The Evolution of

Enterprise Architecture:
Enabling IT to “Speak Business”
to Drive Innovation

A new blueprint for effectively architecting

and implementing ideas that produce the
right business outcomes

Learn More at
erwin.com
Introduction An EA practice supports this critical requirement by mapping a company’s
applications—complete with an understanding of their associated technologies and
data—to the business functions or value streams they enable. Defining application
IT and business
capabilities and interdependencies within the context of their connection to
alignment enterprise strategy paves the way for IT leaders to prioritize technology investments
so their budgets align with business goals.
within an
organization can EA is invaluable for internal business intelligence, governance, management insights,
and transformation and planning. Organizations can use EA tools to bridge the gap
be dramatically between ideation and implementation, making more informed choices throughout
enhanced with the process. However, the reality is that most organizations don’t leverage EA to its
true potential.
enterprise
architecture (EA). One of the contributing factors is that EA has remained in its traditional IT comfort
zone. However, EA is not only about IT and yet it lives within IT, focuses on IT and
therefore often loses its business dimension and support. Additionally, the traditional
EA approach—the analysis, design, planning and implementation of IT capabilities for
the successful execution of enterprise strategy—also has seemed to miss something:
data.

EA has been compartmentalized for three main reasons:

1. LACK OF TRUST IN THE AVAILABLE INFORMATION

• Information is mostly collected, entered and maintained manually.
• Automated data collection and connection is costly and prone to errors.
• Identification of issues can be very difficult and time-consuming.

2. LACK OF TRUE ASSET GOVERNANCE AND COLLABORATION

• Enterprise architecture becomes ring-fenced within a department.
• Few stakeholders willing to be actively involved in owning assets and being
responsible for them.

3. LACK OF PRACTICAL INSIGHTS (INSIGHTS, ANALYSES AND

MANAGEMENT VIEWS)
• Thinking about what EA can provide has been too small and narrow.
• The few analyses performed focus on immediate questions, rarely strategy
and planning.
• Tools were not designed to “speak business” to facilitate conversations
about value-stream design.
• Collaboration on EA is seen as secondary and mostly focused on reports
and status updates.

THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE | 2

Introduction Because of these reasons, EA often failed to deliver the relevant insights that
management needs to make decisions—in a timely manner. However, times are
continued changing as a result of digital transformation and emerging technologies. EA
is becoming increasingly relevant to the business. In fact, Gartner says EA is
becoming a “form of internal management consulting” because it helps define and
shape business and operating models, identifies risks and opportunities, and then
creates technology roadmaps. And Ovum describes EA as a continuous activity
driven by business; it has changed from EA to AE as in “architect everything.”

To do EA right, you need the right tools for communication and collaboration with
the business. EA typically has been undertaken using basic visualization tools,
spreadsheets or even word processors. However, there are limitations with using
these generic solutions: they lack industry standards to capture and align business
and IT elements and how they link together, and they hinder the collaboration
required to continuously and methodically maintain models, frameworks and
concepts as they evolve.

Without a solution for centrally documenting and visualizing this information,

there can be no single source of truth of the architecture’s current state. Agility
suffers when the organization can’t rely on coherent and consistent representative
architecture concepts to smoothly and accurately analyze and plan for technology
changes and transitions necessary to accommodate business priorities.

EA management can be more strategic and impactful when used to dynamically

link data assets and business processes, applications and infrastructure. Faster,
more accurate decision-making also is enhanced when you make automation part
of your EA practice.

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE HELPS YOU

Align business and IT with consistent design, documentation and
communication of architecture assets

Understand the full impact of changing business and IT capabilities in

support of strategic decision-making

Model and integrate complex strategy, process, application, data and

technology architectures

Collaborate with all stakeholders on innovation and transformation

initiatives

Retain organizational knowledge

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE DEFINED

Enterprise architecture is the analysis and documentation of an enterprise

in its current and future states from an integrated strategy, business and
technology perspective.

