Enterprise Architecture

Areas of Practice
Many enterprise architecture frameworks break down the practice of developing artifacts into four practice areas. This allows the enterprise to be described from four important viewpoints. By taking this approach, enterprise architects can assure their business stakeholders that they have provided sufficient information for effective decision making.

These practice areas are :

1. Business:

• Strategy maps, goals, corporate policies, Operating Model
• Functional decompositions (e.g. IDEF0, SADT), capabilities and organizational models
• Business processes
• Organization cycles, periods and timing
• Suppliers of hardware, software, and services

2.Information:

• Metadata - data that describes your enterprise data elements
• Data models: conceptual, logical, and physical

3. Applications:

• Application software inventories and diagrams
• Interfaces between applications - that is: events, messages and data flows
• Intranet, Extranet, Internet, eCommerce, EDI links with parties within and outside of the organization

4. Technology:

• Hardware, platforms, and hosting: servers, and where they are kept
• Local and wide area networks, Internet connectivity diagrams
• Operating System
• Infrastructure software: Application servers, DBMS
• Programming Languages, etc..