Delivering Business Value Through Enterprise Architecture

This white paper provides an overview of enterprise architecture’s role in the enterprise transformation process: common definitions, frameworks and views, the EA linkage to solution architectures and service-oriented architectures, the business value of EA and a summary of implications that EA imposes on successful software development.

Enterprise architecture is fundamentally a management tool whose real value results in making better decisions for the business. “Studies have shown that with a solid EA practice in place, enterprise application integration cost savings of 25 to 40 percent can be realized in the development and architecture phases.” Implementing an EA can provide benefits, such as:

• Increased collaboration with multiple stakeholders—through precise, standardized communication about the essential elements and functioning of the enterprise
• Centralized, stable and consistent information about the enterprise and its assets such as applications, hardware, databases and human resources
• Faster response and flexibility in the face of change—making it easier for an organization and its system partners to manage changes as they occur
• Improved return on investment (ROI) on an organization’s various IT implementations—by reducing the duplication and inconsistencies in the information and accelerating the delivery of systems from integration or outsourcing partners
• More predictable results—when the information about the enterprise is more precise and supported by automated traceability, higher quality and better decision making can be achieved