Source: International Enterprise Architecture Institute

THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE | 3

The Role of The development and analysis of complex models helps manage costs,
ensure regulatory compliance and mitigate the risks associated with business
Enterprise transformation. Some of the most common EA use cases are:

Architecture Application portfolio management. accounting of business assets

EA helps manage the enterprise (both technological and human) means
With a shift toward application portfolio, providing it’s best placed to align security and
digital business insights into the usefulness, risk management with business goals
functionality and structural and objectives, giving an organization
and increasingly composition of applications. insight into where time and money can
competitive markets, Capture and manage such information best be spent in improving security, as
as user satisfaction, total cost of well as the resources available to do so.
EA provides a way ownership, business criticality and
to quickly and risk/compliance (e.g., GDPR, Data governance. Today’s enterprise
Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and the embraces data governance to drive
efficiently understand
processing of sensitive data). Use data opportunities, including growing
opportunities erwin Evolve to identify functional revenue, and limit data risks, including
redundancy and plan consolidation regulatory and compliance gaffes. EA
offered by new
and modernization projects. solutions that provide much-needed
technologies, process insight into the relationship between
improvements Compliance. Enterprise architecture data assets and applications make it
is critical for regulatory compliance. It possible to appropriately direct data
and portfolio helps model, manage and transform usage and flows, as well as focus
rationalization and mission-critical value streams across greater attention, if warranted, on
industries, as well as identify sensitive applications where data use delivers
translate them
information. When thousands of optimal business value.
into an actionable employees need to know what
compliance processes to follow, such Digital transformation. For an
strategy.
as those associated with regulations organization to successfully embrace
(e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, CCPA, etc.) change, innovation, EA and project
it ensures not only access to proper delivery need to be intertwined and
documentation but also current, traceable. Enterprise architects are
updated information. crucial to delivering innovation. Taking
an idea from concept to delivery
Data security/risk management. requires strategic planning and the
Any flaw in the way data is stored ability to execute. Before they enter
or monitored is a potential ‘in’ for a production, organizations need to test
breach, and so businesses have to and pilot their projects to help answer
ensure security surrounding sensitive some important questions: 1) How do
information is thorough and covers these technologies disrupt? 2) How
the whole business. Security should do they provide value? Modeling can
be proactive, not reactive, which is also help organizations understand
why EA should be a huge part of complex integrations. Outcomes like
security planning. By using well- more profitable products and better
built EA for the foundation of data customer experiences are the ultimate
security, organizations can help business goals. Getting there first is
mitigate risk. EA’s comprehensive view important, but only if everything runs
of the organization means security smoothly on the customer side. The
can be involved in the planning disruption of new technologies should
stages, reducing risks involved in new take place behind the scenes, after all.
implementations. Its comprehensive

THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE | 4

The Role of Mergers and acquisitions. Combining two organizations
into one is complicated. And following a merger or
Enterprise acquisition, businesses typically find themselves with
duplicate applications and business capabilities that are
Architecture costly and redundant, making alignment difficult. EA is
essential to successful mergers and acquisitions, helping
continued
alignment by providing a business-outcome perspective
for IT and guiding transformation. It also helps define
strategy and models, improving interdepartmental
cohesion and communication. In an M&A scenario,
businesses need to ensure their systems are fully
documented and rationalized so they can comb through
their inventories to make more informed decisions about
which systems to cut or phase out to operate more
efficiently. Roadmaps can be used to provide a common
focus throughout the new company, and if existing
roadmaps are in place, they can be modified to fit the
new landscape.

Innovation management. EA is crucial to innovation

and project delivery. With open standards to link
EA tools with other products within the overall
project lifecycle, agile EA can be integrated with agile
development to connect project delivery with effective
governance. It takes a rigorous approach to ensure
that current and future states are published for a wider
audience for consumption and collaboration—from
modeling to generating road maps with meaningful
insights provided to both technical and business
stakeholders during every step.

