Empowering a Collaborative Enterprise Architecture

by Tushar K. Hazra

Collaboration is not a new concept for the industrial world. For any company, large or small, it has always been important to connect various operational units (business, engineering, or technical) while delivering well-coordinated business solutions or services. Collaboration has definitely moved past the status of yet another hyped innovative technology in the business sector. As a practitioner in the field, I can assert that available technologies and tools to support collaboration have progressed significantly over the past two decades. Additionally, with globally dispersed workforces, the need for collaboration has become more prominent. For example, from the mid-1980s through the 1990s, collaboration was directed toward centralizing business operations or services; whereas during the current decade, its focus has been on integrating and extending corporate operations or service delivery options beyond the boundary of a single enterprise.