The Five Areas of Enterprise Architecture
While traditional architectural practices look at the structure of a building, enterprise architecture deals with the socio-technical nature of an enterprise. For example, a house is a physical structure, but it also contains a complex set of behavioral attributes. Similarly, a business is an organization that has people and complex information systems. Hence, traditional architecture practices do not apply to enterprise systems.
Business
Enterprise architecture (EA) focuses on aligning information technology with business functions and processes. It enables strategic planning and tactical execution. According to Microsoft’s Michael Platt, EA is a conceptual blueprint that reflects a company’s operating model. It identifies key business processes and identifies the interactions among them.
The scope of EA is very wide and can involve all aspects of an organization. The key is to establish a governance model. This involves defining roles, responsibilities, and co-operation forums.
The EA team should have a strong understanding of the business and IT architectures, since they influence the design of business processes. The team should be located close to the company leadership and should not be buried within the IT organization. This way, they can balance organizational and technical issues. Likewise, the EA team should be agile enough to adapt to rapid changes in the business and technical environments.
Infrastructure technology
Enterprise architecture is a framework for integrating technology and business processes. It examines the inter-relationships of processes and identifies the future state of these processes. It can also be seen as a blueprint for networks, storage systems, and hardware. It is one of the five areas of enterprise architecture.
Architects use enterprise architecture to plan and organize business processes, and then implement the solutions. They typically make decisions based on business requirements and IT infrastructure needs. The ultimate goal of enterprise architecture is to increase efficiency, agility, and consistency of complex business operations.
Business information systems
Enterprise architecture is a way to create a comprehensive blueprint for an organization’s systems and processes. It also promotes standardization and team alignment. Typically, enterprise architects work with the business to identify the best solutions for a particular business challenge. They develop and implement a set of guidance documents that document enterprise architecture.It can also be seen as a blueprint for networks, storage systems, and hardware
The process of enterprise architecture starts with defining the goals and the data structures that support them. The business information system includes the application infrastructure, business processes, and the interactions between them. Next, it moves to the information perspective, which consists of the classification of raw data and other business information. Finally, the technology perspective includes the hardware and software that the business needs.
Database domains
The former is based on the customer relationship, while the latter is based on product data. Both types can share data through common driveway patterns, or they can have different architectures.
Database products and domains are a core component of data architecture. They represent units of functionality for making read-optimized data sets available. Using data products can help companies manage their data in a flexible manner. It is essential to be consistent about data ownership, especially if you’re integrating complex vendor packages, SaaS solutions, or legacy systems. In addition, separating data ownership can also require you to make improvements to your applications and databases.It also promotes standardization and team alignment.
Object-oriented domain models can be simple or complex. Complex domain models are more sophisticated and require a Data Mapper.
Property classes
Enterprise architecture is a way to structure a system to support multiple domains. Provides a logical and conceptual structure for data to be shared between systems.It also promotes standardization and team alignment. Enterprise architects can use DoDAF to create views of data to meet their unique business needs.