What's Enterprise Architecture?
Ask 10 people in an IT team what enterprise architecture is - and you will get about 15 answers between "Very strategic work" and "No idea". Ask 3 enterprise architects, and you will get as many answers, all of which sound impressive, but none of them appears too conclusive - which may indicate that the "No idea" at least was honest...
Software architecture is a rather young discipline (Mary Shaw and David Garlan published their wonderful book in 1996), and it became very popular in the last 5 years. Nowerdays, everybody calls himself an architect - I recently saw a job advert for an "Outlook Architect" - and the questions mount what this architecture thing is. For a couple of years now, we have ISO 1471-2000, so it should not be so complicated.
But what are we doing about this "Enterprise" Architecture thing? Not the toy version, where IT people construct IT systems, and call it enterprise, because they just discovered that there is a world outside IT they have to service.
Enterprise Architecture - that simply means applying architecture to the enterprise, to processes, to org units, HR, finance and whatever else you can think of. Does that work? Can we architect an "enterprise" (that is, a living, breathing company) the same way we construct a new billing system?
I am not sure yet to which extent it does fly. But I do believe that architectural approaches, that the capabilities of an architect can help the enterprise. Create structure. Use repeatable patterns, bring in best practices. And I am not the only one - many large companies are embracing the concepts of business architecture.
Thomas Obitz
Principal Architect - Strategic Technology and Architecture Consulting
