Enterprise Architecture As Strategy

Enterprise architecture defines a firm's needs for standardized tasks, job roles, systems, infrastructure, and data in core business processes. This book explains enterprise architecture's vital role in enabling - or constraining - the execution of business strategy. It provides frameworks, case examples, and more.

The Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) discipline deals with the alignment of business and information systems architectures. While EAM has long been regarded as a discipline for IT managers, this book takes a different stance: It explains how top executives can use EAM to leverage their strategic planning and controlling processes, as well as how it can contribute to their sustainable competitive advantage. Based on the analysis of best practices from eight leading European companies from various industries, the book presents the crucial elements of successful EAM. It outlines what executives need to do in terms of governance, processes, methodologies, and culture in order to bring their management to the next level. Beyond this, the book points out how EAM could develop in the next decade, thus allowing today’s managers to prepare for the future architecture management.

The popularity of enterprise architecture (EA) has increased in the last two decades, in both business and academic domains. Despite the cumulative interest from all sectors, the implementation and practice of EA have been entangled with numerous challenges and complexities. Consequently, some organisations continue to theorise the concept, which has ramifications on practice and return on investment (ROI). This has led to many studies that have been conducted, to understand the complexities impacting the implementation and practice of EA in organisations. Yet, the trajectory of some convolutions remains mystery in many quarters. This attributes to the struggle to articulate the value of EA in many environments. Hence many organisations find it difficult to apply EA for strategic management of modern information technology (IT) solutions. Enterprise Architecture for Strategic Management of Modern IT Solutions provides guidance on how to employ EA in deploying and managing IT solutions from pragmatic and implementable strategies’ perspectives. Until now, implementation and practice of EA have been slow, despite its growing popularity and interest from all sectors. The author employs sociotechnical theories such as actor-network theory (ANT) and structuration theory (ST) as lenses to examine and explain why and how challenges and complexities exist and derail the implementation or practice of EA in organisations. By doing so, this serves to enable practitioners and readers to gain fresh insights on why the challenges exist and how they can be addressed in creating collaborative capabilities for business enhancement, sustainability, and competitiveness. The book provides detailed insights on how to apply EA for organisational purposes, from three main fronts. First, it explains the implications that lack of understanding of EA have on organisational activities and processes. Second, it examines the challenges and complexities that hinder the implementation and practice of EA in organisations. Third, it proposes models and frameworks on how EA can be applied for strategic management of modern IT solutions in organisations. Written for postgraduates, researchers, academics, and professionals in the fields of EA, IT, and information systems, this book provides a valuable resource that will enable and enhance implementation and practice of EA including future studies.

A critical part of any company's successful strategic planning is the creation of an Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA) with its formal linkages. Strategic research and analysis firms have recognized the importance of an integrated enterprise architecture and they have frequently reported on its increasing value to successful companies. Enterpr

Based on an extensive study of the actual industry best practices, this book provides a systematic conceptual description of an EA practice and offers practically actionable answers to the key questions related to enterprise architecture.

History has shown that having a competitive advantage is critical to the success and long-term viability of all organizations. However, creating and sustaining such an advantage is a challenge. Organizations must formulate a winning strategy, surpass competitors at implementing and executing it, and excel at adapting in response to internal and external events. Although organizations have applied numerous best practices to help them succeed in their strategic endeavors, they still face serious difficulties, which they can only surmount by adopting business architecture. The goal of this book is to describe what business architecture is; how it can help meet the challenge of formulating, implementing and executing an organization’s strategy; and how to build and exploit a superior strategy management system that leverages business architecture.

Electronic enterprise is the road map to well-planned evolution of enterprise complexity with business and system strategies integration through standardized architectures of IT components. This work provides a vision for IT leaders with practical solutions for IT implementation.

An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture is the culmination of several decades of experience that I have gained through work initially as an information technology manager and then as a consultant to executives in the public and private sectors. I wrote this book for three major reasons: (1) to help move business and technology planning from a systems and process-level view to a more strategy-driven enterprise-level view, (2) to promote and explain the emerging profession of EA, and (3) to provide the first textbook on the subject of EA, which is suitable for graduate and undergraduate levels of study. To date, other books on EA have been practitioner books not specifically oriented toward a student who may be learning the subject with little to no previous exposure. Therefore, this book contains references to related academic research and industry best practices, as well as my own observations about potential future practices and the direction of this emerging profession.