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.
The British Ministry of Defence Architecture Framework (MODAF) was an architecture framework which defined a standardised way of conducting enterprise architecture, originally developed by the UK Ministry of Defence. It has since been replaced with the NATO Architecture Framework.
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.
The Enterprise Architecture Body of Knowledge (EABOK) is a guide to Enterprise Architecture produced by MITRE's Center for Innovative Computing and Informatics, and is substantially funded by US government agencies. It provides a critical review of enterprise architecture issues in the context of the needs of an organization. Because it provides a "big picture" view of needs and methods, some enterprise architecture practitioners recommend it as starting point for a business establishing an enterprise architecture unit.
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.
Enterprise systems engineering (ESE) is the discipline that applies systems engineering to the design of an enterprise. As a discipline, it includes a body of knowledge, principles, and processes tailored to the design of enterprise systems.
John A. Zachman is an American business and IT consultant, early pioneer of enterprise architecture, chief executive officer of Zachman International, and originator of the Zachman Framework.
Information Framework (IFW) is an enterprise architecture framework, populated with a comprehensive set of banking-specific business models. It was developed as an alternative to the Zachman Framework by Roger Evernden.
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 systems planning (BSP) is a method of analyzing, defining and designing the information architecture of organizations. It was introduced by IBM for internal use only in 1981, although initial work on BSP began during the early 1970s. BSP was later sold to organizations. It is a complex method dealing with interconnected data, processes, strategies, aims and organizational departments.
Treasury Enterprise Architecture Framework (TEAF) was an enterprise architecture framework for treasury, based on the Zachman Framework. It was developed by the US Department of the Treasury and published in July 2000. May 2012 this framework has been subsumed by evolving Federal Enterprise Architecture Policy as documented in "The Common Approach to Federal Enterprise Architecture".
FDIC Enterprise Architecture Framework was the enterprise architecture framework of the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). A lot of the current article is about the enterprise architecture framework developed around 2005, and currently anno 2011 out-of-date.
Enterprise architecture planning (EAP) in enterprise architecture is the planning process of defining architectures for the use of information in support of the business and the plan for implementing those architectures.
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.
The Treasury Information System Architecture Framework (TISAF) is an early 1990s Enterprise Architecture framework to assist US Treasury Bureaus to develop their Enterprise Information System Architectures (EISAs).
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.
Michael Rosen is an American enterprise architect, and management consultant, known for his work on Common Object Request Broker Architecture (1998), and Applying service-oriented architecture.
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" closely related to enterprise architecture. The concept of business architecture has been proposed as a blueprint of the enterprise, as a business strategy, and also as the representation of a business design.
