The history of business architecture has its origins in the 1980s. In the next decades business architecture has developed into a discipline of "cross-organizational design of the business as a whole" [1] closely related to enterprise architecture. The concept of business architecture has been proposed as a blueprint of the enterprise, [2] [3] as a business strategy, [4] and also as the representation of a business design. [5]
The concept of business architecture has evolved over the years. It was introduced in the 1980s as architectural domains and as an activity of business design. In the 2000s the study and concept development of business architecture accelerated. By the end of the 2000s the first handbooks on business architecture were published, separate frameworks for business architecture were being developed, separate views and models for business architecture were further under construction, the business architect as a profession evolved, and more businesses added business architecture to their agenda.[ citation needed ]
By 2015 business architecture has evolved into a common practice. The business architecture body of knowledge has been developed and is updated multiple times each year, and the interest from the academic world and from top management is growing.[ citation needed ]
Business architecture has its roots in traditional cross-organizational design. Bodine and Hilty (2009) stipulated, that the "responsibility for the cross-organizational design of the business as a whole, the work of the Business Architect, has historically fallen to the CEO or their assignee, supported by generalist management consulting firms whose teams of MBAs work with corporate managers to transform strategy into new business configurations using the newest tools." [1] John Zachman (2012) commented in this context, that "a lot of material has been written about business architecture (by some definition), going back to The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) by Frederick Taylor." [6]
One of the roots of business architecture lies in the proposals for enterprise architecture made since the 1980s and 1990s. Bernus & Noran (2010) distinguished two types of proposals. On the one hand "Proposals that created generally applicable ‘blueprints’ (later to be called reference models, partial models...) so that the activities involved in the creation (or the change) of the enterprise could refer to such a common model (or set of models)." [7] And on the other hand "proposals which claimed that to be able to organise the creation, and later the change, of enterprises one needs to understand the life cycle of the enterprise and of its parts... the ‘Enterprise Reference Architecture’." [7]
More specific about the emerge of business architecture Whelan & Meaden (2012) described, that this emerged against a backdrop of change. The business architecture is "maturing into a discipline in its own right, rising from the pool of inter-related practices that include business strategy, enterprise architecture, business portfolio planning and change management – to name but a few. [8]
The concept of business architecture emerged in the 1980s in the field of information systems development. One of the first to mention business architecture was the British management consultant Edwin E. Tozer in the 1986 article "Developing strategies for management information systems." [9] He introduced the concept of business architecture in the context of business information systems planning, and distinguished:
And he explained, that "each entity class in the Information Architecture is represented in some database and each business function may be supported by one or more systems." [9] In this paper Tozer was "prescriptive about the order in which [strategy] issues should be identified.", [10] and focussed on "IS adaptability to organizational strategies." [11]
The American organizational theorist William R. Synnott (1987) presented one of the first models of business architecture, (see image), in the context of data management. Synnott wanted to develop an overall Information Resource Management (IRM) architecture, and proposed business architecture as its foundation. He described:
Business architecture is the foundation upon which the IRM architecture rests. The architectural model consists of a set of building-blocks of linked architectures which together form the basis for the technology infrastructure of the firm... In the figure data architecture and communication architecture are shown as horizontal bars because these are corporate-wide information resource components. They serve all business units. The four vertical resource components are business specific. The resources can be divided according to the business units they serve. That us, data and communication might be centralizes resources, whereas human resources (professional systems staffs), computers, user-computing, and systems could all be decentralized resources to one degree or another. [12]
This model of Information Resource Management (IRM) distinguished seven types of architecture:
This type of architectural model classifies different types of architecture. In the later theories and models different sets of architectures have been proposed. For example, the late 1980s NIST Enterprise Architecture Model distinguished five types, and this was incorporated in the 1990s Federal Enterprise Architecture, which contained four types of architecture.[ citation needed ]
Synnott (1987) furthermore described, how business architecture should work and introduced the idea of architectural planning:
