What are the primary enterprise architecture layers, and their definitions?
Enterprise architecture entails applying architecture practices and principles to guide an organization through the business, application, data, and technology changes required to implement business strategies. An example of enterprise architecture is the TOGAF framework. The main enterprise architecture layers based on the TOGAF model are Business architecture, application architecture, data/information architecture, and Technical/technology architecture.
The business architecture layer describes the structure of the enterprise and the required functional features to deliver the vision of the business (The Open Group, n.d.). It defines the required processes to meet business objectives. The layer deals with the business vision, objectives, and strategy that guide the development of business competences. It also describes the responsible parties for implementing the defined business competences or services.
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The application architecture layer describes each application, the way they interact, and how they relate to the organization’s core business processes (The Open Group, n.d.). It defines the design of specific applications and their interactions with each other. The layer deals with the way an organization implements the previously defined business competences. It contains components for integrating applications, models for developing applications, service definitions, and event and service architectures.
The data architecture layer describes the structure of the physical and logical data assets and data management resources of the organization (The Open Group, n.d.). It defines the organization and accessibility of enterprise data stores. Every organization depends on information and the information patterns to gain insights regarding its customers and product or service offerings. The data architecture layer provides knowledge regarding customers through data analytics to allow the organization to enhance its business processes.
The technical architecture layer describes the required hardware and software to implement the application, data, and business services (The Open Group, n.d.). It supports applications and their interactions by identifying the software and hardware infrastructure. The layer enables information flow within the organization to support efficient operations.
What primary outputs (in the form of artifacts: catalogs, matrices, or diagrams) are created within each EA domain layer?) Provide a list of 5 or more output artifacts created in each domain layer.)
Once the architectural states have been described, a gap analysis is performed between the existing and expected states to create artifacts that will then be added to the repository of the architecture (The Open Group, n.d.). Examples of artifacts created to describe the Business architecture include business capabilities, business value streams, organizational units, performance metrics, and business processes. For the data architecture, artifacts created may include data entity, data management process models, conceptual data model, logical data model, and data security model. Artifacts such as organization matrix, application communication model, role matrix, interface catalog, and function matrix are created in the application architecture. Regarding the technology architecture, the objective is to create an architecture that enables the data and application architectures parts. Common artifacts for this architecture include hardware models, processing models, communication models, technology portfolio catalog, technology standards catalog, platform decomposition diagram, and network computing and hardware model.
What is a best practice for addressing security across the architecture?
It is often confusing to implement security in an enterprise. The focus of security is on developing controls to ensure adequate preventive, detective, and corrective measures. The best practice for dealing with security across the architecture is to use the chosen framework such as TOGAF to develop security measures. The initial step should start at the top of the business architecture where the artifacts in that domain such as the vision, objectives, and goals are considered (MuleSoft, n.d.). The next step entails identifying all the risk related to the artifacts, determining the needed controls to address the risk, and defining a program to develop and implement the controls. These measures should be implemented for each architecture domain. After identifying and assessing all risk, the development of the enterprise can continue.
After implementing the controls, the organization must establish adequate key performance indicators (KPIs) and monitoring measures to determine the architecture maturity over time (MuleSoft, n.d.). For each maturity level, the current level should be compared with the expected level to design a program to reach the expected level. Different controls can be used for each maturity level. They may include procedural controls, operational controls, application controls, endpoint controls, and infrastructure controls. The result will lead to different maturity ratings for the existing status and the expected status. After implementing the required controls, the next maturity management stage follows where ratings are updated.
How can enterprise architecture create a transformation plan for an organization?
In the current corporate world, businesses must constantly transform to adapt to the changing circumstances. The transformation plan can, nevertheless, be a challenging and complex task. Businesses can successfully manage their change plan using enterprise architecture. Organizations can use EA as a central system that integrates and shares information regarding different structures in and the entire transformation plan. EA offers relevant input that business can use to prioritize and plan changes besides providing program-level coordination across artifacts to realize the transformation coherently (CDW, 2014). EA also helps the organization in tracking the realization of the anticipated gains and can correct the transformation plan when required. The usefulness of Enterprise architecture during the transformation plan also concerns its ability to be used for consolidating and standardizing the required process to ensure consistency besides eliminating errors, security breaches, and system failures.
Enterprise Architecture
Explain how the domain layers have “line of sight” between them
The business architecture deals with all the activities undertaken by the organization, including activities focused on conceptualizing, designing, developing, and maintaining application and data assets that the organization depends on in the production of valuable outputs (The Open Group, n.d.). It also:
Offers revised or new IT services and applications that are generated within or acquired from the outside through business events. These will be categorized and stored in the application architecture for future sharing and reusing
Offers updates and definitions for the various metadata that support the production procedure to the data architecture
Offers revised or new data assets to be stored and categorized in the data architecture for reuse. Examples include survey outputs and new questionnaires.
The application architecture categorizes and hosts applications by defining their interactions, deployment, and relationships with the organization’s business processes such as editing, estimating, and regular tool adjustments. The architecture promotes accessibility and discoverability, which increases sharing and reuse (The Open Group, n.d.). It also:
Offers reusable and basic IT services for the Business Architecture to perform activities
Offers functionalities for transferring data between applications and stores besides offering paradata output processes to the data architecture
Offers applications and interfaces to the technology architecture
The data architecture categorizes the data and knowledge assets collected, produced, and used in the business architecture. It also defines the standards and models that underlie the output and promotes accessibility and discoverability (The Open Group, n.d.). It also
Offers categorization model for the business architecture to access and check stored metadata to enhance reuse in addition to providing quality paradata and metadata obtained from monitoring procedures to redesign processes
Offers format for data processing for the application architecture besides offering data inputs for applications to function in
Offers data categories, models, ideas, and structures for specifying and defining the data to be stored in the Technology architecture in addition to offering policies and instructions regarding the stored data
Technology architecture defines the required information technology architecture to enable the deployment of IT services and applications such as networks and hardware (The Open Group, n.d.). Besides, it:
Offers IT infrastructure to the application's architecture for IT services and applications to function with
Offers IT infrastructure to the data architecture for storage of data assets that the organization uses and produces
References
CDW. (2014). The Cloud as a Catalyst for Business Transformation . CDW.
MuleSoft. (n.d.). Managing the Full API lifecycle . MuleSoft.
The Open Group. (n.d.). The TOGAF® Standard, Version 9.2 . Pubs.Opengroup.Org. https://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/
