Enterprise Architecture – Where Business Meets IT

[Latest News Headlines]

 

I believe that a Enterprise Architect must be well grounded in the big picture business view of a company just as much as any technological aspect. 

In an blog post by Eric Roach, this concept is echoed:

The business was promised great benefits from SOA that often turned out to be non-tangible or non-existent. Large amounts of money were spent on software and infrastructure with no clear plans on how to achieve business value. The fundamental concepts of starting small, proving ROI and gaining business sponsorship where ignored in the avalanche of SOA marketing hype.

Read the article at: SOA Sponsorship and The Business

EA’s need to be in close contact with the business units to understand business goals from a MACRO perspective. Only when armed with that view can they effectively take, and translate, those goals into architectural concepts and practices that IT can follow to meet those goals.

Some advice to Architects: Don’t spend all your time engrossed in the latest technology trends (though they are important). Break away and spend time with business counterparts and find out WHAT needs to get done across multiple LOB’s.  Then you can focus on HOW to get things done with approaches like SOA, Cloud, etc., that best meet the business goals.







More from the Enterprise Architecture at Oracle Blog ...