Architecting The Future Enterprise

Two experts in enterprise architecting lay out a holistic approach to creating a blueprint for future enterprise transformation. Every enterprise evolves continuously, driven by changing needs or new opportunities. Most often this happens gradually, with small adjustments to strategy, organization, processes, or infrastructure. But sometimes enterprises need to go beyond minor fixes and transform themselves, in response to a disruptive event or dramatically changing circumstances—a merger, for example, or a new competitor. In this book, enterprise architecting experts Deborah Nightingale and Donna Rhodes offer a framework for enterprise transformation. Successful transformation, they believe, starts with a holistic approach, taking into consideration all facets of the enterprise and its environment rather than focusing solely on one factor—information technology, for example, or organizational structure. This is architecting the future enterprise: creating a blueprint for what the enterprise will look like after the transformation. Nightingale and Rhodes introduce the ARIES (Architecting Innovative Enterprise Strategy) framework, including a ten enterprise element model and an architecting process model, and show how to apply it, from start to finish. They explain how to create a holistic vision for the future enterprise and how to generate concepts and alternative architectures; they describe techniques for evaluating possible architectures, tools for implementation planning, and strategies for communicating with stakeholders. Nightingale and Rhodes offer real-world examples throughout, drawing on their work at MIT, with an extensive case study of enterprise transformation at a medical device manufacturer. An appendix offers two additional architecting projects. Seven Architecting Imperatives Make architecting the initial activity in transformation. Develop a comprehensive understanding of the enterprise landscape. Understand what stakeholders value and how that may change in the future. Use multiple perspectives to see the whole enterprise. Create an architecting team suited to the transformation challenges. Engage all levels of leadership in transformation. Architect for the enterprise's changing world.

Enterprises that are successful over the long term are compelled to continuously transform in order to adapt to new contexts or economic environments. However, many of these transformation efforts fail to achieve their desired objectives. MIT Professors Nightingale and Rhodes have been developing an integrative approach that uses Enterprise Architecting as an instrument to support the planning of successful transformation. Although the approach has shown to be useful to guide transformations in various domains, feedback from previous users indicated the need for a more prescriptive and quantitative guidance in the process of moving an enterprise from the 'As-Is' to the desired 'To-Be' state. This thesis introduces a framework that provides a structure of reasoning about the process of architecting the future state of an enterprise in the context of a transformation. The 'Architecting the Future Enterprise' (AFE) Framework is an iterative method that incorporates a systems thinking approach to design future states and a multidimensional evaluation process that compares competing architectures in terms of effectiveness, effort and risk. It enables the generation of an output in the form of an Architecture Tradeoffs Matrix, a quantitative visual representation to assess tradeoffs among competing architectures. A case study is included to illustrate a real application of the AFE Framework. The implications of this research span across two areas. First, it aims to formalize enterprise transformation planning policies by providing practitioners a structure for reasoning that can help to minimize decision making errors. Second, by introducing quantification approaches to effectiveness, effort and risk, it improves the decision making process normally followed by enterprise leaders and architects to select the future architecture of their organizations. Finally, the framework leverages the use of simple engineering and management tools that lead to more informed decisions and to practical contributions to the practice of enterprise architecting and management decision making.

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.

This work outlines a disciplined and structured approach to understanding how modern enterprise applications will make use of Web services. It presents a forward-looking architecture that can meet future development challenges with ease and agility.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has evolved to become a prominent presence in today’s information systems and technology landscape. The EA discipline is rich in frameworks, methodologies, and the like. However, the question of ‘value’ for business ;professionals remains largely unanswered – that is, how best can Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Architects deliver value to the enterprise? Enterprise Architecture for Business Success answers this question. Enterprise Architecture for Business Success is primarily intended for IT professionals working in the area of Enterprise Architecture. The eBook gives practical insights into what constitutes EA and how it might be practiced in a typical resource constrained business environment. The contents of the eBook include a brief guideline about EA systems and terminology, followed by notes on how to design enterprise systems in line with business strategies. The eBook also presents case studies which help to demonstrate the distance between theory and reality when it comes to optimizing IT infrastructure for successfully achieving business goals. Lengthy theoretical discussions are avoided in favor of focusing more on the practice and tools of EA. Readers will find value in this eBook, whether they are an IT consultant or a manager, an EA team lead or member, or just someone keen to learn about real-world EA.

Enterprises, from small to large, evolve continuously. As a result, their structures are transformed and extended continuously. Without some means of control, such changes are bound to lead to an overly complex, uncoordinated and heterogeneous environment that is hard to manage and hard to adapt to future changes. Enterprise architecture principles provide a means to direct transformations of enterprises. As a consequence, architecture principles should be seen as the cornerstones of any architecture. In this book, Greefhorst and Proper focus on the role of architecture principles. They provide both a theoretical and a practical perspective on architecture principles. The theoretical perspective involves a brief survey of the general concept of principle as well as an analysis of different flavors of principles. Architecture principles are regarded as a specific class of normative principles that direct the design of an enterprise, from the definition of its business to its supporting IT. The practical perspective on architecture principles is concerned with an approach to the formulation of architecture principles, as well as their actual use in organizations. To illustrate their use in practice, several real-life cases are discussed, an application of architecture principles in TOGAF is included, and a catalogue of example architecture principles is provided. With this broad coverage, the authors target students and researchers specializing in enterprise architecture or business information systems, as well as practitioners who want to understand the foundations underlying their practical daily work.