The business architecture of the company (organization structure, strategic business units and missions, product and services) is the foundation of IRM planning. Since every company has an existing architecture, architectural planning begins with an inventory of the firm's information resources. Assembling the various information resource components' inventories results in an "as is" picture of the corporation's technology structure. From this inventory, the CIO can analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the company's information resources, particularly as they relate to business information needs as identified in the strategic planning process. From this analysis one can evolve an architectural plan, which is a "to be" picture of where one wants to go and how to get there, not just a picture of the status quo. [12]
Cees J. Schrama. (1988) of the European IFIP Technical Committee on Information Systems IFIP TC8 presented the opinion, that "business architecture is required to provide a solid base for the total development process." He pictured another model consisted of elements such as information processing architecture and network architecture, and explained:
[Business architecture] contains the fundamentals for the information processing architecture, where process data, support systems and network architecture are performed. In business architecture the following can 'be identified:
- - enterprise analysis: to indicate the business domains
- - business analysis
- - Information systems planning
There are some basic elements in business architecture: management, organization, processes to be performed and data to be made available/delivered. In the past, when mainly operational systems were developed, the processes received considerable attention. Information was seen as being needed to perform processes. This is changing. It is becoming important to have data available to serve information retrieval needs as well. [13]
These ideas around the concept of architectural planning evolved in the early 1990s into frameworks, such as TAFIM, the predecessor of TOGAF.
In the 1987 article "A Framework for Information Systems Architecture" John Zachman presented some of the principles of Enterprise architecture, [14]
In the 5th NIST workshop on Information Management Directions (1989) a working groups under guidance of W. Bradford Rigdon developed one of the first Enterprise Architecture frameworks, the NIST Enterprise Architecture Model. In this model business architecture was incorporated as one of the layers of Enterprise Architecture. Bradford Rigdon et al. (1989) brought it like this:
A discussion of architecture must take into account different levels of architecture. These levels can be illustrated by a pyramid, with the business unit at the top and the delivery system at the base. An enterprise is composed of one or more Business Units that are responsible for a specific business area. The five levels of architecture are
- Business Unit
- Information
- Information System
- Data
- Delivery System
The levels are separate yet interrelated... The idea if an enterprise architecture reflects an awareness that the levels are logically connected and that a depiction at one level assumes or dictates that architectures at the higher level. [15]
In the original 1989 illustration of the NIST AE Framework (see image) the top layer was named "Business Unit Architecture." In representation of this model in the 1990s the top layer was named "Business architecture."
In the 1990s the Information Age was unfolding [16] changing the global market economy. With the businesses adapting, the new concept of business architecture was presented as promising alternative. Gharajedaghi (1999) explained the context:
In a global market economy with ever-increasing levels of disturbance, a viable business can no longer be locked into a single form or function. Success comes from a self-renewing capability to spontaneously create structures and functions that fit the moment. In this context, proper functioning of self-reference would certainly prevent the vacillations and the random search for new products/markets that have, over the past years, destroyed so many businesses.
In fact, the ability to continuously match the portfolio of internal competencies with the portfolio of emerging market opportunities is the foundation of the emerging concept of new business architecture... [17]
According to Bodine and Hilty (2009) "important advances in this area borrowed from the operations discipline came in 1993 in the form of Michael Hammer and James Champy‘s book Reengineering the Corporation, which introduced tools for mapping and optimizing business activities using process modeling. The Balanced Scorecard developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton at about the same time enabled the business to measure overall corporate success against goals on qualitative as well as quantitative dimensions." [1]
In the 1990s works the concept of business architecture is presented in distinguished ways:
Business architectures is presented as tool for change management, acknowledged Van Rensburg (1997). It "provide organisations with the means to understand organisational activities in such a manner that it is used as a mechanism to support the organisation through the business transformation process. Using an object-oriented modelling approach in the design of the business architecture allows for a robust modelling approach which captures real world instances in a business architecture repository. This enables the creation and caption of organisational understanding required for the transformation process." [20]
In 1996 the US government introduced the Clinger–Cohen Act, to improve the acquisition and management of their information resources.
