle means such as the agreement and declaration of IT principles.

Enterprise Architecture requires appropriate positioning in the organization to be successful. One such analogy of city-planning is often referenced for enterprise architecture groups. A common issue for groups that are granted too much authority is becoming known as an "Ivory Tower" group, alienating the teams involved in following architectural governance. A combination of a federated and a small enterprise team can be the most successful implementation, with a focus on democratic instead of authoritarian team involvement.^{[citation needed]}

An intermediate outcome of implementing an enterprise architecture process is a comprehensive inventory of business strategy, business processes, organizational charts, technical inventories, system and interface diagrams, and network topologies, and the explicit relationships between them. The inventories and diagrams are tools to support decision making at all levels of the organization. It is key that the information remain current to be relevant and useful; a process must exist to keep the information "evergreen."

The organization must design and implement processes that ensure continual movement from the current state to the future state, keeping the details current. The future state planning will generally be a combination of one or more:

• Closing gaps that are present between the current organization strategy and the ability of the IT organization to support it
• Closing gaps that are present between the desired future organization strategy and the ability of the IT organization to support it
• Necessary upgrades and replacements that must be made to the IT infrastructure using lifecycle management practices for infrastructure and technologies employed, to address ever changing regulatory requirements, and other initiatives not driven explicitly by any single team in the organization's functional management. One such example is Service Oriented Architecture, an ideal candidate for enterprise architecture team leadership.

In computing, the term Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) expresses a software architectural concept that defines the use of services to support the requirements of software users. ...

Relationship to other IT disciplines

Enterprise Architecture is a key component of the Information technology governance process at any organization of significant size. More and more companies are implementing a formal enterprise architecture process to support the governance and management of IT. However, as noted in the opening paragraph of this article it ideally relates more broadly to the practice of business optimization in that it addresses business architecture, performance management and process architecture as well. Enterprise Architecture is also related to performance engineering, IT portfolio management and metadata in the enterprise IT sense. Information Technology Governance, IT Governance or ICT Governance, is a subset discipline of Corporate Governance focused on information technology (IT) systems and their performance and risk management. ... Performance management may mean: Performance measurement is the process of assessing progress toward achieving predetermined goals, while performance management is building on that process adding the relevant communication and action on the progress achieved against these predetermined goals (Bourne, M.,Franco, M. and Wilkes, J. (2003). ... Process architecture is the structural design of general process systems and applies to fields such as computers (software, hardware, networks, etc. ... Performance engineering is the set of roles, skills, activities, practices, tools, and deliverables applied at every phase of the Systems Development Lifecycle which ensures that a solution will be designed and implemented to meet the non-functional requirements defined for the solution. ... IT portfolio management is the application of systematic management to large classes of items managed by enterprise Information technology (IT) capabilities. ... Metadata is data about data. ...

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. (From this figure and a bit of thinking one can see that software architecture is truly a solution architecture discipline, for example.)

Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...

Enterprise Architecture frameworks

Frameworks, or prefabricated architectures, are commonly used to organize enterprise architectures into different views that are meaningful to system stakeholders. These frameworks, commonly referred to as enterprise architecture frameworks are standardized for both defense and commercial systems.^[1] An Architecture Framework is a specification of how to organize and present an Enterprise Architecture. ...

See also

• Zachman framework Zachman Institute's Enterprise Architecture Framework
• TOGAF The Open Group Architecture Framework
• DoDAF
• Federal Enterprise Architecture or FEA
• MODAF The UK Ministry of Defence Architecture Framework
• IDEAS Group A four-nation effort to develop a common ontology for architecture interoperability
• EABOK - The Guide to the Enterprise Architecture Body of Knowledge - U.S. Federal-funded guide to EA in the context of legislative and strategic business requirements.
• ANSI/IEEE 1471-2000 - Recommended Practice for Architecture Description of Software-Intensive Systems on the ISO/IEC 25961 standards track
• Enterprise Information Security Architecture - (EISA) can give a better understanding of the positioning of security within Enterprise Architecture.
• Enterprise Architecture Management
• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• Information Systems Audit and Control Association - the body that produces IT governance standards used by many governments
• Information technology
• IT Governance
• IT Portfolio Management
• IT Service Management
• Executive Information System

