Louis I. Kahn, the celebrated architect of buildings such as the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA and the IIM building in Ahmedabad, India once remarked, “ It was not belief, not design, not pattern, but the essence from which an institution could emerge…”

The comment was in reference to the architect’s role in conjuring up a well defined brick and mortar structure, but he might as well have said the same thing about enterprise architecture, for it would have made perfect sense. Be it a tangible structure such as a building or an ocean liner or a conceptual entity such as an enterprise, the focus on optimizing at the macro level almost always pays rich dividends down the road. An effective Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the best driver of such an exercise.

In the early 80s, when John A. Zachman wrote the seminal piece on enterprise architecture framework, the concept of EA was non-existent. So much so that Zachman himself titled his paper “Framework for Information System Architecture.” Years later when he published his “Concepts of the Framework for Enterprise Architecture,” he acknowledged the fact that even he missed the wide-angle view. By limiting the scope to information system architecture, his original framework did not do full justice to wide reach of the framework.

Frameworks Galore
Frameworks for engineering an enterprise come in a variety of shades, each one particularly applicable to suit a specific industrial sector. At the basic level, frameworks for EA are nothing but logical scaffoldings that encompass all the components that make up an enterprise. On the first dimension, the frame work classifies and organizes the abstractions of various services or products of an enterprise. The other dimension captures the various roles in the design process.

Some examples of EA frameworks are the Zachman Framework (the most popular and well known), Department of Defense Architecture Framework, Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework, Extended Enterprise Architecture Framework, and the Open Group Architecture Framework. But before delving deeper into frameworks, it is important to put EA in the right context and understand the strategic issues that drive and define EA.

Overarching Architecture
The supporting concept behind EA is termed Strategic Capabilities Architecture (SCA). This concept aimed to harness the synergies between the various strategic capabilities of a firm. For instance if different divisions of a firm such as Procter and Gamble compete in the marketplace based on different strengths, the SCA aims to coalesce these strengths into a portfolio of capabilities. This portfolio will then reduce the firm’s exposure to particular risk and provide a way to sustain its competitive advantage.

Over the years, SCA morphed and branched out into Strategic Information Systems (SIS), Global Information Systems, and EA. Under the bailiwick of EA exists an entire cross section of lower tier architectures. These include business process architecture, information architecture, application/system architecture, network architecture, data architecture, and hardware architecture. Each one of them concentrates on designing and optimizing the IT environment at a different (and equally important) level. Nevertheless as their influences overlap and impact each other, the need for an overall enterprise architecture becomes clearly evident.

Why EA
Once a firm’s business strategy is clear, the next step is to create a blueprint that captures these business requirements and translates them into technology solutions. The effect of such a blueprint is to ensure that IT and business are in perfect alignment. EA enables such an alignment. An effective enterprise level architecture also allows companies to respond rapidly to new business requirements and economic context changes such as mergers and acquisitions, new partnerships, new distribution channels, new products, and new technologies. The consistency and homogeneity enforced by an effective EA promotes convergence in the way internal IT projects manage their IT architecture. This, in turn, increases product sophistication and reduces the temptation to build non-integrated out-of-context technology solutions that consume enormous ‘maintenance’ resources.

Some of the recurring themes in EA circles include reducing complexity, increasing standardization, and perpetuating best practices. An effective EA places a heavy emphasis on standardization since it not only encourages component reuse but also brings down the total cost of ownership of a system. Standardization helps a firm to ultimately reap the benefits of economies of scale and scope. Heterogeneity on the other hand breeds complexity and severely hampers any efforts to promote interoperability and integration.

Tools of the Trade
A host of modeling tools dots the EA landscape today. Some of them are repository-based tools that provide a global view of the firm by maintaining a storage of development and system management models. Products such as Mega (from Mega International) and Troux (by Troux Technologies) fit this mould. Other tools build off their strengths in the classical IT modeling world. Tools such as the Metis product family from Computas, System Architect tools from Popkin Software, and Corporate Modeler from Casewise are good examples of tools in this genre. In addition to providing enterprise architects with powerful means to achieving IT and business alignment, these tools help governance in determining and managing IT priorities.

Living Architecture
IBM’s companywide cross-organizational EA is termed ‘Living Architecture’ – proof that the job of architecting at the enterprise level is never ‘complete.’ It is a continuous exercise in meeting business challenges and overcoming market hiccups. Too often companies tend to freeze their EA at some stage and lose their focus on the big picture as they continue to grow. This inevitably results in insufficiently integrated systems with very little capacity to scale and adapt. A ‘living’ architecture forestalls any such tendencies to atrophy.

Current trends in EA clearly point to a shift from the client/server world to a ‘service oriented’ architecture. A decade from now, this would undoubtedly change. Regardless, if an enterprise has a solid EA built upon a well-defined framework, its opportunities to survive and thrive are virtually boundless.

V. Anantakrishnan is a senior technology manager at AXA Financial in New York. He has over a decade of experience managing and implementing large scale systems integrations projects in the telecommunication and financial industries. He holds a masters in international business from Columbia University, and a masters in IT management from Carnegie Mellon University. He can be reached at vak88@hotmail.com.