Issue 4

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Enterprise Architecture – Critical to Large Transformation Programs

Business transformation is increasingly a key driver for many organizations in today’s competitive environment where the focus is either on cost reduction by means of improving operational efficiency or on increasing the market share through innovation and other means of growth. Information Technology (IT) is looked upon as one of the key enablers for business innovation and competitive differentiation. As a result, many organizations identify a number of IT initiatives that enable business transformation and alignment of IT to business objectives and drivers. Such initiatives are often undertaken as part of large, multi-year business transformation programs that are aimed at changing and optimizing business processes and enhancing the IT capabilities that enable them. The initial effort and excitement of such changes often propel many transformational projects directly into an execution phase where focus is often on delivery without appropriate investments in program planning and further in planning and definition of the enterprise architecture. Such an approach often results in lack of appropriate guidance for the implementation projects and leads to large pitfalls. Organizations become unclear of what to deliver and how to deliver the change that can provide value to business and provide a return on the investment. Eventually this lack of planning leads to a failure to achieve the transformational objectives. This article highlights the need for enterprise architecture definition in large transformation programs, key considerations for defining the enterprise architecture, key challenges involved, and concludes with the benefits enterprise architecture brings to various stakeholders involved in transformation programs.

Getting More out of Government Enterprise Architecture

The achievement of business value in organizations has been attributed to a higher Enterprise Architecture (EA) maturity level. In attempting to achieve business value, managing performance is necessary because it acts as the sensor to an organization’s management control system. While the Government of Ontario (GO) deserves recognition for instituting corporate governance to ensure its information and information technology (I&IT) initiatives are strategically justified and the proposed solutions are architecturally sound, IT governance goes beyond that. To unlock value from IT investments, the COBIT framework advocates having an internal control system, which measures achievements, evaluates efforts, and signals problem areas, so that an organization deploys its resources and processes appropriately to minimize deviations from desired values. This article presents the case for GO’s EA program, as a means to help fulfill IT governance’s dual- goal of risk management and value creation, to go beyond the alignment and integration decisions to help make EA practices more credible.

A Survey of Approaches to Virtual Enterprise Architecture: Modeling Languages, Reference Models, and Architecture Frameworks

As the theory and practice of enterprise architecture became mature, researchers and practitioners have started applying similar concepts and approaches to virtual enterprises. The virtual enterprise is a temporary coalition of enterprises joining hands to exploit a particular opportunity. Virtual Enterprise Architecture addresses a Virtual Enterprise holistically at a strategic level. This article provides a definition of Enterprise Architecture, Virtual Enterprise, and Virtual Enterprise Architecture and presents results from a study of six approaches to virtual enterprise architecture for virtual enterprises (NEML, CAML, AVERM, VERAM, BM VEARM, and ARCON). Interestingly, all of these approaches attempt to provide a holistic coverage of Virtual Enterprises, but have significant difference in the way they approach it. This article is aimed as an aid for researchers and practitioners to study different approaches for strategic planning of enterprise architecture.

Rational Systems Design for Health Information Systems in Low-income Countries: An Enterprise Architecture Approach

Low-income countries with their funding and implementing partners are increasingly recognizing health information systems (HIS) as an essential way to strengthen and support health systems. There is tremendous potential for innovations in information and communication technologies to assist health managers, health workers, and patients. Yet individual technologies and software applications are often developed without specifying how they will interact and communicate with existing and future information systems. Furthermore, they are developed without giving adequate attention to the needs the information system is supposed to address, resulting in software applications that do not effectively meet user needs. There is a lack of documented systematic methodology for gathering and documenting requirements for developing HIS. This article introduces a systematic, architected, and rational approach (SARA) for the design and development of health information systems. SARA, based on an Enterprise Architecture (EA) approach, represents a portfolio of practices, tools, and methods that can be easily and appropriately adapted and applied in the design phase of health information system development. This article will present early efforts to develop this portfolio including lessons learned from applying SARA in Tanzania.

An Enterprise Architecture for Banking

This article is about a practical application of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) framework, process, and methodology for developing an EA in the retail banking industry. The case shows the progression from the first EA plans and ideas, through the development of the EA capability for the bank, and finally the application of the framework to the development of the first iteration of the EA, focused on aligning customer service with the bank’s main strategic goals and drivers.

Arquitectura Empresarial en el Sector Bancario

El presente artículo se refiere a un caso de aplicación práctica del proceso, marco y metodología de Arquitectura Empresarial (AE) para la Banca Comercial en América Latina (Costa Rica). El caso presenta las diferentes etapas desde los primeros planes e ideas alrededor de AE, desarrollo formal de la práctica y desarrollo de AE en el banco y, finalmente, la aplicación del marco para el desarrollo de la primera iteración enfocada en servicio al cliente, lo cual corresponde con el principal objetivo estratégico. Visión y motivadores estratégicos del banco.