Chris,

I agree with you: a common definition would be of help since it would help avoid useless terminology wars. However, I am not convinced with your definition. To me, it sounds too unspecific, and therefore can be applied to anything.

Let me try and start from Genesis. Initially, there was a lonely and bored Computer, which was generally useless since it did not have any Programs. Then The Programmer came and the computer became of some use to the Users (I would avoid philosophical discussion here about potential and factual use of a computer in general). When The Programmer got tired and went to bed, other Programmers rushed into the game, which started all the fun: the Computer got many more Programs that hated each other and stepped on each other’s toes (with pleasure). They also stored the same data, but different metadata, and each Program insisted that her data is the only true one. Later on The Insane Programmer came and invented LAN. Now evil Programs could fight for dominance over the net with Programs on other Computers. Gradually, Programmers lost control. They failed to understand how all this mess works. They failed to even observe it. The Internet was the last nail that sealed the coffin. The Users grew confused. They now hated Computers, Programs and Programmers, both Sane and Insane ones. And finally one of them came and said: “Why don’t you, Sane and Insane, put at least some order to this mess?”

To me, this is where the need of EA comes from. Get some sanity to hundreds if not thousands unrelated and contradicting apps that any large corporation is running.

Do you think this would help come up with more specific definition?

Cheers,
Eugene Nizker,
Evident Point Software Corp. (we hire only Sane Programmers who write only friendly and benevolent programs) :)

Interesting question… When we started to look at EA in my shop, we came up with this definition inspired from Gartner: The Enterprise Architecture is a roadmap that shows the relationship between the business goals, the information assets, the applications portfolio and the supporting computer technology infrastructure over a given foreseeable horizon. In other words, it is our plan to get from where we are today to where the business wants to be in the next 3 years. We do not see the Enterprise Architecture as encompassing the entire business plans, as some models suggest. And no, the Architect does not report to the President. She reports to the CIO. The EA plan is done under the leadership of IT for IT.

As with any plan when it comes to Information Technology, it starts with a good understanding of the business goals. Defining the current business environment and future vision is the first layer of our roadmap, the Business Architecture. It requires a good communication channel with senior management and with the business unit managers. It is hard enough to get the requirements for one application, let us be modest and start small. Note also that it is less important to describe the current environment than the future state.

The next layer is the Information Architecture. Some people will call it Data Architecture. Maybe so, but in my business, information is the main asset. Data is nice but useless unless it is required to produce information, and information into knowledge. Information comes as structured data, unstructured documents from inside and outside the organization; it is the library collection and the multimedia files; it is anything that will be required by the business unit to produce its outputs now, next year, two years from now and three years away.

The third layer is the Application Architecture that tells us what applications are needed to create, collect, process, store the data that produces the information the business needs to attain its goals.

The fourth layer is the technology infrastructure to support the all three layers above. They all have to move in the same direction.

It could be an overly simplistic view of EA but when you want to start something like that, my advice is to think big but start small.

It's not that it was closed so much that it migrated to another forum on Google: The Enterprise Architecture Network >>> the-enterprise-architecture-network@googlegroups.com where I am happy to report the topic is alive and well and thriving. The forum mechanism on Google was agreed to be a better medium to discuss this topic than filling up LinkedIn with dozens of single thread questions.

Whether that was the right or wrong choice for many, it doesn't matter now as the discussion continues on between many of us on a daily basis on this forum.

It's not that it was closed so much that it migrated to another forum on Google: The Enterprise Architecture Network >>> the-enterprise-architecture-network@googlegroups.com where I am happy to report the topic is alive and well and thriving. The forum mechanism on Google was agreed to be a better medium to discuss this topic than filling up LinkedIn with dozens of single thread questions.

Whether that was the right or wrong choice for many, it doesn't matter now as the discussion continues on between many of us on a daily basis on this forum.