Knowledge retention. Unlocking knowledge and then

putting systems in place to retain that knowledge is a
key benefit of EA. Many organizations lack a structured
approach for gathering and investigating employee ideas.
Ideas can fall into a black hole where they don’t get
feedback and employees become less engaged. When
your enterprise architecture is aligned with your business
outcomes, it provides a way to help your business ideate
and investigate the viability of ideas on both the technical
and business level. But the only way you can accurately
make those determinations is by having visibility into your
IT services and the application portfolio

DevOps. The goal of DevOps is to balance the competing

needs of getting new products into production while
maintaining 99.9% application uptime for customers in
an agile manner. DevOps can integrate agile enterprise
architecture with agile development, connecting project
delivery with effective governance of the project lifecycle.
Even if the software delivery process is agile, goals and
associated business needs are linked and can be met.

THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE | 5

The Role Ask someone on the business side what their organization’s enterprise architects
do, and you’ll likely get a response like, “They work with IT,” which is true, but also
of the pretty vague.

Enterprise Each business organizes its enterprise architects in a way that best serves the
Architect organization and helps achieve its goals. That’s one of the reasons the enterprise
architect role has no standard definition. Most teams consist of members with broad
IT experience, but each member will often have some role-specific knowledge. One
Enterprise architect team member might specialize in security, for example, and another in applications.
is a common job
Like the tech industry in general, the only constant in enterprise architecture is
title within IT change. Roles and titles will continue to evolve, and as the business and IT sides of
organizations at the organization continue to come together in the face of digital transformation,
how these teams are organized, where they report, and the types of projects they
large companies, but focus on are sure to change over time.
the term lacks any
Regardless of the specific title, enterprise architects need the ability to work
standard definition. with both their business and IT colleagues to help improve business outcomes.
As enterprise architecture roles move closer to the business, those with business
knowledge are becoming valuable assets. This is especially true for industry-specific
business knowledge.

“By 2021, 40 percent of organizations will use enterprise architects to help

ideate new business innovations made possible by emerging technologies.”

Marcus Blosch, Vice President Analyst, Gartner

While enterprise architects are crucial to delivering innovation, all too often,
enterprise architecture has been executed by IT groups for IT groups and has
involved the idea that everything in the current state has to be drawn and modeled
before you can start to derive value. This approach has wasted effort, taken too long
to show results, and provided insufficient added value to the organization.

Organizations need to reposition EA closer to the center of the business, and not
leave it to stagnate on the fringes. Working closely with CIOs, enterprise architects
can produce roadmaps and other reports that can steer the business through digital
transformation, through innovative and forward-thinking approaches.

Enterprise architects themselves have to ensure they’re not solely focused on

the standard EA framework. This approach might be useful to EAs, but to senior
management and the wider business, the value isn’t clear. A business outcome
approach to EA can help ensure EA is always focused on how it can improve
the business, and help it respond readily to disruption so new avenues can be
capitalized on.

THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE | 6

How to Do erwin transforms the role of enterprise architects, allowing them to “speak
business” and re-architect innovation and value streams in vital areas such as
Enterprise risk management and regulatory compliance. With a trusted enterprise data hub,
every user operates from a ‘single source of truth.’ erwin automatically ingests
Architecture metadata from operational processes, applications s and models to make the hub
a living, relevant and role-based resource for better decision-making. With erwin’s
Large global EA capabilities, organizations can:
enterprises deploy Have flexibility in choosing a deployment path that best suits their needs.
erwin Evolve tools erwin provides two EA products to help customers see where their organizations
stand today and where they need to transform to produce the desired outcomes
to support massive
tomorrow. erwin Evolve provides a complete set of on-premise or cloud-hosted
user counts in highly EA tools. This product is highly customizable for integration into the customer
environment. erwin Evolve is a full-featured, cloud-based EA toolset with out-
regulated industries
of-the-box support for industry frameworks with no hardware to implement and
with complex data manage.
and processes (e.g.,
financial services, Centralize enterprise architecture modeling and management. With erwin
Evolve, enterprise architects have everything they need in one place to plan,
healthcare and
manage and respond to business and IT change while driving innovation and
utilities). digital transformation. Everything in erwin Evolve is presented through a web
experience and ties together via a central, shared repository. An integrated set of
views and information on strategy, business capabilities, applications, information
assets, technologies, etc., provides a thorough understanding of the enterprise.

