What is Enterprise Architecture?

• Set of models – Describe the technical implementation of an

organization’s business strategy and business processes

• “Form ever follows function”– Relationship between an organization’s form and the

customers’ need for functionality

• Key role of managers– Ensure that the proper architecture is designed and

built

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Why Is Enterprise Architecture Important?

• Provides the overall foundation for achieving an organization’s strategic vision

• Must be in a state of constant evolution– To meet changing business requirements

• Enables managers to:– Increase employees’ effectiveness by enabling high-

order thinking– Develop new value propositions of interest to

customers

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Enabling High-Order Thinking

• Organization’s employees must be able to transition from routine execution of daily tasks to high-order thinking

• Ability to innovate– Vital for adapting to the new global economy

• Problem with staying too close to customers – Sometimes they cannot tell you what they really

want

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Developing New Value Propositions

• Value propositions – Provide a clear statement of the tangible benefits

that a customer obtains from using a company’s products or services

• Organizations use technology to provide value propositions to external and internal customers

• Result of enterprise architecture – Provide a solid foundation for both internal and

external customers

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Software Architecture Styles

• Includes multiple styles of computing

• Categories– Centralized and distributed– Almost all new software applications are built using

the distributed model

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Software Architecture Styles (continued)

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Centralized Architecture

• Based on the use of a mainframe computer – Supports a variety of local and remote devices– Maintains tight control over the software applications

that run on it

• Difficult to add incremental amounts of mainframe computing capacity to handle increased demands

• Used frequently to process high volumes of transactions

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Distributed Architecture

• “The Network is the Computer”

• Processing functions and data can reside anywhere on the network or the commercial Internet

• Distributed applications – Share the processing, formatting, presentation, and

storage functions across clients and servers

• Processing capacity is much more scalable

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Client/Server Architecture

• Type of distributed architecture

• General-purpose model of network computing

• Client/server system– Client requests information from a server and the

server performs a database request to the database server

• Client/server architecture – Provides for a separation of responsibilities – Enables the application to be organized in layers

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Client/Server Architecture (continued)

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Client/Server Architecture (continued)

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Service-Oriented Architecture

• Software application development approach based on building user applications out of software services

• Software service – Unit of work developed by a service provider to

achieve desired results for a service consumer

• Well-defined set of rules or protocols – Describe how one or more services can “talk” to

each other

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Service-Oriented Architecture (continued)

• Use SOA to build a comprehensive set of services– Business managers and IT people must define the

services to be offered – Design how to link and sequence the necessary

services– Process is sometimes called orchestration

• Advantages of SOA– Ability to respond to unanticipated changes in the

business environment– Services can be implemented and made available

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A Manager Takes Charge: American Modern Converts to Service-Oriented

Architecture• American Modern Insurance Group

• Patrick Law– Vice President of Infrastructure

• Project to replace the insurer’s casualty policy administration system– Concentrated on choosing the right technology

components required to make everything work – Then trained employees to use these new tools

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Developing an Enterprise Architecture

• Unified Modeling Language (UML) – Language for specifying, constructing, visualizing,

and documenting the artifacts of a software-intensive system

– Enables system builders and users to work well together

• Each organization needs to develop its own approach to realizing enterprise architecture

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The Boeing Story

• Wright Brothers– Designed the capability to navigate an airplane using

three controls simultaneously

• Boeing story – Representative of both risk-taking and innovation in

the new global economy

• Cohesion – Measure of how strongly related and focused the

various responsibilities of a software or hardware component are

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The Boeing Story (continued)

• Coupling – Measure of the degree to which each software and

hardware component relies on other modules to perform its function

• Ideal component – Highly cohesive and has low coupling

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Business Processes

• Enterprise architecture – Enables the implementation of a set of digitized

business processes

• Commonality of business processes across business units– Determines a set of potential repetitive patterns that

add value if digitized

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Process for Developing an Enterprise Architecture

• Clinger/Cohen act– Gave the Office of Management and Budget the

authority to dictate standards for “developing, maintaining, and facilitating the implementation” of an enterprise architecture

– Several organizations within the U.S. government have been audited

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Process for Developing an Enterprise Architecture (continued)

• Numerous approaches exist for creating and documenting an enterprise architecture

• Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF)– Divides enterprise architecture into four components– Process involves nine steps– Once an architecture is defined for one area, the

process can move on to other business areas

• Process of defining the enterprise architecture is never really finished

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Summary

• Enterprise architecture – Enables routine business tasks to be handled

smoothly, efficiently, and reliably– Frees up managers to perform high-order thinking

• Service-oriented architectural style– Set of standard reusable and extensible building

blocks known as services

• If the enterprise architecture is built thoughtfully– Deal with inevitable changes by reassembling the

building blocks

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