Beside the enterprise architecture frameworks a second type of architectural models were proposed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which were called Enterprise Reference Architecture. [7]
In 1999 two works on business architecture and its foundation were published, which became two of the most cited works on business architecture. In his "Systems thinking: Managing chaos and complexity" Jamshid Gharajedaghi presented a set of principles to design business architecture, which were based on systems thinking. Gharajedaghi argued, that business Architecture should be considered a system:
Business Architecture is a general description of a system. It identifies its purpose, vital functions, active elements, and critical processes and defines the nature of the interaction among them. Business architecture consists of a set of distinct but interrelated platforms, creating a multidimensional modular system. Each platform represents a dimension of the system, signifying a unique mode of behavior with a predefined set of performance criteria and measures. [17]
The IBM researcher Douglas W. McDavid presented the paper "A standard for business architecture description." According to Evernden & Evernden (2003) this paper described a "high-level semantic framework of standard business concepts – abstracted from experience, enterprise business models, the organization of business terminology and the various generic industry reference models. There is an excellent discussion on what constitutes business architecture and the nature and use of information categories, although concepts such as product and agreement seem to be missing." [21] McDavid argued:
The concepts in the Business Architecture description provide a semantic framework for speaking about common business concerns... For our purposes, this semantic structure provides a common set of concept patterns to be able to understand the types of content that needs to be supported in technology-based information systems... a set of generic concepts and their interrelationships organize business information content in terms of requirements on the business, the boundary of the business, and the business as a system for delivery of value. [22]
NOTE: This Framework draws heavily from BusinessGenetics Business Modelling Language (BML)
According to Bodine and Hilty (2009)
The arrival of Internet technologies like email, instant messaging and online data repositories in the mid-1990s opened up tremendous flexibilities in the ways co-workers could collaborate, while the new ability of buyers and sellers to interact in virtual space and transact online changed the traditional structure of businesses...
By the late 1990s, MBAs with advanced skills in Internet technologies began developing live business models for e-commerce websites in real-time. They used the development tools to both represent and build the business at the same time. The model became the business, and thousands were launched, allowing companies to access vast volumes of data and respond rapidly to changing market conditions... A Google search on ―Business Architect‖ at the time returned just 12 results... A Google search on ―Business Architect‖ in 2009 returns over 1 million listings.
This is just the beginning of a valuable and rapidly expanding profession. Today‘s Business Architects take a holistic view of the complete business representing all interests and engaging all expertise. They see the business organization as a constantly changing, dynamic organism that balances central planning with individual initiative to achieve its mission through the articulate implementation of its corporate strategy. [1]
According to Bodine and Hilty (2009)
Important advances in this area borrowed from the operations discipline came in 1993 in the form of Michael Hammer and James Champy‘s book Reengineering the Corporation, which introduced tools for mapping and optimizing business activities using process modeling. The Balanced Scorecard developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton at about the same time enabled the business to measure overall corporate success against goals on qualitative as well as quantitative dimensions. [1]
According to Bernus & Noran (2010):
Architecture Frameworks have been used in many industries, including the domains of industrial automation / manufacturing / production management, business information systems (of various kinds), telecommunications and defence. Part of the Enterprise Architecture practice is ‘enterprise engineering’ and the practice of ‘enterprise modelling’ (or just modelling) and complete AFs describe the scope of modelling (which later can be summaised as a Modelling Framework that is part of the AF). [7]
One specific type of Framework is called the "Enterprise Reference Architecture." According to Bernus & Noran (2010):
Several proposals emerged in those two decades – e.g. PERA (Williams 1994), CIMOSA (CIMOSA Association 1996), ARIS (Scheer 1999), GRAI-GIM (Doumeingts, 1987), and the IFIP-IFAC Task Force, based on a thorough review of these as well as their proposed generalisation (Bernus and Nemes, 1994) developed GERAM (IFIP-IFAC Task Force, 1999) which then became the basis of ISO15704:2000 “Industrial automation systems – Requirements for enterprise-reference architectures and methodologies”... [7]
The Business Architecture Special Interest Group (BASIG) is a working group on business architecture of the Object Management Group (OMG). This working group was founded in 2007 as the Business Architecture Working Group (BAWG).
