EA Meets SOA in a Challenged Global Economy

by Paul Allen

Many approaches to enterprise architecture (EA) are based upon ideas that are rooted in the 1970-1980s world of internal IT shops, which puts the focus on the framework as an instrument for keeping internal IT assets in order. These approaches tend to neglect both the "soft" people-related factors that are central to successful EA and the fact that business is increasingly conducted in a collaborative fashion, using distributed Internet technologies. In this Executive Report by Paul Allen, we provide guidance that addresses the needs of organizations operating in a continually challenged global economy by harnessing ideas from service-oriented architecture (SOA) in an EA context.