Enterprise Architecture

{{post_terms.hashtags}}

How Enterprise Architecture Maturity Enables Post-Merger IT Integration

While world-wide Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) activity continues to accelerate, a substantial proportion of deals fails to yield the expected value. The inability to plan and implement post-merger integration of information technology contributes substantially to these failure rates. This paper advances the argument that a company’s pre-existing Enterprise Architecture decisively shapes the capability to implement post-merger IT integration and subsequently realize benefits from M&A. Our multiple-case study investigates three acquisition cases and develops an explanatory theory of how Enterprise Architecture maturity enables the implementation of distinct integration strategies. The results do not only enrich the academic literature on M&A, but also show the strategic value of Enterprise Architecture maturity.

Holistic Layer of the Enterprise Architecture on the Basis of Process-Driven Organization

Growing complexity of the enterprise ecosystem along with the existence of legacy approaches in the organization can result in a number of challenges when maintaining the solid baseline of its information assets. The digital industry has, over past two decades, passed through rapid evolution triggered both by availability of new technologies, and business as well as operating and funding models. These enablers have direct impact on the way that organizations design and execute their business processes in order to maintain the alignment between their capabilities and targets. This trend implies that enterprises and organizations need to remain flexible by maintaining the alignment of their business and their infrastructure in a dynamically changing and integrated ecosystem. It has been widely recognized that the enterprise architecture as well as the process driven approaches provide tools used by organizations to explain how business, resources and other elements within the organization are related to each other. This article discusses the role, and associated value, that the enterprise architecture and process driven approach have when describing what constitutes the enterprise. At the same time it elaborates on principles and constructs of the model of the holistic layer of the enterprise architecture on the basis of process driven approach. The proposed model aims to combine a unified view on infrastructure and behavior of the enterprise with lean principles in order to identify and focus on key elements of the enterprise.

Assessment of Enterprise Architecture Implementation Capability and Priority in Public Sector Agency

The objective of this study is to assess the capability and priority for Enterprise Architecture (EA) implementation in the context of Malaysian public sector agency. This study uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based on the judgments and opinions of EA team members from three different agencies at federal level. There are 27 assessment criteria which are grouped into six categories, Internal Process, Learning and Growth, Authority Support, Cost, Technology and Talent Management. The top capability of all cases is Internal Process and the top criteria for priority assessment is Authority Support. From the findings it can be concluded that AHP is a useful and cost effective method to assess, priorities and plan for EA implementation. Addressing the capability and priority criteria will ensure the optimum EA is implemented thus it shall reduce the risk of EA implementation failure.

Evaluating Enterprise Architecture Frameworks Using Essential Elements

Enterprise architecture (EA) frameworks offer principles, models, and guidance to help one develop an EA program. Due to EA’s flexible and abstract nature, there is a proliferation of EA frameworks in practice. Yet, comparison studies to make sense of them are far from satisfactory in that they lack a theoretical foundation for comparison criteria and do not meaningfully interpret the differences. In this paper, I propose a comparison approach using EA essential elements—the underlying key features of EA programs—to distinguish EA frameworks. Based on the extant literature, I identify eight elements, each with its own theoretical justification and empirical evidence. I illustrate how to use these elements to evaluate eight popular EA frameworks. The results show three ideal types of EA frameworks: technical, operational, and strategic EA. Each type has a different focus, set of assumptions, and historical context. The essential elements offer a more systematic way to evaluate EA frameworks. In addition, they shift attention from the maturity models often used in EA development to focus on particular EA elements being implemented by organizations.

Enterprise Architecture Management: Toward a Taxonomy of Applications

Despite the growing interest in enterprise architecture management, researchers and practitioners lack a shared understanding of its applications in organizations. Building on findings from a literature review and eight case studies, we develop a taxonomy that categorizes applications of enterprise architecture management based on three classes of enterprise architecture scope. Organizations may adopt enterprise architecture management to help form, plan, and implement IT strategies; help plan and implement business strategies; or to further complement the business strategy-formation process. The findings challenge the traditional IT-centric view of enterprise architecture management application and suggest enterprise architecture management as an approach that could support the consistent design and evolution of an organization as a whole.

Modeling Contextual Concerns in Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architecture approaches are used to provide rigorous descriptions of the organization-wide environment, manage the alignment of deployed services to the organization’s mission, end ensure a clear separation of the concerns addressed in an architecture. Thus, an effective Enterprise Architecture approach assists in the management of relations and dependencies of any components of the organization environment and supports the integration and evolution of the architecture. However, the quality of that approach is strongly influenced by the precision of the architecture context description, a fact which is not always recognized. This paper focuses on the architecture context description and addresses the gap between the stakeholders’concerns and the resulting architecture. Based on a combination of established references and standards, we show how an explicit integration of the architecture context into the architecture model improves the linking of concerns and key elements of the architecture vision. We apply our approach to a subject of increasing concern in the Information Systems area: longevity of information. Digital preservation is an interdisciplinary problem, but existent initiatives address it in a very domain-centric way, making it impossible to integrate documented knowledge into an overall organization architecture. We analyze several references and models and derive a description of the architecture context and a capability model that supports incremental development through an explicit distinction between systems and their capabilities. The presented approach allows not just any organization to assess their current digital preservation awareness and evolve their architectures to address this challenge, but in particular demonstrates the added value of an explicit architecture context model in an Enterprise Architecture approach.