Bu09k - Enterprise Architecture Management Patterns for EA Visioning

Abstract

EA management is one of the major challenges of modern enterprises. It aims at aligning business and IT in order to optimize their interaction. The general make-up of the enterprise is reflected in the EA, which comprises both business and IT aspects - ranging from visions (business, as well as IT visions are of interest), via business processes, and business applications, to infrastructure elements, like e.g. application servers or hardware.

Documenting and managing the EA is an advanced topic, as the application landscape, which is part of the EA often includes a few hundreds up to a few thousand business applications and their interconnections in a medium-sized or large company. Thereby, managing the EA is a task, that has to be executed as the need for a flexible IT is an integral concern of most companies. Nevertheless, other reasons for maintaining an EA documentation exist, such as compliance requirements or economic causes, i.e. the cost reduction of the IT function.

This article includes patterns which are part of the EAM Pattern Catalog, a pattern language for enterprise architecture management, which uses a
pattern-based approach to EA management. The intention behind the article is to further extend and enhance the already developed EAM patterns and to document not yet described ones in order to advance the EAM pattern language.