What's the key focus of your enterprise architecture (EA) strategy?

IT Strategy & Roadmap Enterprise Architecture Solutions Architecture

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Chief Enterprise Architect in Finance (non-banking), 10,001+ employees

Enterprise architecture (EA) must address any asymmetry of information. Many times our senior people are not getting visibility into certain projects and then they’ll say, “I didn't know, how come you didn't tell me this thing was happening? I would've given you some options.” A key goal for us is to at least provide transparency to give that visibility into what everything looks like, so that leadership can understand what’s happening. Even if it’s not 100%, they can start to see the state of technology organized by capabilities, and understand exposure or get visibility into running out of compliance with our architectural standards.

VP, Global IT in Manufacturing, 1,001 - 5,000 employees

We are a very small organization in a specialty chemical manufacturing company. We have about 2K employees around the world. The IT organization is about 40 people. And because we are so small, architecture is very important. We just haven't organized it using formal enterprise architecture methods and models. We’re trying to get the teams to talk with each other about what is going on and what solution would fit best for the requirements.

We're a pretty large SAP shop, and at the moment, SAP is being overtaken left and right by the Microsofts of the world, as well as low-code tools. It's interesting because the SAP people always think they can build a custom program for anything, and they immediately go into coding it. Then the SharePoint people say, “I can build a list for you,” and two hours later, it's all done. So my challenge is to get these folks to talk, and to ensure that the technical people and analysts can all take a step back and say, “Okay, I've been used to doing this in SAP for the last 20 years. But the world has changed and I need to get comfortable with the other tools that make it easier to provide a solution or to build a business capability.”

COO in Healthcare and Biotech, 5,001 - 10,000 employees

We think of EA as a lightweight function, closely tied to our IT roadmap. After doing a current state assessment and future state definition, we define our roadmap: high level initiatives needed to take us from current state to future state.

The EA strategy is a set of guiding principles or "guard-rails" to ensure that we stay consistent with our technology goals and meet our objectives, don't introduce (too much) technology sprawl or future tech debt, and meet our business goals. The goal is to find the right balance of control without limiting flexibility and speed/agility of our business leaders.

In the past, I've seen EA become a controlling organization that limits freedom of thought and flexibility, and becomes a pure enforcement function that is a set of approvals and gates. When that happens, companies lose agility, or leaders look for ways to do an end-around the EA function to avoid being constrained... leaving neither team happy.

The solution? A balanced, light-weight EA function.

VP, Actuarial Information Technology in Finance (non-banking), 5,001 - 10,000 employees

An Enterprise Architecture must closely align with the business objectives of the organization. It provides the technology and resources needed to sustain the business as well as to support its future growth. It enables the business to access data needed to prepare financial results, research solutions, and study the effectiveness of products. It must include security, infrastructure, data governance, hardware, software, and standards. And most importantly, it must adapt to the changing needs of the business.

SVP - Software Engineering in Finance (non-banking), 201 - 500 employees

Upskilling and use of common technology platforms

Director of IT in Education, 1,001 - 5,000 employees

Uninterruptible, ubiquitous access, supporting student learning and administrative operational efficiency, is the primary driver for our enterprise architecture; which extends to secured data access, communication (internal & external) and information flow.

Director of IT in Transportation, 5,001 - 10,000 employees

end point security

Sr. Director, Head of Global MCM IT in Manufacturing, 10,001+ employees

EA guides our entire IT strategy ensuring we are using technology that has been vetted and fits with our portfolio to support key business processes.

Director of IT in Manufacturing, 10,001+ employees

To develop a global reference architecture and roadmap to get there

Senior Director of Engineering in Software, 501 - 1,000 employees

Our enterprise architecture focus is on having an API first approach.
With "everything" being an API not only we are assuring the autonomy of Engineering teams but you are also paving the road to open your systems to partners, integrators boutiques, ISVs, etc.

Besides API first we also have a event driven architecture to again assure the autonomy of the engineering teams.