Butler Group believes that now is the time for organisations to start considering and deploying Enterprise Architecture based around a balanced business process and information view of operations.
It is crucial that business and information requirements drive the creation of IT services.
In many instances a rudderless IT department adopts a technology push approach due to the absence of any easily understood corporate direction and poorly articulated strategy.To remain competitive organisations must urgently address the growing dislocation between the business requirements and IT deliverables.
This issue is directly impacting the enterprise's ability to make quick, accurate decisions and causing the slow implementation of the determined course of action.
The gap between IT capability and business needs cannot be allowed to continue.
Adoption of an end-to-end Enterprise Architecture approach will help to re-align IT developments with business objectives.Senior management can no longer ignore IT governance and compliance issues.
The potential of hefty fines and the possibility of a jail sentence are usually guaranteed to gain everyone's attention.
Additionally, many organisations are struggling to highlight the value that IT is delivering to the businesses.
Enterprise Architecture provides a useful framework within which organisations can address their statutory and corporate governance requirements by better planning, ability to prove compliance, and providing a better understanding of the value of technology investments.There are growing regulatory pressures being brought to bear on organisations with legislation such as Combined Code on Corporate Governance, Sarbanes Oxley Act, Freedom of Information Act, and Data Protection Act.
Correspondingly, IT Governance will become progressively more pervasive, with technology being used to manage IT spending.
To meet the demands of all this legislation the alignment of technology with business goals, risk management, portfolio management, and the deployment of an architectural approach will be required.There is an obvious need for better integration between applications to provide for business agility and the requirements of real-time business.
This is leading to the deployment of SOA where composite applications can be created, modified, and removed dynamically, and software reused.
SOA enables the building of functionality based on components and services, either abstracted from existing applications, provided by the platform, or from an external source.
The move to a SOA can be achieved by the use of an Enterprise Services Bus (ESB) offering the opportunity to develop a process-driven view of application integration.
It is also essential to be able to present a unified view of an organisation's data, and supply a common user interface.To be effective, Enterprise Architecture must be more than models for business, information, and organisation.
Butler Group recommends that the process encompass both services architecture and the deployment of a services platform.
Only by embracing an end-to-end methodology and framework will organisations avoid analysis paralysis and separate islands of knowledge, maximising the undeniable benefits and cost savings available from the use of Enterprise Architecture.Report ContentThis Report reveals:Why organisations must urgently address the dislocation between business requirement and IT deliverables through Enterprise Architectures.
How Enterprise Architecture can address IT Governance and compliance requirements.
The importance of the evolution to a services-based IT environment.
The role of a services platform in providing a foundation for Enterprise Architecture.
Why organisations must adopt an organisational-wide architectural approach to service delivery.
Why current frameworks and tools are too technology and application focused.
How to deploy an Enterprise Architecture using the Butler Group framework.
A comparison and evaluation of the main services platform providers.
Vendors included in this ReportBEA Systems - BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform Fujitsu - Interstage version 6 IBM - IBM Middleware Microsoft - Windows Novell - Enterprise Platform Oracle Corporation - Oracle AS 10g Red Hat - Open Source Architecture for the Enterprise SAP - NetWeaver platform, and other SAP solutions Sun Microsystems - N1 SUSE LINUX - SUSE LINUX Server Family Sybase - Unwiring the Enterprise