Support IT-business alignment by developing and capturing multiple artifacts.

To gain critical insights and deliver on strategic outcomes—such as reducing
redundant applications to improve operating efficiency, appropriately processing
sensitive data or seamlessly implementing new cloud systems as part of digital
transformation efforts, develop and capture multiple artifacts to serve as
documentation. These include heatmap-style IT landscape views and business
capability maps, application architecture views, technology dependency views,
roadmaps, dashboards and charts.

Increase enterprise collaboration. Give non-EA stakeholders critical insights

into aspects of the business they wouldn’t have otherwise in time to make key
decisions. This means seamlessly bringing together subject-matter experts
and information consumers to share their knowledge and collaborate. erwin’s
user-friendly web experience provides self-discovery navigation and analysis
of enterprise assets, with cross-functional collaboration encouraged through
discussion threads, surveys and other social features. There’s a single source of
truth, but different stakeholders have different views based on their roles and
information needs.

Model value streams. Enterprise architects become actively engaged with the
business to understand how it works, what its processes are, what a value stream
looks like today (as is) and how it can be enhanced (to be).

THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE | 7

How to Do Support industry-standard frameworks and notations.
Numerous industry-standard and industry-defined
Enterprise frameworks have shaped the implementation of
enterprise architecture, such as ArchiMate, TOGAF,
Architecture Zachman International, DoDAF and FEAF. In addition
to supporting these frameworks, erwin Evolve
continued should serve is easily and fully configurable to meet
enterprise of stakeholder needs. It also is “right-sized”
to efficiently and effectively build the enterprise
architecture information portal that delivers the
greatest value.

Perform quick and easy impact analysis. Explore

model elements, links and dependencies to manage
change in an efficient and cost-effective way while
mitigating inherent risks. Powerful visual analysis is
made possible through heatmaps, reports, charts
and graphs.

Enable business and IT infrastructure interoperability.

erwin Evolve integrates with such third-party tools
as CAST, Cloud Health, RSA Archer and ServiceNow.
We also help customers integrate with other erwin
products, including erwin Data Intelligence to ensure
metadata from data sources, operational processes,
business applications and data models is automatically
harvested, transformed and fed into a central data
catalog and then made accessible and understandable
in role-based views.

THE VALUE OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE TOOLS

Manage complexity: A tool enables business
and IT leaders to capture, understand and
articulate the opportunities, challenges and
risks as businesses shift to digital organizations.

Support the creation of actionable, signature-

ready EA deliverables: EA tools enable
business and IT leaders to make investment
decisions that balance and prioritize current
operational demands, disruptions and
opportunities with the longer-term strategic
vision of the organization.

Speed time to value: EA tools accelerate

analysis and decision support for alternative
investment, rationalization, and optimization
opportunities and plans and for assessing risk,
change and the impact on the organization.

Source: Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture

Tools, Gartner, May 2017

THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE | 8

erwin erwin Evolve provides the right information to the right people at the right time
for smarter decision-making. Following are some examples of how our global EA
Evolve in customers are seeing value with the tools.

