“Just enough & in time” Enterprise Architecture - Oracle EA Framework

“The real value of Enterprise Architecture is not in making better architectures…it’s in making better enterprise.”— Gary Doucet, Chief Architect, Government of Canada Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat GC

"In the early days of computing, technology simply automated manual processes with greater efficiency. As technology evolved, new innovations enabled new capabilities and processes in the enterprise that were driven by IT. Gradually, IT changed the business but not necessarily in alignment with the business strategy. This lack of alignment resulted in significant waste of resources and missed opportunities, and placed the organization in a competitive disadvantage in the market."

"To align the strategies of business with IT, a new approach for managing IT has been developed called Enterprise Architecture. Just as architecture provides a blueprint for constructing a building, Enterprise Architecture provides a blueprint and roadmap for aligning business strategy with IT."

"Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a method and an organizing principle that aligns functional business objectives and strategies with an IT strategy and execution plan. The Enterprise Architecture provides a guide to direct the evolution and transformation of enterprises with technology. This in turn makes IT a more strategic asset for successfully implementing a modern business strategy."

"An Enterprise Architecture typically produces deliverables such as:

· Current-state Enterprise Architecture model
· Future-State Enterprise Architecture reference model that is needed to execute on the proposed business strategy
· Gap analysis that identifies the shortfalls of the current state in terms of its ability to support the objectives and strategies of the business
· Architecture Roadmap that defines the initiatives required to migrate from the current state into the future state."

"By taking an enterprisewide perspective across business services, business processes, information, applications, and technology, an EA ensures the enterprise goals and objectives are addressed in a holistic way across all IT projects."

"To be successful, an Enterprise Architecture needs to be woven into the enterprise’s culture, not treated as a closed-scope project. The value of an EA is greatly enhanced when it is organically embedded into the lifecycle of the organization, including capital planning, project management, asset management, resource allocation, and strategy formulation."

"Enterprise Architecture is a journey not a project. It evolves over time and needs to maintain the flexibility required to adjust to changing market conditions, strategy shifts, and new innovations in technology."

"A number of EA frameworks exist in the industry with the goal of addressing the basic challenge of assessing, aligning, and organizing business objectives with technical requirements and strategies. Examples include the Zachman Framework (IBM framework from 1980s), The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), OMB Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), The Gartner Methodology (formerly the Meta Framework), and the DoD Architecture Framework (DoDAF)."

"In an effort to provide effective framework to help customers align their IT and business strategies, Oracle extracted aspects from several industry frameworks, including TOGAF and FEA, to build a simple yet practical and prescriptive framework called the Oracle Enterprise Architecture Framework (OEAF). The OEAF is complementary to other EA frameworks, with clear mappings to TOGAF and FEA, such that customers can use the EA framework of their choice. The intent of building the OEAF was to leverage the strengths of the different industry frameworks and marry that with Oracle’s experience in developing enterprise solutions."

"Oracle emphasizes a “just enough” and “just in time” practical approach to Enterprise Architecture, which may be used standalone or as a complement a customer’s selected EA methodology."

So, what is "just enough" & "just in time", listen to this podcast.

To know more about OEAF, check out the Oracle EA whitepaper (http://www.oracle.com/technology/architect/entarch/pdf/oea_framework.pdf) from Oracle EA Center