In the 2006 article "Business Architecture: A new paradigm to relate business strategy to ICT," Versteeg & Bouwman explained the relation between business architecture, business activities and business strategy. [23] They wrote:
We use the concept of 'Business Architecture’ to structure the responsibility over business activities prior to any further effort to structure individual aspects (processes, data, functions, organization, etc.). The business architecture arranges the responsibilities around the most important business activities (for instance production, distribution, marketing, et cetera) and/or economic activities (for instance manufacturing, assembly, transport, wholesale, et cetera) into domains [24]
Versteeg & Bouwman also stipulated, that "the perspectives for subsequent design next to organization are more common: information architecture, technical architecture, process architecture. The various parts (functions, concepts and processes) of the business architecture act as a compulsory starting point for the different subsequent architectures. It pre-structures other architectures. Business architecture models shed light on the scantly elaborated relationships between business strategy and business design. We will illustrate the value of business architecture in a case study." [25]
In the 2010 the first handbooks on Business architecture were published. In the US William M. Ulrich and Neal McWhorter of the OMG Business Architecture Special Interest Group published the "Business Architecture: The Art and Practice of Business Transformation," in 2010.
In 2012 in Britain the business consultants Jonathan Whelan and Graham Meaden published their "Business Architecture: A Practical Guide." [26]
In several sources in the exact definition of "business architecture" is under review. In 2008 Jeff Scott had commented in this matter:
Interest in business architecture is growing dramatically. During the past two years both IT and business leaders have joined the discussion about the need for a well-defined business architecture. Though there is a great deal of discussion, there is little consensus about what business architecture is, how it should be pursued, and what value it delivers. Business architects in IT as well as in the business have started developing business-unit-wide and enterprise-wide business architectures, learning as they go. Their ultimate goals are to improve business decision-making and facilitate better alignment between IT and the business units it supports. Architecture teams that want to play a leading role in business architecture development must start soon or be left behind. [27]
Other sources came to the same conclusion, that over the years many different definitions of business architecture have been proposed [26] [28] [29] [30] Some of the more notable definitions have described business architecture as:
The discussion kept going. John Zachman (2012) declared in this matter, that "a lot of people define business architecture differently (I know a lot of people who have a lot of different opinions and definitions for business architecture). Not too many people do business architecture, at least not in a comprehensive and definitive fashion (in my estimation)..." [6]
Ideas and definitions about business architecture originate from different academic sub disciplines, where the concept of business architecture and methods and techniques are developing in numerous initiatives. A selection of related subfields:[ citation needed ]
Guitarte (2013) stipulated, that also different types of organizations have been active, and created a so-called "business architecture vortex.” He listed four types:
Guitarte commented, that "influencers led followed by communities of practice and standards-setting bodies; vendors followed. Conflicting ideas provide opportunity to define the future of business architecture profession." [32]
Surveys have reported a growing interest of management in business architecture, as well as on universities:
The Zachman Framework is an enterprise ontology and is a fundamental structure for enterprise architecture which provides a formal and structured way of viewing and defining an enterprise. The ontology is a two dimensional classification schema that reflects the intersection between two historical classifications. The first are primitive interrogatives: What, How, When, Who, Where, and Why. The second is derived from the philosophical concept of reification, the transformation of an abstract idea into an instantiation. The Zachman Framework reification transformations are: identification, definition, representation, specification, configuration and instantiation.
Enterprise architecture (EA) is a business function concerned with the structures and behaviours of a business, especially business roles and processes that create and use business data. The international definition according to the Federation of Enterprise Architecture Professional Organizations is "a well-defined practice for conducting enterprise analysis, design, planning, and implementation, using a comprehensive approach at all times, for the successful development and execution of strategy. Enterprise architecture applies architecture principles and practices to guide organizations through the business, information, process, and technology changes necessary to execute their strategies. These practices utilize the various aspects of an enterprise to identify, motivate, and achieve these changes."