"In this book, Vivek Kale makes an important contribution to the theory and practice of enterprise architecture ... this book captures the breadth and depth of information that a modern enterprise architecture must address to effectively support an agile enterprise. This book should have a place in every practicing architect's library." —John D. McDowall, Author of Complex Enterprise Architecture Digital Transformation of Enterprise Architecture is the first book to propose Enterprise Architecture (EA) as the most important element (after Business Models) for digital transformation of enterprises. This book makes digital transformation more tangible by showing the rationale and typical technologies associated with it, and these technologies in turn reveal the essence of digital transformation. This book would be useful for analysts, designers and developers of future-ready agile application systems. This book proposes that it is the perennial quest for interoperability & portability, scalability, availability, etc., that has directed and driven the evolution of the IT/IS industry in the past 50 years. It is this very quest that has led to the emergence of technologies like service-oriented, cloud, and big data computing. In addition to the conventional attributes of EA like interoperability, scalability and availability, this book identifies additional attributes of mobility, ubiquity, security, analyticity, and usability. This pragmatic book: Identifies three parts effort for any digital transformation: Business Models, Enterprise Architectures and Enterprise Processes. Describes eight attributes of EA: interoperability, scalability, availability, mobility, ubiquity, security, analyticity, and usability. Explains the corresponding technologies of service-oriented, cloud, big data, context-aware, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, soft, and interactive computing. Briefs on auxiliary technologies like integration, virtualization, replication, spatio-temporal databases, embedded systems, cryptography, data mining, and interactive interfaces that are essential for digital transformation of enterprise architecture. Introduces interactive interfaces like voice, gaze, gesture and 3D interfaces. Provides an overview of blockchain computing, soft computing, and customer interaction systems. Digital Transformation of Enterprise Architecture proposes that to withstand the disruptive digital storms of the future, enterprises must bring about digital transformation, i.e. a transformation that affects an exponential change (amplification or attenuation) in any aspect of the constituent attributes of EA. It proposes that each of these technologies (service-oriented, cloud, big data, context-aware, IoT, blockchain, soft, and interactive computing) bring about digital transformation of the corresponding EA attribute viz. interoperability, scalability, availability, mobility, ubiquity, security, analyticity, and usability.

An enterprise architecture tries to describe and control an organisation’s structure, processes, applications, systems and techniques in an integrated way. The unambiguous specification and description of components and their relationships in such an architecture requires a coherent architecture modelling language. Lankhorst and his co‐authors present such an enterprise modelling language that captures the complexity of architectural domains and their relations and allows the construction of integrated enterprise architecture models. They provide architects with concrete instruments that improve their architectural practice. As this is not enough, they additionally present techniques and heuristics for communicating with all relevant stakeholders about these architectures. Since an architecture model is useful not only for providing insight into the current or future situation but can also be used to evaluate the transition from ‘as‐is’ to ‘to‐be’, the authors also describe analysis methods for assessing both the qualitative impact of changes to an architecture and the quantitative aspects of architectures, such as performance and cost issues. The modelling language presented has been proven in practice in many real‐life case studies and has been adopted by The Open Group as an international standard. So this book is an ideal companion for enterprise IT or business architects in industry as well as for computer or management science students studying the field of enterprise architecture.

Lankhorst and his co‐authors present ArchiMate® 3.0, enterprise modelling language that captures the complexity of architectural domains and their relations and allows the construction of integrated enterprise architecture models. They provide architects with concrete instruments that improve their architectural practice. As this is not enough, they additionally present techniques and heuristics for communicating with all relevant stakeholders about these architectures. Since an architecture model is useful not only for providing insight into the current or future situation but can also be used to evaluate the transition from ‘as‐is’ to ‘to‐be’, the authors also describe analysis methods for assessing both the qualitative impact of changes to an architecture and the quantitative aspects of architectures, such as performance and cost issues. The modelling language presented has been proven in practice in many real‐life case studies and has been adopted by The Open Group as an international standard. So this book is an ideal companion for enterprise IT or business architects in industry as well as for computer or management science students studying the field of enterprise architecture. This fourth edition of the book has been completely reworked to be compatible with ArchiMate® 3.0, and it includes a new chapter relating this new version to other standards. New sections on capability analysis, risk analysis, and business architecture in general have also been introduced.

An enterprise architecture tries to describe and control an organisation’s structure, processes, applications, systems and techniques in an integrated way. The unambiguous specification and description of components and their relationships in such an architecture requires a coherent architecture modelling language. Lankhorst and his co-authors present such an enterprise modelling language that captures the complexity of architectural domains and their relations and allows the construction of integrated enterprise architecture models. They provide architects with concrete instruments that improve their architectural practice. As this is not enough, they additionally present techniques and heuristics for communicating with all relevant stakeholders about these architectures. Since an architecture model is useful not only for providing insight into the current or future situation but can also be used to evaluate the transition from ‘as-is’ to ‘to-be’, the authors also describe analysis methods for assessing both the qualitative impact of changes to an architecture and the quantitative aspects of architectures, such as performance and cost issues. The modelling language and the other techniques presented have been proven in practice in many real-life case studies. So this book is an ideal companion for enterprise IT or business architects in industry as well as for computer or management science students studying the field of enterprise architecture.