Enterprise Architecture Trends

Supporting Executives to Digitally Transform the Enterprise

Analyst Perspective

Enterprise architecture, seen as the glue of the organization, aligns business goals with all the other aspects of the organization, providing additional effectiveness and efficiencies while also providing guardrails for safety.

In an accelerated path to digitization, the increasingly important role of enterprise architecture (EA) is one of collaboration across siloes, inside and outside the enterprise, in a configurable way that allows for quick adjustment to new threats and conditions while embracing unprecedented opportunities to scale, stimulating innovation to increase the organization’s competitive advantage.

Milena Litoiu Principal/Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture Info-Tech Research Group

Accelerated digital transformation elevates the importance of EA

The Digital transformation journey brings Business and technology increasingly closer.

Because the two become more and more intertwined, the role OF Enterprise Architecture increases in importance, aligning the two in providing additional efficiencies.

THE Current need for an accelerated Digital transformation elevates the importance of Enterprise Architecture.

More than 70% of organizations revamp their enterprise architecture programs. (Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)

Most organizations still see a significant gap between the business and IT.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is impacted and has an increasing role in the following areas

Accelerated Digital Transformation

• Business agility Business agility, needed more that ever, increases reliance on enterprise strategies.
  EA creates alignment between business and IT to improve business nimbleness.
• Security More sophisticated attacks require more EA coordination.
  EA helps adjust to the increasing sophistication of external threats. Partnering with the CISO office to develop strategies to protect the enterprise becomes a prerequisite for survival.
• Innovation EA's role in an innovation increases synergies at the enterprise level.
  EA plays an increasingly stronger role in innovation, from business endeavors to technology, across business units, etc.
• Collaborative EA Collaborative EA requires new ways of working.
  Enterprise collaboration gains new meaning, replacing stiff governance.
• Tools & automation Tools-based automation becomes increasingly common.
  Tools support as well as new artificial intelligence or machine- learning- powered approaches help achieve tools-assisted coordination across viewpoints and teams.

Info-Tech Insight

EA's role in brokering and negotiating overlapping areas can lead to the creation of additional efficiencies at the enterprise level.

EA Enabling Business Agility

Trend 01 — Business Agility is needed more than ever and THIS increases reliance on enterprise Strategies. to achieve nimbleness, organizations need to adapt timely to changes in the environment.

Approaches:
A plethora of approaches are needed (e.g. architecture modularity, data integration, AI/ML) in addition to other Agile/iterative approaches for the entire organization.