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Build Your Next-Generation Enterprise Architecture
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Enterprise architecture has different meanings for different organizations.
For some it is a set of rules. For others, it is a logical and technical design. And some consider it a methodology for achieving an effective design.
But practically all enterprise architecture projects have a common goal: to create order from chaos. However, achieving this goal is easier said than done, especially since enterprise architecture must provide structure and efficiency, but remain flexible to accommodate different business strategies, functions, rules, and components — things that seem to change constantly.
This collection of new Gartner research examines and defines some of the strategies and objectives of the next-generation of enterprise architecture and introduces some new concepts. These concepts include the "Technology Power Grid," the "bricks" and the "styles" of enterprise architecture.
An effective, working architecture can no longer be based on a static structure. Innovative business principles are breaking down the traditional enterprise. The new enterprise architecture allows the enterprise to be dynamic while sustaining continuity. In Key Components For Building Your Architecture, Gartner analyst Jeff Comport examines how the components of Gartner's new enterprise architecture work together with related business and technology initiatives to form a working architecture.
Architecture for the virtual enterprise anticipates and accommodates the heterogeneous mix of applications, technologies and business organizations that an enterprise buys, builds and subscribes over time. It builds on older architectural principles in an evolutionary manner. The evolution focuses on the importance of a layering of the architecture's components and a loose, dynamic coupling of interactions within and among enterprises. In Architecture for the Virtual Enterprise: Creating Order from Diversity, Comport outlines research detailing how the new enterprise architecture creates order from the diversity of its elements.
A powerful tool for the analysis and application of an IT enterprise architecture is the determination of architectural styles. Style is important to enterprise architecture much as it is important to the architecture of houses and buildings. Here, the concept of architectural styles is a way to describe some of the characteristics of fundamental business processes. In Architectural Styles and Enterprise Architecture, Bill Rosser and Jeff Comport look at research with an eye to how an enterprise can support multiple architectural styles and, eventually, leverage this multiple support to enhance collaboration with other enterprises.
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Because of the widespread use of the word "architecture" in so many different contexts, Gartner offers a few consistent definitions and interpretations of its role so that communication about the topic can be facilitated.
12 August 2002 |
Bill Rosser
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Enterprise ability to address business changes with corresponding shifts in IT platforms is likely to be eroded. We discuss the cause of this possible loss of flexibility and advise suitable responses.
8 August 2002 |
Regina Casonato
Nikos Drakos
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Modern technology architecture differs from traditional technology architecture because it accommodates technically diverse individual applications while bringing order to the technology of the connecting integration grid.
31 July 2002 |
Roy Schulte
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Large enterprises should create a central integration competency center to reduce the time and cost required to integrate application systems.
31 July 2002 |
Roy Schulte
Gary Long
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The enterprise nervous system and its associated technology, systems and metadata architecture are increasingly extended via the grid to enterprise-to-enterprise scenarios.
31 July 2002 |
Jeff Comport
Benoit Lheureux
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An architectural style is a logically related set of IT guidelines and system designs tailored to suit a fundamental core business process. Tailored standards will increase the performance and value of IT investments.
8 August 2002 |
Bill Rosser
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Design patterns have gained substantial support in object-oriented systems design. They are now being applied in higher levels of design, such as e-business processes. Collaborative processes are a striking opportunity.
8 August 2002 |
Simon Hayward
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Architecture is no longer an "expense only" proposition. By creating business models, enterprises are demonstrating both return on investment and value on investment.
9 July 2002 |
Jim Sinur
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Doing business in the future will require technologies that allow an enterprise to adjust in many different ways. Web services are a key part of this new and more flexible type of architecture.
24 July 2002 |
David Smith
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With analytics becoming a critical architectural style, enterprises must use a business intelligence competency center to leverage their BI skills and data knowledge, and to align business users with the IS organization.
25 July 2002 |
Howard Dresner
Kevin Strange
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Making an enterprise architecture work requires creating the architecture project, selecting the right technologies, delivering the guidelines, achieving compliance and establishing a governance process.
24 July 2002 |
Bill Rosser
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Architecture for application integration differs from intra-application architecture, just as planning for a city differs from a building architecture. The success of enterprise architecture depends on responding to differences in scope.
31 July 2002 |
Roy Schulte
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Information architecture in a modern virtual enterprise must accommodate diversity in design and semantics. An "exchange" information model can organize the way applications are integrated with each other.
31 July 2002 |
Roy Schulte
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Mobility is not an add-on to existing architectures: It is a profound disruption. Enterprises that ignore the impact of mobility on their software architectures are setting themselves up for accelerating software maintenance costs.
19 July 2002 |
Simon Hayward
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Architectural styles play a critical role in the evolution of architecture toward the information exchange model of the new enterprise-to-enterprise world.
8 August 2002 |
Bill Rosser
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A Gartner survey showed a return on investment of nearly 10 percent in IT costs being saved by using business rule technology. The future savings and benefits of business rule engines are expected to grow significantly over time.
18 July 2002 |
Jim Sinur
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With packaged applications and Web services garnering much attention, we address data's importance -- or its perceived lack of importance -- as well as the "black box" concept that data does not require attention.
1 August 2002 |
Kevin Strange
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Digital relationships are a powerful force changing today’s business models, but trust models have failed to keep pace. Dynamic trust, using real-time assessment tools and rules-based responses, is the new model for secure digital relationships.
12 August 2002 |
Rich Mogul
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As business transformation drives the adoption of new enterprise architectures, the operations architecture must perform the dual role of striving for stability and fostering agility.
19 June 2002 |
Jeff Comport
Mark Nicolett
Milind Govekar
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Although it's possible to make incremental changes to architecture without severely affecting application development roles, the IS organization must reorganize to maximize success in building and deploying Web services.
23 July 2002 |
Michael Blechar
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