Thursday, 12 January 2017

What is Enterprise Architecture as described by TOGAF 9.1?

 

What is Architecture?

The TOGAF documentation initially refers to the original version of ISO/IEC 42010:2007 (Systems and software engineering) which defines architecture in the following terms:

“The fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment, and the principles governing its design and evolution.” [1] [2]

However, TOGAF defines an architecture as follows:

“1. A formal description of a system, or a detailed plan of the system at component level to guide its implementation
2. The structure of components, their inter-relationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time” [2] [3]

What is an Enterprise?

An enterprise is defined as follows:

“The highest level (typically) of description of an organization and typically covers all missions and functions. An enterprise will often span multiple organizations.” [4]

What kinds of architecture are dealt with by TOGAF?

TOGAF deals with 4 kinds of architecture:

  • Business Architecture
    • defines the business strategy, governance, organization, and key business processes [2]
    • a description of the structure and interaction between the business strategy, organization, functions, business processes, and information needs [5]
  • Data Architecture
    • describes the structure of an organization's logical and physical data assets and data management resources [2]
    • a description of the structure and interaction of the enterprise's major types and sources of data, logical data assets, physical data assets, and data management resources [6]
  • Application Architecture
    • provides a blueprint for the individual applications to be deployed, their interactions, and their relationships to the core business processes of the organization [2]
    • a description of the structure and interaction of the applications as groups of capabilities that provide key business functions and manage the data assets [7]
  • Technology Architecture
    • describes the logical software and hardware capabilities that are required to support the deployment of business, data, and application services [2]
    • includes IT infrastructure, middleware, networks, communications, processing, standards, etc. [2]
    • a description of the structure and interaction of the platform services, and logical and physical technology components [8]

 

References