Week 1: Introduction to Enterprise Architecture

What is EA?

Enterprise architecture (EA) is the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution. The scope of the EA includes the people, processes, information and technology of the enterprise, and their relationships to one another and to the external environment.-------------link

“ Enterprise Architecture is about understanding all of the different elements that go to make up the Enterprise and how those elements inter-relate. “ - Jaap Schekkerman

“The analysis and documentation of an enterprise in its current and future states from an integrated strategy, business, and technology perspective.” – Scott Bernard

John A. Zachman published his work A framework for information systems architecture in 1987, which can be viewed as the beginning of EA. 

There is a picture shows how EA developed and evoluted during time.

There is a smart comparison between EA and anatomy.

• A body part (organ) implements a few of the body vital processes. For an Enterprise Architecture, the term "Function" (or Capability) plays the same role, grouping related business processes. 
• A body system depicts the assembly of a few parts of a body with similar functionality. In EA, a View is an abstract cross-section in the Enterprise, looking like a virtual cut or a CT (computer tomography) picture.  A layer is a physical View consisting of elements of same type, such a layer of muscles in the body or applications in EA.
• The organs or body parts, are interconnected by nerves, arteries...In EA, the interconnections between business functions are Lines that are implemented by connections.

 Why EA?

It is universally agreed that running a business is not a simply job, so a reasonable plan before action is vitally significant, otherwise there is highly risks that overlapping investment and isolated information resources would happen.

The purpose of Enterprise Architecture is to align organizational strategy, business processes, Information technology hardware and software, and IT spending.

EA benefits from mainly three aspects, which can be divided into 6 sub aspects.

–Operating Excellence

•Reduce Cost

•Reduce Risk

–Product Leadership

•Increase Revenue

–Customer Intimacy

•Better Customer Experience

•Enhanced Reputation

•Better Lifetime Value of Customer

 Details via this link

Like the analogy I mentioned above, EA is the anatomy of enterprises. Only after systematically analysis how business operates, management will be able to know key points of improvement, after which the IT management are likely to play a best role.

SOA

Mentioned in the Case Study of this week,Service-oriented architecture(SOA) attracted me and thereafter I did some research on this topic as well.

SOA is the process of representing what the business does in the context of the structure of the systems, which are comprised of components or building blocks, the external visible properties of those
components and the relationships among them. The following properties have been identified and must be prevalent for an architecture to be referred to as a SOA

SOA is a way of thinking about IT assets as service components. When functions in a large application are made into stand-alone services that can be accessed separately, they are beneficial to several parties.

It is not in itself an “architecture,”but an architectural style whose goal is to achieve loose coupling among interacting services, a set of principles and methodologies for designing and developing software in the form of services that work corporately.

SOA-EA

As SOA is not an architecture itself, it should be applied on EA to be benefit.

EA focuses on the creation of a strategy rather than implementing a strategy.
SOA addresses the implementation after the planning has occurred.
EA is not funded for implementation but focus on the creation of the strategy, the plan or the means with which to move an organization forward strategically.
It is leveraging well-defined processes, approaches, and methodologies that
in some instances are difficult to map into SOA.         Link

SOA helps in bridging EA with solution architecture and implementation by layered service components across business models, application models, and technology implementations.

In this ppt, the author explains how SOA helps EA by four challenges facing EA practice.