There are several reasons why enterprise architecture is crucial for maintaining and strengthening a business. Keep reading for answers to your questions on why enterprise architecture matters — and what to look for in an enterprise architect to improve your enterprise infrastructure.
The formal definition of enterprise architecture provided by Gartner is “a discipline for proactively and holistically leading enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing the execution of change toward desired business vision and outcomes.”
Similarly, CIO magazine defines enterprise architecture as “the practice of analyzing, designing, planning and implementing enterprise analysis to successfully execute on business strategies.”
To put it more succinctly, enterprise architecture reflects the goals of a business within the technology and keeps a business humming. An enterprise architect’s primary goal is to equip an organization with the most fitting technical tools to deliver on business outcomes.
Enterprise architects are masters of quickly understanding an organization’s business goals, high level processes and major data flows. They’re skilled at providing technological blueprints that will transform the technology. This can be achieved by creating and executing a transformation road map or by following the blueprint as a firm executes day-to-day projects. The enterprise architect’s function is to take business stakeholder goals and see them reflected in the digital technology.
Enterprise architects are crucial in helping to build an organization’s technology strategy. By assessing infrastructure, security, software, data and processes, effective enterprise architecture ensures that each piece of the technology strategy supports business objectives.
Enterprise architecture is vital to your organization for several reasons. It provides a strategic, holistic technology blueprint for your organization and shows how the technology supports the business capabilities. It targets the kinks in your system, ones that may be causing hiccups, delays or miscommunications. It also identifies where an organization’s technology portfolio can more effectively enable communication and integration.
Because of this, the measurable benefits of enterprise architecture are enormous.
Successful enterprise architecture:
Your ideal enterprise architecture project starts with a good enterprise architect who is a jack of all trades. They’re IT professionals with skill sets focused on cloud infrastructure and on-premise, software engineering, data and business processes. True to their title, an enterprise architect is an expert in design – not only in technology but in the information and process flow of the business.
An enterprise architect should also be comfortable working with the business and technology, executives and geeks. An ideal enterprise architect also knows that experience is their most powerful asset and guide.
Additionally, this enterprise architect should be supported by a diverse set of skilled peers in software, data and cloud engineering. This team will support the enterprise architect in areas where they may need a deeper level of expertise. The end result should be a high-quality technology strategy that can be executed to achieve or exceed customer expectations.
We have a team of seasoned enterprise architects who can build the blueprint you need for your organization.
No matter the size and complexity of your organization’s application portfolio, our enterprise architects have seen it all. We take a data-first approach to help you articulate your desired business capabilities, then map them into the technology required to enable them.
Contact us to learn more about how we can get started on your technological transformation.
Doug Whittenburg is an Enterprise Architect for 27Global. Founded in 2008, 27Global designs, builds and operates technology solutions for businesses of all sizes. 27Global has the business acumen to understand your vision and the expertise to build your technology solution. To learn more, visit 27Global.com or connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
