Enterprise Architecture – more than technology and frameworks?

Posted by TomRose on November 10, 2006 under EA, SOA | 2 Comments to Read

There are a few posts about the Enterprise Architecture Conference (EAC), and the lack of discussion about SOA. I did not attend so I’m only getting the information second hand, and most of what I read seems consistent. Either the session was about SOA or EA, and the two were never really blended or a relationship clearly articulated. I have some thoughts on why that occurred.

Enterprise Architecture, well everyone has their own definition and no need to go there for the moment. Perhaps we can agree that SOA is part of a corporate EA practice. I think it’s also safe to say that Integration and Business Architecture are part of EA as well. SOA is an architectural approach that blends Business & Integration Architecture providing an agile integration and pallet of business services to enable business operations.

EA also contains application, infrastructure, and information architecture. Regardless of the definition and what name the architecture type is given, how many you have, etc, these are all in a category of Technical Architecture. Many times I think we stop here and just equate the two (EA = TA), instead of understanding TA is just a subset of an EA practice. From my experience it’s the easiest component of EA, and if all I had to do is define and create the enterprise technology portfolio to run the business, life would be grand!

Unfortunately, a successful EA practice also consists of strategy/planning, governance, portfolio management, program management, and education. Then strong ties with business strategy, strategic sourcing/vendor management/procurement, and an EA process to tie it all together.

This is where EA gets hard, focus on the non-technical critical success factors and nothing ever gets pushed out into the daily operations (ivory tower syndrome). Focus on the TA, and the effort is siloed where it began and never gets full enterprise reach. Only because of tactical cost reduction and functional needs of the enterprise such as, new ERP functionality, system/datacenter consolidation, identity management, federal and state regulation/legislation, web portal, etc, do enterprise initiatives get completed. Both have to be done, and the companies that can, will be the ones that move from good to great.

When looking at the scope of an EA practice, SOA is a very critical and small piece of the complete picture. The same can be said for the EA frameworks and models.

Cheers!

Tom