The Zachman Framework is a framework for enterprise architecture which provides a formal and highly structured way of defining an enterprise. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards and make it easier to understand, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The U.S. Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) is a framework for development of a systems architecture or Enterprise architecture (EA). ... The Federal Enterprise Architecture is an Office of Management and Budget initiative to comply with the Clinger-Cohen Act and provide a common methodology for information technology acquisition in the U. S. federal government. ... The UK Ministry of Defence Architectural Framework (MODAF) defines a standardised way of conducting Enterprise Architecture and provides a means to model, understand, analyze and specify Capabilities, Systems, Systems of Systems, and Business Processes. ... The IDEAS Group is the International Defence Enterprise Architecture Specification for exchange Group. ... The EABOK is a guide to Enterprise Architecture produced by MITRE (specifically MITREs Center for Innovative Computing and Informatics), and is substantially funded by US government agencies. ... IEEE 1471 is the short name for a standard formally known as This standard was recently accepted by ISO JTC1 as ISO/IEC DIS 25961. ... Enterprise Information Security Architecture (EISA) is a part of Enterprise Architecture focusing on information security throughout the enterprise. ... EAM (Enterprise Architecture Management) describes and structures complex IT systems in terms of their business, application, information and technical layers, and to reform programs through the planning process as strategic business demands, and as standards and guidelines for the development of local solutions and service offers. ... Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an evolution of distributed computing and modular programming. ... Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) founded in 1967, when a small group of individuals with similar jobs—auditing controls in the computer systems that were becoming increasingly critical to the operations of their organizations—sat down to discuss the need for a centralized source of information and guidance... Information and communication technology spending in 2005 Information technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware. ... The idea of IT Governance is that all members of an organization (including the board of Directors) should share both the planning of, and responsibility for, IT systems. ... IT portfolio management is the application of systematic management to large classes of items managed by enterprise Information technology (IT) capabilities. ... IT Service Management (ITSM) is a discipline for managing large-scale information technology (IT) systems, philosophically centered on the ITSM stands in deliberate contrast to technology-centered approaches to IT management and business interaction. ... An Executive Information System (EIS) is a computer-based system intended to facilitate and support the information and decision making needs of senior executives by providing easy access to both internal and external information relevant to meeting the strategic goals of the organization. ...

References

Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 283rd day of the year (284th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

Further Reading

• Zachman Institute for Framework Advancement Numerous articles on the Zachman Framework and Enterprise Architecture
• Tony Shan and Winnie Hua (2006). Solution Architecting Mechanism. Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International EDOC Enterprise Computing Conference (EDOC 2006), October 2006, p23-32.
• Carbone, J. A. (2004). IT architecture toolkit. Enterprise computing series. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall PTR.
• Cook, M. A. (1996). Building enterprise information architectures : reengineering information systems. Hewlett-Packard professional books. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall.
• Groot, Remco; Martin Smits, Halbe Kuipers, 2005. "A Method to Redesign the IS Portfolios in Large Organisations," Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'05) - Track 8 p. 223a (IEEE)
• Pulkkinen M.: "Systemic Management of Architectural Decisions in Enterprise Architecture Planning. Four Dimensions and Three Abstraction Levels." In: Sprague, R.H. Jr (ed.): The Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), January 2006. - p.179
• Ross, J.W., Weill, P., Robertson, D. (2006) Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution. Harvard Business Review Press.
• Spewak, S. H. and S. C. Hill (1993). Enterprise architecture planning : developing a blueprint for data, applications, and technology. Boston, QED Pub. Group.
• Zachman, A.J. (1987). "A framework for information systems architecture" IBM Systems Journal , Vol 26, No, 3. This is the original paper by John Zachman about his framework.
• Bailey, I.D. (2006). "A Simple Guide to Enterprise Architecture" Describing the basics of EA, and the key enablers to successful EA projects.
• modaf.com documents section. Articles on MODAF, DoDAF and EA in general.
• TOGAF, The Open Group Architecture Framework, is an industry standard architecture framework that may be used freely by any organization wishing to develop an information systems architecture for use within that organization. Online description is available.
• James Martin (author) (1995). “The Great Transition”. Enterprise Engineering = Enterprise Architecture + TQM + Human and Culture Development + Strategic Visioning.
• Description of a pragmatic enterprise architecture process based on TOGAF: english version arctic.process, norwegian version arctic.process
• Enterprise Architecture 2010. SOA Consortium presentation on the roles and responsibiles of EA teams by 2010.