Issue 3

During the past few years, enterprise architectures (EAs) have become one of the major interests of both business and information technology (IT) practitioners and academics. It has been suggested that EA is an approach for controlling the complexity and constant changes in the organization’s business environment. Research has mainly focused on the development and modeling of EAs, while the quality aspects of EA have only recently gained attention, especially in the form of EA maturity models. These models have been developed to provide a means to evaluate the stage – and the quality – of the organization’s EA. While most existing maturity models seem to be domain-specific, this study aims at developing a more generic evaluation model for EA usable in private sector organizations, regardless of their lines of businesses. The generic evaluation model is based on the combination of the potential critical success factors for EA, defined in the previous steps of the project, and the maturity stages. The initial generic evaluation model for EA was trailed in three organization. The experiences and needs for improving the evaluation model derived from these cases are also represented.

As Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has evolved an opportunity to close the gap between the Business Architecture and Technical Architecture. This is however not realizable by just “adding” SOA to an existing EA program. SOA will change EA, and if not aware of this challenge introducing SOA into an organization is sure to fail. SOA has gone through an exceptional evolution during the last couple of years, not only in terms of the hype that often follows new paradigms, more importantly the very conception of SOA has evolved. This evolution has changed the level of abstraction on which SOA operates; it has evolved from a technical discipline to encompass some of the aspects normally seen as key elements of the discipline of Enterprise Architecture (EA). The reason for SOA transition into the discipline of EA lies in the goals of EA and SOA, which are fundamentally identical. The goal of EA within an organization has been described through the use of different maturity models, these maturity models are essentially “the normal path” of EA. Maturity models for SOA are also starting to emerge, but as augmented in this article, the goals of EA and SOA are the same. It is necessary to align the paths of EA and SOA on a common path. To do this it is necessary to identify where EA and SOA correlate so that redundant work is eliminated. One of the main challenges here is to acknowledge that SOA will create artifacts similar to EA. Who owns these artifacts? Are they a part of EA or SOA? The discussion of whether SOA is part of EA, or EA is part of SOA is probably a matter or perspective – they change each other. A change of such proportions that it must be taken into consideration if this change is in fact not a new discipline. This article advocates for the correlation of EA and SOA is resulting in a special type of EA and SOA called Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture.

Performance is a key driver of Enterprise Architecture efforts within organizations of varying sizes. In order to use this driver, it is important to determine quantifiable, outcome-based metrics that can be used to measure and track progress towards a “target” vision. These metrics must be aligned throughout all layers of the EA, thereby creating a “Line of Sight” from business goals to related services and enabling technology. Performance measurements must be aligned to strategic goals and mission needs, and must work seamlessly to drive technical solutions – from inputs to outputs to outcomes.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) gained growing importance as a key issue of information management in recent years. This article is aimed at contributing to EA methodology b a systemization of EA analysis techniques and EA application scenarios. These findings are compared with current EA practice collected by means of an exploratory study.