Acquisition system of federal government in need of EA

According to Jim Williams, the acting GSA Administrator, the current acquisition system needs structure and a common way of looking at processes. Enterprise architecture would provide these things. It needs to have a standardized process, to be able to join various parts of the process and provide consistency.

With his vision, enterprise architecture would: change how the government looks at a system comprised of people, the complex processes, and how the technology fits in.

Growing interest in enterprise architecture

Recently, Lauren McKay pondered whether this new trend of growing interest in enterprise architecture would continue to build and grow into a sustainable process, or whether it was a trend that would eventually fade away.

Since enterprise architecture focuses on governance structure, business processes and business information, it is a trend that can keep going? The interest highlights a direct link between technology and the business done by the company trying to align the two key facets of their company.

What do you think? Is EA the growing trend, or is it something that companies are going to set aside in a few years?

SOA and the enterprise

In an article I found at Computer World, three experts talk about importance of implementing SOA on a company wide basis, not just a project to project basis, and defining the processes to have the enterprise architecture work company wide. Larry R. DeBoever, one of the principals, along with Tim Westbrock and George S. Paras, of EAdirections took time to share their views on what they see necessary for SOA to be best implemented across an enterprise.

Westbrook believes architecture is important to the processes, "A strong enterprise architecture program is vital if SOA is to reach its potential of actually operating across the enterprise rather than being isolated in individual custom application development projects."

Paras belives, "Many people see SOA as a technology, an implementation approach you use deep in the bowels of application development. It really is more of a flexible, adaptive, reusable design approach for disassembling and reassembling an enterprise as it evolves in response to a constantly changing environment."

It is important that the SOA plan of the company is built off of a game plan, as it is vital to know which services need to have processes built for them and how they’re going to be coordinated together. All of this and standards need to be the same across the company in order for SOA to work to the best of its ability.

Finding the Value in Enterprise Architecture

Peter Evans-Greenwood, CTO of Capgemini Australia, released the following presentation about “Finding the Value In Enterprise Architecture” on slideshare. The presentation is very informative, and explains changes happening in Enterprise Architecture and ways to ensure that it still generates value to the organization. Hope you enjoy!

Finding Value In Enterprise Architecture

view presentation (tags: strategy capgemini enterprise-architecture ea)

Enterprise Architects can be key in tough times

Yesterday, we told you that enterprise architects are vital to an organization for many reasons.

Today, Forrester released a study stating that enterprise architects could be a valuable asset for today’s businesses given the current economic downturn. The report, detailed here at CIO, states that during this economic hardship, executives will look closely at IT and judge the value of their investments. Enterprise architects can show the executives the areas of the IT departments that can be can be let go as well as the valuable ones.

Enterprise architects should be encouraging executives to prioritize, cost quantified list of the low-impact items available for cuts, the most important things not to cust and the most valuable places to invest any remaining funds.

Another important warning from the report: Technology strategies not only had to be aligned with business goals, but that the business charges them with spotting “game-changing” technologies” and leading their organization.

It is also imperative for the enterprise architect to be a business person above all, as the technology strategies should be aligned with business goals, and the architects should lead their organization when it comes to new technologies.