Increasing numbers of firms are utilizing enterprise architecture programs, driven by “enterprise architects,” to boost IT effectiveness and efficiency by coordinating application utilization across the entire organization. Payoffs include streamlined software needs, lowered licensing costs, and easier IT management. Learn what it takes to become an enterprise architect, and how to introduce and drive acceptance for an enterprise architecture program in your company.
By Mathew Schwartz
www.dice.com
Exactly which business processes and applications currently support your enterprise?
As organizations grow, their business processes and applications tend to sprawl. Thus companies end up with duplicate processes, redundant applications, and legacy systems which may support nothing. Yet all still consume scarce IT resources.
To combat this problem, many organizations are launching enterprise architecture (EA) programs to streamline current business processes and create a plan for coordinating application utilization across the entire organization. Eliminating duplicate applications can lower software license and hosting costs, reduce the time needed to patch or upgrade systems, simplify IT management, and make the business itself more agile, all of which saves time and money.
Experts liken an EA plan to a blueprint. “Just like you’d never build a house without a blueprint, enterprise architecture really gives a company a look into its processes, down to its data and technology, and how they’re supporting the goals of the company, to make them more efficient, more effective, and to reduce costs,” says Michelle Miakos, senior vice president of North and Latin American Operations at MEGA International.
To be successful, however, an EA program must address more than just technology. “With enterprise architecture, the subject is the business, and you’re looking at it with up to four different lenses: business, data, applications, and technology architecture,” says Eric Stephens, enterprise architect with the Enterprise Architecture and Integration Team at Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield, New York state’s largest nonprofit health plan. “Trying to get those all lined up is what enterprise architecture is all about.”