Action
MANAGING GDPR COMPLIANCE AND RISK ANALYSIS
Increasing regulatory
Risk management and regulatory compliance are primary use cases for erwin
pressure, competitive Evolve, with many customers using the tool to identify sensitive data points, such
differentiation, as those associated with PII, GDPR, HIPAA and SOX. With this information mapped
out in erwin Evolve, users can run risk analyses for compliance audits as well as
operational determine where data breach vulnerabilities exist so they can enhance governance
excellence – and security measures.

everything in today’s For example, a Japanese pharmaceutical company with clinical development
operations in Europe and the United States has an EA initiative managed from the
business world
United Kingdom with a focus on application interactivity, architecture landscapes,
depends on quick impact analyses and risk management, including GDPR compliance.
response, but those Following several internal delays due to the project’s complexity, erwin Evolve was
actions also have to implemented to support a fully automated enterprise architecture ecosystem with
visualizations and dynamic, role-based dashboards to improve global collaboration
be based on accurate
in real time. Within two weeks, the erwin Evolve design and configuration team,
information. working closely with the Astellas EA and GDPR risk management team, developed
a central EA portal, importing more than 260 MB of data. Now the company has
objective control and management of its applications for GDPR profiling and risk
analysis.

CREATING AND COMMUNICATING BUSINESS NEEDS AND PROCESSES

Southern California Edison (SCE), the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is

the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. Utilities
are complex organizations, with no function operating in isolation. Interconnected,
multi-step processes are supported by multiple applications and software
solutions so a problem in one area will almost certainly have a downstream effect.
After evaluating various enterprise architecture solutions, erwin was chosen to
help create a more comprehensive picture of SCE’s business process requirements
and communicate business needs to the IT department.

The initial implementation focused on documenting, analyzing and simulating

processes in a central repository for a clear view of who and what will be
impacted by changes. SCE used erwin to identify employee training requirements
and to pinpoint potential trouble spots and bottlenecks in proposed changes. For
a major SAP integration, erwin helped reduce the three-to-six-month stabilization
period to three weeks. The company realized additional savings with erwin by
reducing the time spent writing lengthy technical procedures, savings they
estimate paid for the solution within a year.

Analysis and simulation helps SCE make fully informed decisions, train the right
people and give them access to the correct information they need. It is “one of the
most important change management resources” they have and “a key enabler”
in support of major change initiatives. The company also uses erwin to power an
employee portal for submitting ideas about operational improvements, helping
them keep “a fresh perspective.”

THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE | 9

erwin ENABLING POST M&A COST SAVINGS
AND BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION EFFORTS
Evolve in
A property data solutions, service and technology provider for realtors, financial
Action institutions, insurance carriers, government agencies and other housing market
participants had grown through numerous acquisitions. Thus, it lacked visibility
continued and governance over all its business units and product lines.

The company decided to implement erwin Evolve to support the documentation

of its enterprise architecture for a complete picture of the technology landscape
to reduce IT costs and use those savings to fund business transformation
activities, including next-generation products. After one year, it saved $42
million and went on to achieve its three-year savings goal of $250 million with a
more holistic EA that encompasses business strategy, application dependency,
disaster recovery, server inventory and cloud migration.

With the savings, the firm has been able to migrate all of its data warehouses,
which support 52 product lines, to a managed service and integrate all of its
ETL processes into a global service to better manage data integrations and the
associated standards. These also are examples of how the company has been
able to reduce risk.

IMPROVING COMMUNICATION, COLLABORATION AND GOVERNANCE

A governmental agency in Europe started a data governance and digital

transformation journey to improve services and security while containing costs. The
CIO and his team had to address multiple innovation initiatives, such as data center
consolidation, IT service management, ISO certifications and IT strategy and design,
and then use cost savings from one project to pay for the next. Project coordination
and delivery was challenging because different teams were supported by different
vendors, and communication based on standard terminology was lacking.

erwin Evolve was implemented to manage a portfolio of 580 applications, as

well as to model the complex current-state architecture across applications,
processes, organizations and services. A central repository for EA artifacts was
created to provide integrated and approved, role-based views of this information
to better manage complexity and risk; standardize and/or re-engineer processes
and understand the impact of changes; and establish the infrastructure to deliver
services to external clients for other public administration agencies. This latter
objective includes maintaining and publishing a catalog of more than 360 services
with end-to-end process maps depicting components, customers, service-level
agreements, service owners and delivery managers.

