Thursday, January 8, 2009

What is Enterprise Architecture?

Is there universal definition for EA? Chris Potts from CIO.com recently answered this question found on LinkedIn in this post. Here’s the question:

Do you think we need to have a universally agreed definition of Enterprise Architecture? If so what do you think it should be, in one sentence, and why?

Chris states that there is really no agreed definition of EA, but it is very important to understand what business executives think the two component words mean. Many people mistakenly believe that the term “Enterprise” means that EA has something to do with technology, when only IT at times only represents 21 percent of a company’s operating costs. So instead of coining both terms, Chris has instead summed up his definition of EA in one sentence.

"The art or science of designing and constructing undertakings, especially bold or difficult ones, and of the readiness to be involved in them; the style of such undertakings."

What’s your definition of EA?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think that the MIT Sloan School of business has a more coherent definition of EA (see http://www.iese.edu/en/files/6_29338.pdf). I just recently attended a presentation by Gene Leganza of Forrester Research (see http://ploneglenn.blogspot.com/2009/01/enterprise-architecture-talk-on-second.html) where he seemed to present EA as a marriage of business and technology strategy.