Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a strategic planning framework that aligns business and IT resources to support organizational goals and strategies. It provides a comprehensive view of an organization’s processes, information systems, personnel, and technologies. The primary objectives of EA are to improve business agility, ensure efficient IT resource utilization, and foster alignment between IT and business functions.
There are four architecture domains that are commonly accepted as subsets of an overall Enterprise Architecture:
- The Business Architecture defines the business strategy, governance, organization, and key business processes
- The Data Architecture describes the structure of an organization's logical and physical data assets and data management resources
- The Application Architecture provides a blueprint for the individual applications to be deployed, their interactions, and their relationships to the core business processes of the organization
- The Technology Architecture describes the logical software and hardware capabilities that are required to support the deployment of business, data, and application services; this includes IT infrastructure, middleware, networks, communications, processing, standards, etc.
Source: TOGAF Concepts
Architecture Documentation
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| Archimate 3.1 Frequently Used Concepts and Relations |
Source: Archimate Language
Key Definitions:
Application Architecture
A description of the structure and interaction of the applications as groups of capabilities that provide key business functions and manage the data assets.
Business Architecture
A representation of holistic, multi-dimensional business views of: capabilities, end-to-end value delivery, information, and organizational structure; and the relationships among these business views and strategies, products, policies, initiatives, and stakeholders.
Business Architecture relates business elements to business goals and elements of other domains.
Data Architecture
A description of the structure and interaction of the enterprise's major types and sources of data, logical data assets, physical data assets, and data management resources.
Solution Architecture
A description of a discrete and focused business operation or activity and how IS/IT supports that operation. A Solution Architecture typically applies to a single project or project release, assisting in the translation of requirements into a solution vision, high-level business and/or IT system specifications, and a portfolio of implementation tasks.
Solution Continuum
A part of the Enterprise Continuum. A repository of re-usable solutions for future implementation efforts. It contains implementations of the corresponding definitions in the Architecture Continuum.
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