Communication, collaboration and governance have improved thanks to clear

and accurate dashboards and a current services catalog fed by metadata from
various underlying systems (e.g., ServiceNow, RSA Archer, CA Clarity, IBM Data
Architect) that is constantly updated and aligned, creating synergy between
systems, processes and work groups. Live indicators monitor the progress,
assess completeness and balance the responsibility load for different actors
involved in EA maintenance (services, processes and application map), with
more than 100 workflows established to calculate metrics related to solution
completeness and accuracy.

THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE | 10

erwin DELIVERING AUTOMATIC VISUALIZATIONS AND
INSTANT IMPACT ANALYSES FOR MASSIVE APPLICATION TRANSITION
Evolve in
A communications infrastructure and media services provider in the United
Action Kingdom uses advanced networks to support the exponential growth of
connected devices and the ever-increasing demand for data from smartphones
continued
to tablets, connected TVs, smart meters, cars and medical devices.

The company chose to work with erwin to help it transition from using 243
applications across data, enterprise and business architectures down to six.
Because this project would have enormous impacts, it needed to be managed
in an agile fashion with automatic visualizations and impact analyses with
information accessible and manageable at the appropriate levels but also cross-
referenceable.

Thanks to erwin Evolve, all three disciplines now use the same system and
taxonomy to communicate and collaborate, making it the largest IT project
they’ve undertaken within a decade a success. Process owners and SMEs now
provide instant feedback to enterprise architects and application managers
about what processes support which applications, while any changes planned
by enterprise architects are instantly analyzed by process owners so they can
plan changes on their end. Data architects can see how data moves not just
at the application level but also at the process level with data relationships,
dependencies and lineage mapped.

THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE | 11

erwin BUILDING AN EA PRACTICE WITH FAST ROI
Evolve in
Daktronics, based in Brookings, South Dakota, designs, manufactures, sells and services
Action video displays, scoreboards, digital billboards, dynamic message signs, sound systems
and related products. The company was building out its EA practice and needed a
continued
better way to capture the current state of its business, applications, infrastructure and
data architecture. After determining that ArchiMate was the best way to describe,
analyze and visualize its architecture within and across business domains in an
unambiguous way, it needed to find an EA tool it could use to “win fast of fail fast.”

erwin Evolve Agile was selected because it is compatible with ArchiMate, cloud-hosted
for fast implementation with lower cost, and has a configurable metamodel for easy
modifications. In addition, erwin Evolve Agile enables the retrieval of information from
other systems for reporting via APIs. With erwin Evolve, you can also easily create and
retrieve diagrams, including the associated relationships for future use.

By incorporating erwin documentation into Daktronics’ development process, the

platform has provided beneficial insights into component dependencies throughout its
pillar systems and services, along with a valuable reference for analysts, architects and
developers to quickly gain procedural and architectural understanding of the technical
ecosystem. The company considers erwin Evolve Agile a fast win—it was up and
running within the same day, and they realized success within the first week.

As the focus of EA expands from erwin Evolve

IT capabilities to business outcomes, will help your
working with a collaborative enterprise organization
architecture platform is essential realize a
to engage stakeholders across the new world of
organization, ensuring alignment alignment,
between IT and the business. innovation and
governance.

Do you see the value of taking EA START

beyond a limited IT support role to a
strategic business function enabled
A TRIAL
by purpose-built tools? OF erwin
EVOLVE

THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE | 12

About erwin, Inc
As the data governance company, erwin provides enterprise modeling, data cataloging
and data literacy software to help customers discover, understand, govern and socialize Connect with
their data to mitigate risks and realize results. The erwin EDGE platform facilitates erwin at erwin.com
IT and business collaboration in driving actionable insights, agile innovation, risk
management and business transformation. We help government agencies, financial
institutions, healthcare companies and other enterprises around the world unlock
their potential by maximizing the security, quality and value of their data assets.

© 2019 erwin, Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.