The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) is the most used framework for enterprise architecture as of 2020 that provides an approach for designing, planning, implementing, and governing an enterprise information technology architecture. TOGAF is a high-level approach to design. It is typically modeled at four levels: Business, Application, Data, and Technology. It relies heavily on modularization, standardization, and already existing, proven technologies and products.
Enterprise integration is a technical field of enterprise architecture, which is focused on the study of topics such as system interconnection, electronic data interchange, product data exchange and distributed computing environments.
Unicom System Architect is an enterprise architecture tool that is used by the business and technology departments of corporations and government agencies to model their business operations and the systems, applications, and databases that support them. System Architect is used to build architectures using various frameworks including TOGAF, ArchiMate, DoDAF, MODAF, NAF and standard method notations such as sysML, UML, BPMN, and relational data modeling. System Architect is developed by UNICOM Systems, a division of UNICOM Global, a United States-based company.
An enterprise architecture framework defines how to create and use an enterprise architecture. An architecture framework provides principles and practices for creating and using the architecture description of a system. It structures architects' thinking by dividing the architecture description into domains, layers, or views, and offers models – typically matrices and diagrams – for documenting each view. This allows for making systemic design decisions on all the components of the system and making long-term decisions around new design requirements, sustainability, and support.
Enterprise information security architecture is the practice of designing, constructing and maintaining information security strategies and policies in enterprise organisations. A subset of enterprise architecture, information security frameworks are often given their own dedicated resources in larger organisations and are therefore significantly more complex and robust than in small and medium-sized enterprises.
Enterprise modelling is the abstract representation, description and definition of the structure, processes, information and resources of an identifiable business, government body, or other large organization.
In the business sector, business architecture is a discipline that "represents holistic, multidimensional 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–IT alignment is a process in which a business organization uses information technology (IT) to achieve business objectives, such as improved financial performance or marketplace competitiveness. Some definitions focus more on outcomes that means ; for example,
Alignment is the capacity to demonstrate a positive relationship between information technologies and the accepted financial measures of performance.
Enterprise life cycle (ELC) in enterprise architecture is the dynamic, iterative process of changing the enterprise over time by incorporating new business processes, new technology, and new capabilities, as well as maintenance, disposition and disposal of existing elements of the enterprise.
A view model or viewpoints framework in systems engineering, software engineering, and enterprise engineering is a framework which defines a coherent set of views to be used in the construction of a system architecture, software architecture, or enterprise architecture. A view is a representation of the whole system from the perspective of a related set of concerns.
Business reference model (BRM) is a reference model, concentrating on the functional and organizational aspects of the core business of an enterprise, service organization or government agency.
Technical Architecture Framework for Information Management (TAFIM) was a 1990s reference model for enterprise architecture by and for the United States Department of Defense (DoD).
NIST Enterprise Architecture Model is a late-1980s reference model for enterprise architecture. It defines an enterprise architecture by the interrelationship between an enterprise's business, information, and technology environments.
Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology (GERAM) is a generalised enterprise architecture framework for enterprise integration and business process engineering. It identifies the set of components recommended for use in enterprise engineering.
Peter Bernus is a Hungarian Australian scientist and Associate Professor of Enterprise Architecture at the School of Information and Communication Technology, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.
James G. "Jim" Nell is an American engineer. He was the principal investigator of the Manufacturing Enterprise Integration Project at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and is known for his work on enterprise integration.
Jaap Schekkerman is a Dutch computer scientist and founder of the Institute For Enterprise Architecture Developments (IFEAD) in the Netherlands. He is particularly known for his 2003 book How to Survive in the Jungle of Enterprise Architecture in which he compared 14 Enterprise Architecture Frameworks.
Jamshid Gharajedaghi is an Iranian-American organizational theorist, management consultant, and Adjunct Professor of Systems thinking at Villanova University. He is known for his work of systems thinking, managing complexity, and business architecture.