"We also tried to find the simplest tools available to do the job. That has been a difficult thing: there are so many people out there claiming to have enterprise architecture tools, but those tools are themselves extremely complex."
To get around the problem Defence is issuing high-end powerful architecture tools to the small group of people who need them. For the rest, the majority who simply need an architectural process, relatively simple tools like Word, Excel or PowerPoint are likely to be all that is required.
"It's only when you want to get visibility across the enterprise that you need to invest heavily in high-end tools," Ramsay says. vThe Four Pillars of EA WisdomMichael Tan, enterprise architect, Information Services Group, NSW Department of Transport and Regional Services, defines enterprise architecture as consisting of the following four architectures, the pillars of your IT assets.
Business architecture. By business architecture, Tan means the high-level processes of the business. An enterprise architect needs to know the key processes of the business in order to gain understanding of the business issues. This is important because IT exists to help resolve business issues and enhance business standing. Without an understanding of the business issues at hand, technology per se has no meaning, he says.
Information architecture. Information architecture is concerned with how data should be collected, stored and transformed into valuable information. There are many issues relating to information: ownership, sharing, storage, culling, transformation and privacy issues and so on. The key objective here is to develop business advantages using information transformed from the raw data collected. CRM relies heavily on your data holding.
Application architecture. Usually represented by interconnecting block diagrams denoting systems, application architecture is about how systems interoperate to support key business functions. In recent years, enterprise application integration (EAI) dominates this area. Many vendors claim to be able to integrate your systems whether contemporary or legacy.
Technology architecture. Technology architecture shows how a system can be constructed with current technologies. This is the nuts and bolts and the building blocks that make up your systems. This area is full of acronyms from the marketplace: J2EE, .Net, CORBA - just to name a few. But this is a critical area, Tan says. "This is the minefield. Trek with care," he says. "You need to separate the marketing hypes from reality. How do you do that? You need your enterprise architect to run R&D-type projects to ascertain firstly if a product does what it says and equally important, it fits in with the rest of your building blocks."
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.