Enterprise architects, the economy is in your capable hands
Summary: CEOs don't know enough about technology, so EAs are becoming the most important players in the emerging digital economy.
Soon, all companies will be technology companies in one form or another. It's the only way to compete in a global, digital world. And there is but one breed of professional who can help with this journey: enterprise architects.
That's the view of Thomas Lawton, visiting professor of business administration at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, who makes the case for enterprise architecture to advance today's businesses. And he's telling this to a wide audience -- readers of U.S. News.
While IT is the best response to competitive pressures and a rocky economy, CEOs and business leaders are not particularly well equipped to deliver a strategic IT approach. They're too focused on "operational and strategic topics, such as managing cost drivers and finding new revenue sources," says Lawton. "Few CEOs really understand the implications of new, rapidly changing and complex IT systems and processes for the current business model or perceive a strategic potential and value in new technology implementation."
Enter the enterprise architect. These professionals know how to build the bridge between technology and business goals. As Lawton describes it:
"The role of enterprise architects is to act as partners to senior executives, understand what is on the CEO's agenda and how IT fits into it. [They] exploit IT efficiency, effectiveness and change potential and link it with strategic objectives and operational delivery."
As a result, there is growing interest in the process and practice of enterprise architecture, Lawton observes. Business leaders know IT is the future of their organizations. In fact, in many cases, IT is becoming the business. EAs are needed, desperately, to provide the guidance in this journey from widget-making to data and service provider.
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Talkback
Chief Mobility Officers on the rise
EA is not IT
I define an enterprise's architecture as the structure of its data + the structure of its processes + the interactions between the two, informed by the enterprise's goals and objectives. I define the EA's job as creating (for start-ups only), documenting, rationalizing, optimizing, educating about, evangelizing about, and consulting about that architecture. The EA should also have authority and responsibility for architectural oversight of all creation of, and changes to, the enterprise's data and processes -- the "bones" of its architecture -- to ensure that those data and processes stay consistent with the enterprise's architecture, or that the architecture is adapted to accommodate them. (However, the EA should not have direct responsibility for those creations and changes; that's for solution architects.)
Note that none of the above is specific to IT.
EA is not IT (I agree)
I have tried to explain what EA should be through a very informal animation on YT channel: http://youtu.be/yoxhkZ9LaO4
Soon, all companies will be technology companies, don't think so
What the enterprise sees is a business service independent how and what technology delivers it.
Since the outsourcing to IT tends to be handled by business rather than IT people the role of the IT department in the enterprise will be diminishing.
Hence, I would say the opposite, that the trend is for companies to become less technological than they are today.
That only means that the EA role has to become, as it should, business and Cloud integration focused.
Completely Flase